Judging from the CIDU archive, Stone Soup was one of Bill’s favorite comics, and he originally scheduled this strip to appear shortly after it was published in 2019:
The problem is that he never finished writing the text to go along with it:
“There seems to be a common theme, especially in comic strips, that physical books are more …”
Would anyone like to take a shot at completing Bill’s sentence, or offer some other perspectives about reading (for enjoyment, not as work) in paper vs. electronic form?
Comics I Don't Understand 
People who prefer paper books over electronic entertainment do seem to have a superiority complex about it.
@ Powers (1) – That prejudice existed even before the corresponding electronics had been invented. In Heinlein’s “The Rolling Stones” (1952), he writes that most of the family preferred “real” books (the alternative being microfilm spools – Heinlein was often prescient, but he didn’t predict everything correctly).
…more “real” somehow.
I resisted the Kindle for years. Then, like so many, once I got one, physical books became unpreferred in a big way (for pleasure reading–reference is another matter). At one point I was on a business trip and my newish Kindle bricked itself. I called, got someone coherent at Amazon, and after retrying all the things I had already done, he agreed it was dead and said they’d send a new one. “But how will I get home?!” I asked; he laughed, said he understood.
My wife has a friend who had never read for pleasure. Her husband got her a Kindle as a gift, which she was unenthusiastic about, until for some reason she tinkered and made the text very large. Suddenly reading became easy! She concluded that she had some minor, undiagnosed learning/perception disorder, and now reads happily.
Last anecdote: in 1995 or so, I suggested an idea, a small screen that you’d plug into a cradle at night. It would dial up the local newspaper and download the content; in the morning, you’d unplug and read the paper there, instead of staggering out to the driveway to pick up the dead-tree version.
My wife said that was ridiculous, that she’d never want to read a paper that way.
Cue Larry David’s FTX Super Bowl ad: Of course it’s now been well over a decade since we cancelled our physical newspaper delivery… (Well, except for Sunday, because it’s cheaper to get the Sunday paper + online than to just get online; I assume this is because they sell the ads in the Sunday paper, so it’s sort of subsidizing the rest.)
I used to say “I don’t watch TV but the other day it happened to be on …”
Now I say “I don’t read books but the other day one happened to be open …”
When I hit my 35th anniversary at Megacorp, it was time to select a gift from the cumpnee. I was discussing it with a cow-orker, and he suggested a pad computer which could be used as an e-reader. So I went with an iPad Mini, which got better reviews for that purpose than a Galaxy. I wasn’t sure how much I’d use it as a reader, as I mostly read books from the library. Things I soon discovered:
The library has a large, and ever-growing, selection of e-books. As it’s open 24/7 as long as you have internet, you’ll never run out of books.
You can increase the font size of the books to make them easier to read. Absent reading glasses, I’d gotten to the point where MMPBs were near impossible, and hardbacks were getting dicey.
You can search within the book. So that deals with things like, “Wait, who’s this guy?”
You can look up words. That can be very useful especially for UK writers, especially slang.
Funny, Brian in STL, this:
>That can be very useful especially for UK writers, especially slang.
…I take exception with: it’s that UK slang that needs looking up! :)
(And is there a “STL” in the UK?)
Another aspect of e-readers is that if you’re lucky enough to live in a metropolitan area with a library consortium, your reach is even broader. Here in the DC area we have TEN libraries we can pull from. Now if only they used a shared catalog/checkout system…
Hey Brian in STL, there’s a commenter on GoComics named Brian that used to work at Megacorp. You guys ever meet? 🙂
“There seems to be a common theme, especially in comic strips, that physical books are more …”
Authentic, perhaps?
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/27/1215372795/merriam-webster-word-of-the-year-2023-authentic
After Robert had cataract surgery on his eyes he had trouble reading. He had never worn eyeglasses and had trouble adjusting to them. This was back in his mid 50s. He was very unhappy as he could no longer read books. A number of years later he found he could download books and read them on his regular computer. The pages were definitely large enough to read. Early in Covid he found out he could download them from not only our county library system, but also parts of the NYC library system as well as other libraries. We couldn’t find his library cards (one from our community and one from the community he used to work in), so I handed him mine. “I” have been reading books online ever since.
