It's the question of the decade, and possibly of this century; do you go with physical books or electronic books (eBooks). My personal opinion is for eBooks, unless the book will be used as a reference book, then I prefer a physical copy.
I overall prefer eBooks because they are easier to hold for me. Depending on how long a book is, my hands get tired of holding a book very easily. I will read maybe five pages and then have to re-situate the book in my hands, or constantly change hands. Often this will lead to pain, which takes away from the story. I become so distracted by the pain I either give up, put the book down, and go do something else, or set the book down, shake my hands out and try to find a new sitting position so I can hold the book or prop up the book so I don't have to hold it.
Yes, I hear you, "Sarah, get a book stand". I have a book stand, in fact it's in the photo above, holding my tablet that I use for reading eBooks. Again, this solution, depends on the book. There are books, with text so close to the bottom of the page that I have to keep lifting the book to read the bottom of the page. This gets rather annoying, rather fast.
Another thing I like about eBooks, you can buy them or borrow them at any time. You don't have to wait for a store or your local library to open to go pick up a book. Pre-Order? Available on the app at midnight if I was so excited about a book that I wanted to start reading the book right away. Only downside, is I've found it's midnight where the seller - Amazon.com, Kobo, etc - are located. Still better than waiting for 9 am, and the store doors to be opened. Also, I'm not sure about your local area, but around me, I haven't seen or heard of very many midnight book releases. Like waiting for a big video game, you can go wait in a line so long you've never seen a line so long ever in your life; I don't see this often at all. I enjoy these lines; I get to meet new people with a similar interest.
EBooks travel better. When going on a family vacation, no worries about nothing to do while there and running out of books. With eBooks, I can stock up, and have more books with me than I know what to do with, but the weight of my bag will never change.
The downside to eBooks, is if using them for reference, such as with the MLA style guide you probably used in high school or college, I find it faster to find what I need by flipping pages.
User/system error is also possible with eBooks. A few times, I tap the screen to wake up my tablet and I touch the screen in a way that it thinks I'm trying to use the dictionary feature or highlight text. Somewhat falling under both, user and system error, is letting the battery die on my tablet. Okay, I don't really let the battery die, but it happens. I forget to shut down the tablet, like after the last book I finished, I got sidetracked with some audiobooks and physical books I checked out of my local library, turned on the tablet today to find it has a low battery. (Needless to say, I am charging the tablet while I write this.)
This is in no way meant to sway you one way or the other, this is just my opinion and my personal preference. Do I look down on those who prefer physical books? No. I respect their opinion, just as I hope they respect mine.
