Booking Through Thursday - Interactive?

Booking Through Thursday

Today's Question:

• With the advent (and growing popularity) of eBooks, I’m seeing more and more articles about how much “better” they can be, because they have the option to be interactive … videos, music, glossaries … all sorts of little extra goodies to help “enhance” your reading experience, rather like listening to the Director’s commentary on a DVD of your favorite movie.
• How do you feel about that possibility? Does it excite you in a cutting-edge kind of way? Or does it chill you to the bone because that’s not what reading is ABOUT?

I have mixed emotions on this subject.  (It seems that is happening to me more and more.)  I picture myself as an "old school" reader.  I have a Kindle, I also have the Kindle app on my iPad.  I use both for all of my reading.  In the past, almost, five years now that I've owned a Kindle I have not bought a "paper" book for myself.  I am often reading more than one book at a time.  The convenience of being able to carry them all around with me in the light, compact, Kindle is a great benefit.  Also, it is next to impossible, I mean I really have to work at it, to loose my place.  And I even like the "extras" option that comes with most books that list characters, places, etc.  It is information that has been contributed by other readers of the book.  There is even an entry for other books like that one.  I am also far more comfortable in highlighting text in my eBook than I ever was in my actual paper volume.  On paper, it is so permanent.  When there is text I want to reference, it is so easy to copy it out of the eBook, as opposed to having to retype it all from a printed version.  Then too, there is no bookstore in the small town where I live.  The nearest Barnes & Knoble is almost 30 miles away.  With the Kindle, I can have a new book in a matter of moments.

I don't find the advent of video, and a lot of other stuff to be that great of a benefit.  All I really need is just to be able to read the print.  That being said, it is very nice to be able to use the dictionary to look up a word just by clicking on it.  Still, I'm fairly simple in what I need when it comes to a book.  There are, however, people like my son.  He claims to like books and to like reading.  But it takes the internet being down, and a malfunction of his vido game system, and for him to not be able to find anything else to do - all at the same time - before he will consider picking up a book.  He says they just move too slow for him to keep his attention.  For him, and those like him, video, music, and anything else that could be crammed in there might be of a benefit.  And in the video game, fast paced, visually oriented, future we seem to be heading, those types of features may be what's needed to keep future generations reading.

Being a lover of books and reading, yes, I think that does bother me.