I wanted to post this earlier but got sidetracked….

Free Access to the public from July 4th to August 4th, in celebration of Project Gutenberg’s 35th Birthday.

July 4th to August 4, 2006 marks a month long celebration of the 35th anniversary of the first step taken towards today’s eBooks, when the United States Declaration of Independence was the first file placed online for downloading in what was destined to be an electronic library of the Internet. Today’s eBook library has a total of over 100 languages represented.

The World eBook Fair welcomes you to absolutely free access to a variety of eBook unparalleled by any other source. 1/3 million eBooks await you for personal use, all free of charge for the month from July 4 - August 4, 2006, and then 1/2 million eBooks in 2007, 3/4 million in 2008, and ONE million in 2009.

http://worldebookfair.com/

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh.
Booksbooksbooksbooksbooksbooksbooksbooks!

sounds cool 😊

I always wondered though, dont your eyes hurt loads if you read an entire book online? that or you waste all your PC ink.
Anywho, I’ll still have a look around, I’m just being moany,

Thunder being moany? noooo   😝   but I understand your point and you are right….a nice new LCD works great but yeah, if your monitor flickers or just isn’t all that great, it can cause eye strain leading to headaches etc. But they also have books in MP3 format so you lazy types can just listen to ‘em on your I-Pod or whatever it is all the cool kids use now.

and Boo, my reaction was very similar to yours 😊

Eh. I never liked eBooks. I read about a chapter of one I really liked, but I got a headache and had to keep scrolling down, so I just printed it. Which, as Thunder said, wasted all my ink.

I never understood why people think eBooks will push conventional books in oblivity. That will never happen.

It just doesn’t read leisurely from a screen. And you can’t take it with you to the toilet.

If you ARE going to read an eBook, make it worthwhile and read something that’s absofuckinglutely genius:

http://images.ucomics.com/images/pdfs/sadams/godsdebris.pdf

(Its a PDF)

la, if you charge your laptop enough, you could take it to the loo, although it might be hard to move around and stuff.

Ooh! I’ll be one of the lazy types to listen on my ipod 😊

Thanks FlintJ 😊

I’ve never tried an e-reader, so I’m not sure how comfy they’d be.  I agree with LaMa that, while I don’t mind looking things up online, for reading an entire book I’d much rather have a hard copy.  I’ve printed out a couple that I really wanted to read because it’s so uncomfortable to read it on my PC, and even my laptop is too bulky read in bed with.  These new digital paper e-readers might be just the thing, when they perfect them and bring the cost down to a reasonable level.

In addition: you can’t put an e-book on a bookshelf. And much of he tfun of books is both having a good bookcase, as well as being able to pop into a bookshop and browse the shelves at will.

I think his whole e-book thing is as unrealistic as the “paper-less office”

LaMa, I don’t think anybody here is saying that they prefer e-books to normal books.

I like e-books for reading books I don’t have, and currently can’t afford to buy.

I also don’t mind reading online, although I suspect I’m in the minority on that.

I’d rather have a proper book, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to turn down free books, in whatever form they may be.