One of us! The correct term for book backlogs is “THE PILE”.
I have a sort of similar issue. While I can finish ebooks with ease, I have paper books in a pile. That’s because I have bouts of insomnia. When I can’t sleep, I use Kindle on my phone in night mode, so as not to disturb the wife. OTOH I can’t flip the light on and read a regular book that way. Sure I could go to another room, but then I’m giving up on sleep completely.
I’ve awakened at some ridiculous hour and completed whole novels before 6AM.
Yeah, this is the reason I stopped buying physical books completely after I got married a few years ago. It’s digital only now, so I can read on the phone without switching on the light.
I got the latest Kindle, the Oasis, which has night mode. It’s nice.
I rarely buy paper books anymore. I’ve gotten too used to the ease of holding a Kindle vs. holding a paper book.
I’m at the point where my Kindle, whose storage capacity is so large compared to book files that I naively thought it might as well be infinite, is consistently on the verge of being completely full. And I still have other books waiting on my hard drive for the next time I need to charge and there’s space. Consistently.
(How many books is that? Around 950-1000. More if most stuff is plaintext or with a little bit of graphic content, significantly less if I’m trying to read something like Illuminae or the Secret History of Twin Peaks that’s fuckin’ entirely image files. Sigh.)
Welcome to the club. I’ve dozens, if not hundreds of books in my pile due to bargain newsletters and such. Unlike games though, I almost always finish books. ;)
I have the Paperwhite, but the light is dim enough that it doesn’t disturb my mate.
Does reading in the dark, even though with backlight, make your eye sight goes bad? The old adage of don’t read in dark does not seem to apply and yet I’m wary of it.
I’m not sure. My eyesight is weird to begin with. I’m functionally monocular. The Kindle does help me not check the web and social media while I am reading before bed, though.
It doesn’t seem to bother me, but reading in bed is like taking a couple of sleeping pills for me. Usually after 10-15 minutes I get real sleepy and put the book down. So I don’t do that much reading in the dark.
I feel like the black background in general is a bit easier on my eyes, so I keep mine in that mode all the time.
Reading in bad light won’t do any permanent damage but it will strain the eye muscles, make it harder to focus, that kind of thing. Some rest, a good night’s sleep, will set you right again.
Then again I’ve got seriously poor eyesight so maybe you shouldn’t listen to me.
The automatic backlight and “sleepy time” feature on the Oasis help too I think. I forget the name but sleepy time gradually dims the backlight over 30 minutes to help you go to sleep.
For those who haven’t read it or want it in their digital library, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is $1.99 right now.
When I had my first daughter around 9 years ago and as I was cuddling her to sleep, I used to read in the dark on the iPad. Fortunately for me, that as when I happened to encountered the Game of Thrones book for the first time and it it so much easier to past the time putting a baby to sleep. Anyway, after a couple of years of doing that (the 2nd daughter came)… I find that my eye sight has deteriorate. I don’t know if it was the iPad being too bright, or it was reading in the dark, or it was just timing (I probably have reached 40 by then). I needed new glasses very two to three years. So, I stoped reading in the night. I actually asked an optometrist and he doesn’t think reading in the dark on a backlit device is the cause. So perhaps I am just being silly.
I believe 40 is about the time our eyes begin to change, so it was probably that as much as anything. I was able to hold out until about 45 before I needed reading glasses. Now I can’t read anything without glasses on.
Yep, wasn’t too much past 40 I had to switch to bifocal/progressive lenses. Getting old is a blast. Oh wait, I meant a bitch. But as they say, beats the alternative.
True this. All of sudden when I turned 40, any conversation with people around my age would inevitably turn to how well we could read, how far we have to hold things away from our face, etc.
You people and your decades of functional eyes. I had to get glasses at like age 4 and it’s been all downhill since then.
I got glasses when I was 10 or 12, so, not that far off.
You know, I look at my pile of paperback books on the shelf and I cannot read them comfortably without a reading glass. Thank good news for digital gadgets and Large font!
To read comfortably without my reading glasses I either need to hold the Kindle way out from my face or jack the font size up so much that it feels like I’m turning pages in time with my heartbeat.