Fiction

Physical, nook, and unabridged audio. I'm not as prolific a reader as some here, but it still makes about 50 of each a year.

I buy physical books for a) authors to sign; b) to support a local indy bookstore; c) for tech books--never try to read a code listing in an e-reader; or d) out of habit.

I buy e-Books a) to quickly get the next book in the series; b) to support authorial friends who are only doing e-Book publishing; or c) out of ease.

I use the library for both types. In addition to the library, there are lots and lots of sources on-line for free books, starting with Project Gutenberg and working out from there. Anytime I'm looking for something pre-1930, that's my first stop.

I have one of the nook glow model that can be side-lit if you wish--before that I had one of the original nooks. The e-ink screens for nook or Kindle (I'm talking about the non-color, non-backlit versions) are to my eyes superior to ink on paper now, with the added plus that at the end of the day I can pop the size up a bit. I know the newer paperback form factor (you know, the bit taller, bit skinnier) allows for more white space on the pager for baby-boomer eye-ease, but sometime's it's still too damn small. The glow I only use occasionally--my wife sleeps easily with my bedside light on. On the other hand, I'm more restless, so she reads hers in the dark more. My non-backlit one goes for a couple weeks easily between charges. She has a nook tablet and thus, backlit, it needs much more regular charging.

Ironically, since one of the guy's points was worrying about carpal tunnel (or was that a comment), I got my wife her nook because of carpal tunnel. She could no longer comfortably hold a physical book for extended periods of time. It's a lot easier to shift a nook around. It's been an absolute godsend for her--someone who had always read several books a week that had pretty much stopped.

I also went and rooted my nook, so in addition to the B&N software, I run Kindle for Android and Overdrive for Android, so I can buy epubs (nook) or mobi (Amazon) or download directly from the library (Overdrive) without needing to use Adobe Digital Editions or Calibre to transfer the book to the reader. (Yes, I love Calibre for lots of things, but it's nice, too, to be able to download directly when I'm not near my laptop.)

The biggest drawback for me with e-Books is direct access to locations, otherwise known as "flipping through the book." E-Books can only take you to a specific page (nook), percentage read (kindle), or bookmark that you were prescient enough to set ahead of time knowing you'd be looking for the spot later (both, but NEVER happens for me )

It's true that you don't know how far you are or how far you have to go by feel, but a screen tap will show you a progress bar. Sharing depends entirely on the source of the book. It also depends on with whom. For DRM-free files, it's easy to share for anyone. For our family, the nooks are hooked up to one B&N account, so anything there for one is available for all. My smartphone has nook and kindle installed, too, and location is kept in sync between the devices. That's for reading emergencies, though.

All of that said, our house is still overflowing with books v1.0 and we never, ever have had enough bookshelves and don't have the creativity to build easy chairs out of them...