NancyLebovitz comments on How To Have Things Correctly - Less Wrong

57 Post author: Alicorn 17 October 2012 06:10AM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 19 October 2012 07:07:32AM 2 points [-]

Any thoughts about optimizing book ownership?

Comment author: Alicorn 19 October 2012 04:55:24PM 2 points [-]

Depends on:

  • whether you like reading on screens
  • how often you reread
  • how many friends you have who a) have similar tastes and b) reliably return borrowed objects
  • how much living space you have to work with
  • how convenient you are to a library
  • your finances, and
  • to what extent you enjoy books as decor.
Comment author: DaFranker 19 October 2012 05:14:15PM *  1 point [-]

Add also:

  • which kind of books you want and their intended form of reading
  • how often you will want to search the contents
  • how often you might want to refer to the contents when applicable, such as reference books
  • whether you have the urge to press ctrl+f whenever you want to find something in a long text
  • how likely you are to immediately look up the definition of a word (perhaps in another tab or window) as opposed to just keep on reading and infer from context
  • other stuff that's easier to do when you've already got the text in electronic format and have direct access to search and lookup tools
Comment author: Vaniver 19 October 2012 02:26:09PM 2 points [-]

Buy all of them.

(More seriously, I go back and forth on this. My books are some of my favorite possessions, so long as I'm not moving- but every time I move, I get that much closer to switching to a Kindle.)

Comment author: David_Gerard 23 October 2012 04:56:33PM *  1 point [-]

Electronic copies of every book and a reader you actually enjoy reading books on. I was surprised to find a Blackberry phone doing a decent job of being the latter, a much better job than my laptop did - I read all the time now, whereas I have paper books by my bedside I haven't opened in a year. YMMV, this is a highly personal thing.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 24 October 2012 05:22:43AM 0 points [-]

I'm finding my new Nexus 7 tablet a very good book reading device. Small enough to carry in a pocket and hold with one hand, and has enough resolution and screen space to display almost any sensible PDF readable in full page view. I just gave away my older 10" PDF reading tablet (Acer A500) after not having booted it once since getting the N7.

I moved apartment this month and didn't bring over any paper books or a bookshelf. I doubt I will either. A single SD card is much nicer to carry around than a few bookshelves worth of books.

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