BOOKS SHOWDOWN The country’s most spectacular showdown. e-books vs. printed books. Reading is a great form of entertainment. Did you know there are many benefits of reading,? For example, reading books slows your heart rate down, making you more relaxed. Reading also exercises lots different areas of your brain. You even form knowledge and understanding of other cultures. All this just from reading! Books Printed books are good in many ways; you can share them with your friends and you can’t with e books. You can borrow them from the library so you can get them for free instead of paying for the book reader and for the books. With a book you have unlimited reading time. How annoying would it be to have an E-book of a long novel only to have the battery die out part way through…always at a good bit. And of course, you can take it in the bath without getting electrocuted. Due to copyright problems we don’t get as much choice in e-books. Also an E-book device has limited storage meaning if you love books you’re going to have to delete some just to read the next book in the Lord of the Ring series. E-books We have said a lot of bad things about them but there are some good things about e-books. For example, they are more environmentally friendly than the normal books as the normal book take a lot of trees then delivering it to bookshops around the world increases its carbon footprint. When an author makes a new novel there needs to be a lot of copies. Also e-readers are very light to carry with you so you can have a wide choice of books with only one slim tablet. You can adjust the reading light and font to suit your needs but with normal books you can’t. If you have arthritis or another condition that makes it difficult to hold heavy items then you can use an e-reader as they are light and it doesn’t matter how big the book is. So, which is more popular? We decided to see what others think about this war between the two. We conducted a survey asking students and staff what they prefer. Normal books had 64 votes and e-books had 36. This was a surprise as to be honest we thought e-Books were going to destroy normal books because it’s ‘technology’. But clearly the majority of people still like the old fashioned way of reading. However you read remember, books are a precious thing and we need to preserve them. We need more stories and if you enjoy writing them there is obviously a future in it. Be creative because you’ll never know, you might become the next best author. So it’s up to you. You decide who is the proud winner! By Justin, Holly and David