Annie Proulx once said that "no one is ever gonna sit down on a twitchy little screen ever" to read a piece of literature. But, she was wrong. The internet has allowed us to read books online and find many extracts on sites like google books. Technology has gone even further and given us handheld gadgets to read books from. For example we have the Kindle and the iPad to name just a few.
Even though the physical book has been around for years, technology allows our libraries to evolve. You can carry your whole library around with you and read anytime you want without the hassle of carrying various books with you.
What is better though, an actual book or an electronic version?
Personally the feel of an actual book with actual pages is something that cannot be replicated when reading from a screen. The action of turning pages and using bookmarks has been practiced for years. By using something like a Kindle, there is no physical interaction apart from touching the screen to turn a page.
On the other hand, with the Kindle you can highlight words that you are unsure about and it gives you a definition. If you're reading a book and you don't understand a word, you have to reach for another book (the dictionary) and physically look it up. Carrying a Kindle around is also much lighter than carrying some books around. Furthermore, you can store lots of novels onto the Kindle.
Conclusively though, I think that reading from an actual book is better than something like the Kindle because authors write for books, not for electronic devices. Also, when you read you can get lost in the story and play the scenarios of the book in your head. I'm not sure if this could be done or if you could get the same effect if you were reading from an electronical tablet device
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