Penelope Lively: 'eBooks For Bloodless Nerds'

Telegraph:

According to Penelope Lively, 78, the Booker Prize-winning author, e-books are for "bloodless nerds". She said that Kindles and other devices to which you can download novels are no substitute for real books and no self-respecting bibliophile should want one.

Read the whole story: Telegraph

Comments

[listen to the silence]

10:57 PM on 07/13/2011

I'm with one of my favorite authors, Penelope herself, on this one. I wouldn't own a kindle. I want the real thing in my hands not a piece of metal. No, not for me. I love my books too much.

[sunnydee07]

12:35 PM on 07/13/2011

I love having my books on my shelf. I think they give my home life and make sure that the written word stays alive in our house.

Having said that, the e.book format just allows an easier way for some people to access literature. Just for the sake of the "traditional", we shouldn't dismiss a new technology that might make an author's work more accessible to those who don't want to carry books around with them.

Maybe those children who aren't reading paper books, will pick up an e.reader more readily. Isn't that what the goal is?

[Ayla87]

12:33 PM on 07/13/2011

"Kindles and other devices to which you can download novels are no substitute for real books and no self-respecting bibliophile should want one"

Unless of course you're dyslexic or blind. In which case the font, audio and color features would be a great advantage.

[jshop]

11:51 PM on 07/12/2011

The words remain the same. Save a tree. Don't be a luddite and get yourself an e-reader!

(Advice from one who reluctantly traded books for a NookColor which he now loves tremendously!)

[terragazelle60]

03:16 PM on 07/12/2011

well since I could not read because of poor eye sight, and the gift of a kindle now allows me to again read after several years of buying books but unable to read them...I love my Kindle. It not only allows me to read for pleasure, but to have cookbooks and dictionaries and reference books. I can not put in my house the amount of books I can fit into my Kindle.

I can also have documents sent to me and I can download it into my Kindle and be able to read it. I am not a bloodless Nerd, I am handicapped...but even without that, I would love my Kindle.

Now let me get back to the third installment after Game of Thrones...RR Martin sure can write.

[John David Redux]

07:53 PM on 07/12/2011

Somehow, I don't think she was talking about those with vision problems. But it's telling how you automatically read the worst intentions into what she said.

[debkey]

02:26 PM on 07/12/2011

One person's opinion. No more. No less.

[John David Redux]

07:52 PM on 07/12/2011

Not one person's. It's the opinion of many, many people.