NEW books find no space on my shelves, which are already spilling their guts out with scores of the old titles I already have.
That's when I thought of soft copy books - e-books and audiobooks.
Most importantly, apart from saving space, these digital books will not tether me to the computer.
It must work on my iPhone or an e-book reader.
My experiment with digital reading material began about a month ago when I was bored on the treadmill.
Brisk walking is a pace too fast for reading a magazine or book - unless you try to be a hero and get thrown off the belt.
Without a mental distraction, the physical act of putting one foot in front of the other in rapid succession for 40 minutes, which is like an eternity, bored me to tears.
So I downloaded a free copy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes detective story Man With A Twisted Lip (audiobooksforfree.com) to my computer and zipped that to my iPod.
It worked.
I was transfixed by the sonorous voice that read the case of an English squire who impersonated a beggar to earn a living. With one successful audiobook experiment done, others followed.
Next, I bought a Kindle 2 for over $600 from a friend and bought e-books like The Future Of The Internet by Jonathan Zittrain from online retail store Amazon.
The Kindle is only about 1cm thick and weighs less than a paperback book which can comfortably fit into any tote bag.
I was amazed at the speed with which I could get and read the new books which have not even hit the stores here.
Many newly published books have Kindle editions which means that I can get titles hot off the press like Zittrain's book and start reading within minutes.
Once a soft copy of the book is transferred to my computer, I transferred it to the Kindle by hooking both of them up.
Within minutes, I was reading the book on the Kindle or on my iPhone which has a Kindle reader.
What I like about soft-copy reading is that it does not cost an arm and a leg.
Apart from the investment in the Kindle 2, many audiobooks are free especially those whose copyrights have expired like the works of William Shakespeare.
And if you have to buy an e-book, they typically cost about 40 per cent less than new physical titles.
Zittrain's book for the Kindle cost US$9.95 (about S$15) - that's US$7 less than if bought new on Amazon and excludes the US$20 or so air freight charges if I want the book sent to me from the United States in the next three days.
With more companies preparing to announce new e-book readers, book publishers and retailers have reason to be worried because they are being sidelined and their profits slashed.
But that is not my fight: As an avid reader, technology lets me read or listen to books when and where I like. And that is that for me.
chngkeg@sph.com.sg
This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.
