Post #840486
2026-03-25 17:12 UTC
Replies (11)
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@lastrobot@writing.exchange 2026-03-25 17:14
@histoftech I prefer paper. But regularly read ebooks, and listen to audiobooks. I just want many, many books to read and will use any mode. 🌞
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@wcbdata@vis.social 2026-03-25 17:14
@histoftech I prefer paper for most long form work, but I think it's because the physicality of it helps to keep my focus...
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@benjamingeer@piaille.fr 2026-03-25 17:15
@histoftech I used to prefer digital books, now I prefer paper, it’s better for my eyes
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@SnoopJ@hachyderm.io 2026-03-25 17:26
@histoftech usually I am fine with digital, but for any "reference" text that I might want to index into for specific material (beyond what digital highlighting can cover), I need dead trees to be a functional reader
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@benjamineskola@hachyderm.io 2026-03-25 17:32
@histoftech I prefer paper for anything that feels ‘reference-y’, where I might flip back and forth a lot rather than reading straight through. Otherwise probably evenly split.
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@spacehobo@teh.entar.net 2026-03-25 17:41
@histoftech I thought I was ride-or-die paper until I went to grad school for an MA a couple years back. Two huge things made me realise how important digital non-fiction documents had become. The first is best illustrated by the first image. Horizontal four-page spreads were life-changing for me. The second is that I could quickly grab plain text out of e-book formats. I'd name the PDFs or ePubs after the citation tag I used in BibTeX, pull out a plain-text version with the same name, and then use `ripgrep` to quickly search for half-remembered passages. The result is something like the second image. In a hurry I could quickly drop something like `NOTE: rg -i white.heat[Hicks2017]` in my document, and follow it up at leisure when I actually worked out where I wanted to weave your take on Wilson's policies into the narrative.
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@lisamakesstuff@mastodon.art 2026-03-25 17:56
@histoftech I think paper, because most of my non-fiction reading lately is either books about quilts and quilting, or books with instructions for making specific quilts. But I *do* have other non-fiction books. :)
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@jongary@macaw.social 2026-03-25 18:19
@histoftech paper, but sometimes the ebooks are cheaper. Whatever , as long as I’m getting them from bookshop.org or the library.
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@RosaCtrl@social.vivaldi.net 2026-03-25 18:20
@histoftech digital for everything
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@StephenMoore@mstdn.social 2026-03-25 18:30
@histoftech Prefer? Paper for everything Tolerate? digital novels, and digital academic articles Will not tolerate digital monographs.
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@oclsc@mstdn.ca 2026-03-25 19:45
@histoftech Depends. If it's one read and done, either is fine. If it's something I'll actually work with, I prefer paper, because it's easier and faster to keep my fingers in a few places and flip back and forth, eg overall diagram vs detail text. Even book readers with bookmarks and quick page refreshes don't quite cut it for me. I don't know whether this demonstrates some interface detail e-book readers don't get yet, or just something about the way my brain works, or both. For quick reference lookups, e-books are fine if the TOC and index are sensibly designed. They aren't always in paper books either, but the way one can flip quickly through paper pages seems to help.