Paper or Plastic?

Hello from the world of ebooks. As of today, I have ventured into the slightly scary world of plastic and not paper. That is, I am now a proud owner of Barnes and Noble's nook (as you can see from the picture to the left which I took with my iPhone).

I have to admit, I have been against ebooks up until now. I am old fashion. Give me oil paint on canvas over digital painting. I always thought the same with books. I love the feel, smell and experience of a real book. I love to go to the bookstore and browse the shelves. I love used bookstores.

That was until I looked around and realized I have close to 1,000 books stored between my house and my parent's house. To move all of those books at some point would be a pain and put a pretty large dent in my wallet.

That doesn't mean I won't buy real books anymore. I will buy my favorite authors in hardback/paperback and will reserve my ereader for books that I don't plan to get signed or collect. I liken it to my cd collection. I used to buy way too many cds and found them bulky. Where to store all the jewel cases? Even if you recycle those, you need folders and folders to keep the actual disk. Since iPods (or mp3 players that is), I only buy the artists that I love. I enjoy looking at the cd jacket and having the physical cd. The rest of my music collection? I either buy used or download when they're released.

As far as buying nook, there were many reasons I chose it over the Kindle. I won't get into that now (maybe a later post), but I hope that nook lives up to my expectations. They are low, I must admit. This is my first venture into an ereader, so just having book digitally and being able to download/buy them at a touch of a button is huge. Sitting at work, I purchased two books and within 30 seconds I had them on the device to read.

I leave for vacation in a few days, and I must say, I'm excited to put nook to the test. I hope that my choice of plastic over paper pays off.