When I read a book, I get sucked into everything about it. The characters, the plots, the setting, and even the way the author writes are all significant aspects of this. The feeling of advancing through a book’s pages is almost as rewarding as actually finishing the book. However, I can’t feel any of that while reading an e-Book. There’s too many distractions, no good way of seeing how I progress, and no closing the book as I finish the final page.
According to Publishers Weekly, reading physical copies of books has declined over six percent every five years since the 1980s.
From another source, Statista, an online platform that specializes in data gathering and visualization information, e-Books are increasing by almost two percent each year.
To me, there’s almost nothing good about e-Books. I started reading The Kinder Poison in a physical copy, but when I finished the book, it’s sequel, The Cruelest Mercy had just come out and wasn’t in any of my nearby libraries. I was desperate to read the sequel, so I searched online. I ended up finding an e-Book version so I clicked on it and started reading.
The whole time I was reading this e-Book, I was distracted. I was always clicking on other tabs and answering different texts. After a short period of time, I also had to give my eyes a break from the strain, no matter how much I wanted to continue. With all of these distractions, I lost my ability to concentrate, and because of that, I suffered from retaining information about the e-Book. I had lost knowledge about the plots, settings and the characters. Losing this information makes the book dreary and prolonged.
If someone were to ask me what I remember from The Cruelest Mercy, here’s what I would say: absolutely nothing except the names of the two main characters: Kasta and Zarhu.
I learned the names of the characters from the first book, so really, I don’t remember anything from the second book. This proves my point that e-Books should have no reason for their growing popularity.
The Guardian recently quoted from a Norwegian study, “We found that paper readers did report higher on measures having to do with empathy and transportation and immersion, and narrative coherence, than iPad readers.”
In simpler terms, most readers who read physical copies have a better sense of mapping out images in a story and making a better sense of the plot.
Reading an e-Book might be a more available option, but I highly discourage it. The whole point of reading is to visualize the scenarios and put oneself into a world that only exists when someone’s reading.
When I read an e-Book, I can’t fall into the author’s writing like I would be able to with a physical book and it destroys the experience.
After the third book was released, I decided to go back and re-read the whole series in the physical form. When I picked up the Cruelest Mercy in its physical form from the library, I remember the sensation of it reading like a whole new book.
