Nowadays a lot of people read books on their electrical products. Some fans of e-books assert that paper books will be replaced by e-books one day. 

By: Mengyi Lu 120905338 Class 2

I have noticed this situation for a while that a lot of people read books on their electrical products like iPad, computer, mobile phone, or kindle. We can’t deny that these products make our reading so convenient that some fans of e-books assert that paper books will be replaced by e-books one day. Actually, I’m a fan of paper books and I’m confident that paper books will exist forever.

Remember there was an article said that as more and more people prefer to read e-books, some book stores found it difficult to survive. I was a little ashamed that I used to read e-books more than paper books in order to save money. There are a lot of free e-books on the internet, and I can download the one I want for free. How nice! But deep down in my heart, I still prefer paper books. I read e-books just because I was poor. As I have more pocket money now, I bought a lot of paper books and almost stopped reading e-books. Paper books bring me more happiness when I am reading. There are some reasons that why I love reading paper books so much.

First, reading paper books won’t harm eyesight that much. I still firmly believe that my eyesight was damaged by reading books on my iPod. Yes, my iPod. The screen was so small that made my reading so hard. Moreover, you can turn back to any page you want immediately when you read a paper book which cannot be achieved easily on e-books.

Additionally, it is safer to read paper books. If you read on an electrical product, you have to worry about whether your product will run out of power, or be stolen by thief, and you won’t be able to keep reading. But if you read a paper book, you won’t need to worry about it.

What’s more, if there is a series of books which was written by your favorite writer and has this really beautiful cover. Do you want to read the e-books or buy them home, read them, and make them a collection?  I’d like to choose the second one. As time goes by, you will find your bookcase filled with books and you will see how many books you have read.

I did some research before I began to write this story. And I found this interesting article written by Rich Adin. He listed seven advantages of paper books in his article The buying conundrum: paper book or e-book?   And I excerpted these points below.

1. When I buy a paper book, I own it; when I buy an e-book, I rent it.
2. Paper books are resalable on a secondary market and/or rise in value as they become scarce; e-books are never scarce and have no secondary market in which I can recoup some of my investment.
3. Nonfiction paper books tend to be less expensive to purchase than the e-book version and are available for significantly less on the legal secondary market, which includes the legal remainders market.
4. Paper books can legally be cooperatively bought, thereby reducing the price to individuals even further (I have bought in cooperation with my son several books over the years that we have shared the purchase cost of).
5. My paper books can be lent to other readers innumerable times; if I’m lucky, an e-book can be lent once for 2 weeks to another reader (after being lent that one time, the e-book cannot be lent again to anyone).
6. Once I buy a paper book it remains mine; unlike the e-book, no one can remotely remove the paper book, replace the paper book, or do anything that interferes with my ownership of the paper book.
7. As my collection of hard covers grows, I, too, may run into the space situation. At that point, I can reevaluate my paper books and remove some from my collection, and I either sell them on the secondary market (see 3) or, more likely, I can donate them to my local library, which is happy to obtain them as they are in pristine condition, giving me a charitable contribution deduction on my taxes at the fair market value, which is the average price in the used book market. I can’t sell or donate no-longer-wanted e-books to anyone, let alone to my local library.

Papermaking is one of the Four Great inventions of ancient China. We made paper books to carry our history, to record our civilization and we ought to be proud of it. Although I can’t deny that e-books bring us convenience and it really changed our lives, it doesn’t mean that we can abandon paper books.

There is a bookcase in our dormitory and it is almost filled with books. Everyone came to our dormitory would say how marvelous it was, it made us so happy. If you want to borrow a book from us, go and find us. Let’s support paper books and make its future bright.