I also thought that the best thing to read was the physical books until I bought an eReader

What do omelets, cell phones, coffee, and computers have in common? They divide people. Tremendous dialectical battles are fought every day to find the answer to what is best, with or without onions, iOS or Android, with or without sugar, with MacOS or Windows... Well, the same goes for reading. In this world, there are two types of people: those who prefer to read a physical book and those who wouldn't change their eReader for anything in the world. I was one of the first ones to death, until I bought an eReader and, suddenly, everything changed.

Two years ago I was a big fan of physical books. That taste for turning the pages, that smell of a new book, that 600-page volume printed on both sides full of knowledge (or stories), that "I sit on the couch and read for a while", that collection of my favorite sagas decorating the shelf? I loved it, but I'll be honest with you, nowadays they seem to me like trifles compared to the comfort that an e-book reader gives.

(Almost) every advantage

The idea of buying an eReader, a Kindle Paperwhite (139.99 euros) in my case, came up one night while I was reading in bed. I read almost every night and I realized that, after a while, my arms got tired of holding the book, especially when the titles were longer than usual. In the last few months, I've been doing a lot of work in physics and philosophy, and the books are quite generous. If I was reading upside down my arms would get tired, if I was reading sideways I couldn't turn the pages properly, so in the end, I was tired of looking for the right position to read lying down in bed.

In addition, as time went by, the bookshelf became fuller and fuller. There came a point when I had no more space to keep books. And you see, I'm not a person who sells them or gives them away. I like to have them always at hand because, for H or B, I always end up going back to them to refresh some concept, find ideas for articles, or just read them again. There are books that I have read two or three times, like the last one by Stephen Hawking, which is a book that I never get tired of recommending.

So, having seen it, I decided to give the eReader a chance. At the beginning I was a little reluctant because I thought "Pf, after all the day in front of a screen, now even to read I'll have to look at a screen", but after time I discovered that, except for that detail, reading in an eReader is almost all advantages. My three arguments are the following.

The first one is space. An eReader allows you to carry a few hundred books in a single device. They don't take up space, they don't weigh, they don't fill shelves, they don't pick up dust, they don't fall down, the pages don't yellow or deteriorate and you don't have to carry three kilos of books when you travel. Everything is stored in the memory of the eReader, which with 8 GB can hold up to 6,000 books, in a jalopy measuring 116 x 167 x 8.2 millimeters, and weighing 180 grams. In the image above you can see my bookshelf after buying the eReader. There are only a few comics, and we will return to them now.

The second is comfort and versatility. Reading in an eReader is comfortable, especially when you have a screen with a good pixel density. The Paperwhite Kindle has 300 dpi, which is the maximum currently available (not only in Kindle but also in other brands). Do you want to read? Open your eReader, select your book, and read. That's it. You don't have to take it out of the bag, look for the marked page in the little corner and hold it with both hands. It's a lightweight, one-handed device that you can carry in any backpack or bag, and that allows you to switch from one book to another in a matter of seconds. If I used to have to carry two or three books when I went on holiday, now I take the eReader with me and have 300 always at hand.

And speaking of having many books, we come to the third argument: the price. As a general rule, and although there are exceptions, eBooks are cheaper than physical books (or even free). There are some that are worth half or less, and you see, that for someone who reads often is a bit of a shock. I've spent more money on books than I could admit in public, and since I have the eReader, I buy the same amount of books, but they cost less. Depending on the eReader you have to look for some formats or others, so it's always good to have Calibre software close by, which is a fantasy to convert formats and have the library organized.

But we were saying that almost everything is an advantage, and for me, there are two things that are still missing to make the experience fantastic: better performance and color screens. I love reading comics and most of the ones I like are in color. Although there are already advances in eReaders with color screens, at the moment the most popular ones only reproduce in black and white, and reading a color comic in black and white is a torment.

To make matters worse, eReaders don't usually have enough power to turn pages full of images smoothly, and that makes the experience much worse. You can read them on a tablet, but at least I'm not convinced by reading them on a conventional screen. That's why I don't read on the computer or laptop, without going any further.

But be that as it may, I wouldn't trade my eReader for anything in the world today. In a way, I miss the smell of a new book and the quick glance at the pages, but then I think about the fact that the shelf is empty, that I don't have to make room for books in my rucksack when I travel and that I save a lot of money on books, and it goes away.