On the other hand. I have trouble concentrating to read online if it is anything other than emails, comics, and similar. Anything like a book, magazine or newspaper I have trouble concentrating on. (Having said that I read our regional newspaper online since the start of Covid – did not want to touch it same day it was delivered at first, so I started doing so. It is more of a scanning through than actually reading it in depth, so just passable for me. I pay for home delivery of the paper daily & Sunday. Why? Well, every time they raised the price of the delivered newspaper over the past decade or so I call and say I am going to cancel due to same and I am told that they will continue me at the old rate. So it is cheaper for me to continue the delivery even though reading online than to pay the online rate – and I still get the ads for things I want. Some day I hope to go back to reading the paper issue. (Just finished today’s before I came to cidu.)
Another aspect of e-readers is that if you’re lucky enough to live in a metropolitan area with a library consortium, your reach is even broader.
We have three. My home library is the largest of them, but I still find some books at the others on occasion.
Hey Brian in STL, there’s a commenter on GoComics named Brian that used to work at Megacorp.
Eh, guy’s a bum.
Perhaps the reason that novelists and cartoonists tend to portray books as being more “real”, “authentic”, or “legitimate” is simply because these authors are directly dependent upon the sales of their own books. One way to test this hypothesis would be to examine webcomics for similar tendencies.
And in the comments, not on GoComics but on Daily Cartoonist, I ran across a familiar avatar with an unfamiliar username:
…maybe Bill intended to post exactly as found? There are a few books that just wouldn’t be as completely enjoyable on an E reader. Firmin comes to mind and was an exquisite joy. I’m glad I read a paperback copy but would have still enjoyed it electronically since I wouldn’t have known anything was missing. Ignorance can be blissful. Nowadays I mostly use audio books. In my experience I’ve found gardening, walking, driving, using a chainsaw, etc., while reading anything, especially a book, is not ideal.
I am curious as to what would be missing from an electronic version.
Personally I have never gotten into audio books. There are few times when listening to one would be convenient, other than driving. I don’t do all that much these days, so it would probably take months to finish a book in the car. So I prefer to listen to music then.
Unlike music, an audiobook or podcast or whatever requires you to pay fairly close attention. For most tasks that’s going to work.
I generally only read e-books for recreation (fiction), so it’s less of an issue, but I have had problems when they include a map of the world, and I can’t make it any bigger, so I can’t see details and it is basically useless to me. I imagine any reference book would be much harder to replicate on an e-book, as they usually have pictures, diagrams, and inset comment boxes – none of which translate well to an e-book, unless it’s a PDF, and that’s going to be challenging on a small device like a phone, or even a small tablet.
Epub books that I read with iOs Books (formerly iBooks) allow tapping the image to show just it, and expanding it. I have made use of that a number of times.
@ Lola in PA (14) – I’ve sometimes found that publishing differences can improve (or destroy) the enjoyment of reading a “real” book. I recently re-read “The Andromeda Strain”: while the paperback edition that I found at our local library did contain the complete text, the reduced quality of the illustrations (and even the poorly chosen font in which it was typeset) made it a second-rate experience (in comparison to the original hardback).
Another example was “The Return of the Native”, which I read in high school. The school bookstore was sold out, so I ended up getting a pristine, high-quality hardback edition from the public library, which had been printed from real plates, and on “bible quality” vellum-like paper (the imprint of the lead slugs was visible from the other side of each page). It had a slightly archaic feel, which matched perfectly with the 19th century narrative. I may have been the only person in the whole class who enjoyed the book, and that “special” edition was a major factor.
STL Brian. Illustrations and the book was physically unusual.
Some people who like paper books more than digital ones act like they think they’re better for it.
And, Johan, do you think there is also some of the vice versa out there?