Downtown and Midtown Re: [OT] Hotel suggestions for downtown London

[Peter Corlett]

On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 09:42:46AM +0100, Jacqui caren wrote:
[...]
> I only have a ~500 books left these days (mostly fiction). I have a <100
> number of IT and misc reference books but most of my books are obtained in
> digital form and the digital now exceeds the paper.

It does however make it harder to read them in the bog.

> I prefer audio fiction as I can listen to a book and work at the same
> time. Also when you have spent far too long staring at a screen it is nice
> to stick a set of headphones on and close your eyes while "reading" a good
> book - especially in the bath ;-)

I have a large collection of Radio 4 documentaries and comedies on my iPod,
which are useful for when I feel like walking home for a bit of exercise.
(The Tube is too noisy and the iPod too weedy to be able to effectively
listen to speech.)

> The big question: do peeps still prefer paper over digital forms?

Naturally.

Books do not suffer bitrot or obsolesence of file formats in the way that
digital data does. Throw DRM into the mix as well and it's a complete
no-brainer to avoid the digital form like the plague.

Digital is useful for searching reference books that have a woefully
inadequate index, but that seems to correlate quite well with the rest of
the book being woefully inadequate as well.