I Hate Books

I hate that indexes suck and that they don't support full text searching across my entire collection.

I hate that I have to guess which ones I'll need or want so that I can carry them with me.

I hate that I need a light to read them, potentially bothering the driver or a sleeping spouse.

I hate moving them, making shelves for them and searching for them on the shelves.

I hate that I can't take notes in them -- not even the ones I own -- without breaking out into a cold sweat (although, to be fair, that's more about my librarian mother than the book itself : ).

I hate that I have to buy a book twice if I want to listen to it instead of read it (and I hate that there's no way to pronounce pictures or code).

I hate that if the local book store doesn't have a book, that I have to wait for somebody to deliver it.

I hate that my local book store doesn't have reviews of the book, whereas my on line book store doesn't let me flip to whatever page I want.

The one thing I don't hate about books is the content. That part triggers my thoughts and my emotions in me that are so strong, I put up with all the things I hate so I can get to it.

Why isn't there an iPod for books (is it because iBook is already taken)? Why isn't all print media, e.g. novels, poems, comic books, news papers, magazines, etc, available in electronic format?

I agree with you in some points, and you don´t mention is common that computer books were heavy!
But, nothing is better than the smell of a new book, or turn the page waiting for the "good guy still alive" or many other things.
I don´t know if something in the future could replace the paper books without losing their magic.

The other thing about an "electronic" book would be that it would make copying much easier. Don't forget that until mp3 became so ubiquitous, record companies didn't even think about copy-protecting CDs, because copying a physical CD is much harder than copying an ethereal .mp3 file - even when CD burners became common.

Hey Chris,

Have you looked at the Sony Reader?

http://products.sel.sony.com/pa/PRS/

Regards,

Greg

For computer books you should look at Safari.
http://safari.informit.com/
It's not perfect, but you can search, make notes, read reviews etc.
And most importantly, it solves the carry around part.
BTW, What would you rather have on your shelves than books? Don't you get excited when you see a wall covered with books?

You're an idiot.

While I love books they have thier flaws as you have stated above.

One more thing I hate about books. When writing code samples out of a book. You have to set the book down. often in an awkward possition, because of the size of them nothing holds them. And worse depending where you are in the book and how stiff the spine is while working on the code sometimes the pages turn on you since your hands are on the keyboard.

I hate you too.

This might not be far away. Optimist estimate, 2 years for mass production.

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2665&p=20

I wanted to reply sooner, but, ah, well couldn't. You should have a look at Charles Petzold's blog and his reply to your post. But I guess you do :). Remember the "Famous Book Fight"? Doesn't this make it round two? :)

What I don't like about electronic books is device-based DRM. I just replaced my old pocket PC with a new model and found out that all the ebooks that I have bought are 'tied' to my old device and I cannot transfer them.

Imagine if you went into a bookshop and they asked you what you were going to carry it home in... ...then finding that the book wouldn't open on your journey to work because you were using a different bag.

"Why isn't there an iPod for books?"

Ironic because iPod followed Audible's first MP3 player and succeeded in part because Audible marketed theirs as a device to download and listen to audio books.

regarding...
"Why isn't all print media, e.g. novels, poems, comic books, news papers, magazines, etc, available in electronic format?"

there's a distributed computing project that seems to be at leasat partly addressing this issue, more info can be found at http://autotranslator.net/

one of the potential problems is with copyright, the same as with music, however the true problem really lies with these industreies not wanting to adapt to a new technology (the music industry for example trying to enforce old-style copyright, rather than employ a new business model for electronic formats)

i hear that google is doing a GoogleBooks, i think the gist of which is to make as much writen/printed material available online, but they're running into legal/copyright issues with this

I hope the progress will help us one day:

http://blog.onthematter.com/archive/2005/12/21/31.aspx

As a point of interest for probably nobody, iBook is owned by Family Systems, which was founded by my companys ex founder, when he left us back in the late 90's.

Told you it probably wasn't of interest..