This sounds like something YKWIA would do

--if he would even deign to have an e-book reader:

Man photocopies his Kindle to make physical backup

In what may seem like an act of either extreme whimsy or incredible paranoia a man has photocopied every page of his Kindle version of George Orwell’s 1984, creating a paper copy of the digital text.

The physical e-book is the brainchild of artist Jesse England who calls the project “E-Book Backup.” England originally carried out the project in 2012 though people seem to be picking up on it now. Here’s what a lame old e-book looks like when printed out and handsomely bound.

I knew they collected the info, of course, but it's interesting to think about the ramifications

Your E-Book Is Reading You: Digital-book publishers and retailers now know more about their readers than ever before. How that's changing the experience of reading.

It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them." And on Barnes & Noble's Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first "Hunger Games" book is to download the next one.

In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with a book. Does the reader quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins? Now, e-books are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them.

Not surprising, but a bit disturbing

Is Your E-Book Reading Up On You?

E-books are quickly going mainstream: They represent nearly one out of 10 trade books sold.

It's easy to imagine a near future in which paper books are the exception, not the norm. But are book lovers ready to have their reading tracked?

Most e-readers, like Amazon's Kindle, have an antenna that lets users instantly download new books. But the technology also makes it possible for the device to transmit information back to the manufacturer.

"They know how fast you read because you have to click to turn the page," says Cindy Cohn, legal director at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It knows if you skip to the end to read how it turns out."

Most of the people I know personally with e-book readers are at least in their 40s, and some into their 60s

Older readers kindle fondness for e-readers

Judy Ellis, 67, got her first cell phone two years ago. So it’s fair to say that like many in her generation, the Minneapolis resident has not been an early adopter of new technology. Then Amazon’s Kindle came along.
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“It’s just so easy to use,” she said, “and the adjustable font size makes a big difference in how quickly you can read.”

But don’t typecast this as a one-note phenomenon. For Ellis and many of her peers, larger type size is just one reason they have embraced e-readers, the increasingly popular mobile devices for reading electronic versions of books, newspapers and magazines.

Portability, accessibility, affordability, readability (beyond the font size) and the availability of thousands of titles have made Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony Reader and other e-readers enormously appealing to seniors and baby boomers.

Via LISNews.

One of my co-workers has being weighing her options and finally got an iPad, where she can download books from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and read the ones on Google's new e-book service. I still love my Kindle, though. Give me free wireless connexion and the ability to download and read a book nearly anywhere I would go, and I'm happy. But I've noticed no matter what e-book reader people choose, they tend to love it, and it really seems to increase the amount and fun they have reading.

Which, as a librarian, I'm all for. Plus, I see people using the library who have e-book readers as well. As one person put it, there are books I want to read but not buy, and the library is where I get those.

I have 144 books on my Kindle right now, if you don't consider that some of those are actually collections (such as the 15 Wizard of Oz books, the 16 volumes of Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights, the collected works of Dickens, Hawthorne, Lovecraft, Conan Doyle, Plato, Aristotle, and Welles, among others). The device (since it is 'only' the second generation) will hold 1500. Maybe some day I'll troll my way through the thousands upon thousands of free books and get that many on there, but I doubt it. The newer ones hold over 3,000 books. 3,000. That's not quite my entire library, but it's probably close. The idea of holding a library in the palm of your hand is just, well, amazing. But the fact that it's easy to navigate, so it truly is at your fingertips is the really positive aspect I love about the Kindle.

I cannot imagine growing up without a single book of my own

Kids More Likely to Own a Cellphone Than a Book, Study Finds

A survey of 17,000 U.K. children between the ages of 7 and 16 found that while 86% owned a cell phone, only 73% said they owned a book. The NLT believes a child's access to books has a direct effect on their reading ability, finding that 80% of children reading at their expect levels have their own books. Conversely, the same can only be said for just 58% of children not reading up to par with their age group.

Now, reading isn't limited to books. But access to books does have an effect on literacy. As far as the article goes, somehow I don't think the all of the other 27% without books were necessarily getting books from the library. The connexion between exposure to print and developing literacy is the reason I run our hospital's early literacy project (Reach Out and Read, part of a national initiative), which gives out free books to children 6 months through 5 years old in the hopes that they will have a library of their own before starting school. Parents are encouraged to read and share books with their child.

I just can't imagine not having a book of my own. Don't get me wrong, I embrace things like e-readers and multi-format stories, etc., but there's nothing that can truly replicate an experience with a book. You can cuddle up with a Kindle on the couch, but it's not going to smell like good old paper. I love going into libraries and bookstores, not only because I am surrounded by knowledge, but because the smell is very welcoming, and the books invite you to open them. (Conversely, I've always associated the smell of fabric shops with allergies, most likely to the wool or sizing chemicals; I like fabric shops, but have to get past that association. Books, however, have wonderful associations for me.) Now it's easy to be sucked into a electronic format with video, text, and sound, but it's a completely different experience.

Thanks to Buffy Hamilton for sharing the link.

An experimental e-book reader that navigates like a book

Dual-display e-book reader lets you flip pages naturally

There's a video that demonstrates the concept. It's still in development, but it looked intriguing. Thanks to Blake at LISNews for this one. (Obviously I read LISNews faithfully, right?)