Week Eleven Prompt Response

 I think that I will always love the physical book. There is something so magical about holding a book in your hands and being able to feel the pages. I love seeing a book that has been read, with tape on the spine to keep it together. I also love ebooks and audiobooks for wildly different reasons. In a world post the height of the COVID-19 pandemic the landscape around books has changed. When people were not allowed to leave their homes they switched to ebooks and audiobooks, and some have never come back. I personally love ebooks and enjoy audiobooks.

For ebooks the biggest appeal factor for me is the ability to change the font size. I have not great vision. I need to wear glasses constantly and without them I turn into Velma from Scooby-Doo. I have realized that I most likely need to read large print books. I can read a standard print book, but it takes much longer. With my eReader, a Kobo Libra 2 to be specific, I can change the font size to something that is comfortable for me without the upcharge and limited selection of large print. The other main appeal factor for me is weight. I mostly read large books and they can hurt my hands after reading for a long time. With a lightweight eReader I do not have to worry about that. I also love that I can either borrow a book from the library or buy a book and then read it immediately without having to leave my house. It is a simple thing but it is very nice. 

With audiobooks I am more on the fence. I do not like to use them as my first read, and that is my main issue with them. When I am reading a book I cannot do other things, but if I am listening to an audiobook I can. When I am multitasking and listening to an audiobook I do not retain the information in the same way that I do when reading the book. The fact that I can multitask while listening to an audio book is why I love them though. The main place in which I listen to them is on my waterproof MP3 player while swimming. I love being able to load a few chapters into the MP3 and swim until they are over. I have not done this in a while because of both work and school, so I look forward to being able to start doing that again. With audiobooks the most different appeal factor is the person reading the book. That can make or break an audiobook. I am lucky and all of the audiobooks I have listened to over the years have had great narrators, but I can easily see how that could ruin the experience.