Is that Dresden Files?

Personally I use B&N for pretty much everything, and I've never had them send me a damaged book; they wrap it up tightly enough that it doesn't have any room to get banged around.

I also bought one book from bookshop.org, mostly because it was something I couldn't find anywhere else at the time, and they shipped it in good condition as well, although since I've only used them once idk if I just got lucky.

I mean, the books you brought up as examples are commonly required reading for high schoolers (and I actually had to read TKAM in middle school), it should be obvious why they're a little less graphic.

I mean, there's got to be hundreds, probably thousands, of great books out there, you can hardly be surprised if someone hasn't read one particular book that you happen to like.

The only reason TKAM and Great Gatsby are even half as well known as they are is because they're required reading in most American schools. People don't read those because they want to, they read them because a teacher tells them to. If you look at more serious discussions for what the 'Great American Novel' is, then Beloved is up there pretty much every single time. Its just not as easy to teach high schoolers with.

Also, what universe do you live in where TKAM doesn't focus on unpleasant themes?

And in 15 those things will probably be capable of reading a PDF. What's your point?

Yes, with how technology works you will be able to open older formats on both new and old computers, while old computers without updates will only work with old formats.

But if you rely on this trend to assume that all future computers will always be able to read a text file because computers have always been able to do that, then why wouldn't I be able to extrapolate from that trend and say that it is equally unlikely for future computers to ever lose the ability to read a pdf? Realistically they are always going to be able to read both.

And if you need to archive them, archiving something in a format that loses data seems questionable. If you save it as a .txt you lose italics, bold, etc. You lose chapter titles being in large font, you lose any pictures that may be in the book, you lose a lot. On the other hand, if you save it as a .pdf, all of that is retained. And if you ever need to convert it from a pdf to a txt for whatever reason, that is possible to do. I don't see why you would ever feel the need to do that, but if you want to there are numerous ways to convert a .pdf file into a .txt.

There can be issues with pdfs saving improperly and being corrupted, but the same thing can happen to a text file, or to literally any other file type.

Additionally, every modern web browser is capable of opening a pdf natively, so you don't even need a dedicated pdf reader. And if you have a computer without a web browser, then I'm curious how you're getting the books on it in the first place.

Lastly, even if you absolutely cannot open a PDF because a bandit has appeared behind you and threatened to shoot you if you open a pdf, there are still free ways to convert a pdf file to a .txt, so you could simply convert it into a text file and then read that if you absolutely needed to.

The only reason you'd run into problems with not being able to read a pdf is if you were technologically illiterate, but it would be much simpler for you to simply learn how to open a pdf than it would be for you to try to read an entire book in .txt format.

>Every OS easily natively reads plaintext. It's a pain to read a lot of it, but it can be done, and manually marked up for better readability and functionality.

The Operating System is not what you're going to use to read a text file. The operating system will run an application that can read text files, but the operating system itself doesn't do that. And if there are any operating systems which are incapable of opening a pdf, then really that's on them for being poorly designed. Every Linux distro I've seen has been more than capable of launching programs that can read pdfs, and I'm struggling to think of how an OS that couldn't even launch a modern web browser would be useful for literally anything outside of incredibly specialized uses.

CPU/Ram aren't even a concern, you might experience slightly longer loading times when trying to pull up the document, but ultimately that's a non-issue that is more than offset by how much easier a pdf is to read.

Additionally, if you tried to use an AI to reformat your .txt file into something more legible, you would have to save it as something other than a .txt, because a .txt by itself cannot store anything but plaintext. And if you do that you're right back at square 1 with plaintext no longer being the ideal format. Also it would require a significant amount of processing power to run the AI.

>Plain text is the most superior format, because it's plain text. No need to convert it to different formats, no special readers required, nothing.

What does that even mean? You still need some form of word processor to read it, unless you can read binary. And I wouldn't really say that a basic pdf reader is any more of a specialized tool than a basic text editor is.

Why would you want plain text? .pdf can be converted to pretty much every format you would like and is incredibly easy to read. A plain text format is inferior to a .pdf in literally every way. The various versions of .epub documents can also be converted to/from pdf with ease.

I mean, if you really like to do your reading in notepad++ then more power to you, but there's a reason that the popular formats get used.

There was a period of about a month where I only read one book, but all that meant is I was reading War and Peace. Likewise I can read multiple books a day for a few days straight, and all that means is I'm reading some light novel/manga series. And of course VNs aren't even technically books, but I still count things like Fate/Stay Night or House in Fata Morgana as reading.

My goal is just that I spend a reasonable amount of my free time reading. Obviously that's impossible to quantify, especially since it depends on how much free time I have. But its the only reasonable metric I've found, even if I just have to go by feel.

I don't think that's an accurate description at all. They are all focused on the war, mostly because I was trying to think of books without women and there's not many women on the front lines of WW1, but even in war there's huge amounts of downtime. All Quiet especially is mostly focused on this part, and I'd estimate a good third of Storm of Steel is simply Junger describing what he and his comrades did while taking cover from artillery.

The Road Back is set immediately after the war, so if course it has nothing to do with combat at all.

I don't think there's any women mentioned in Storm of Steel, let alone romance. Just good old fashioned trench warfare with a heavy sprinkling of artillery. Although that's really a memoir, not a novel, so I don't know if it counts.

There's also Remarque's books, while All Quiet on the Western Front does have a small sex scene in it (no romance, though), I don't think The Road Back had any sex or romance at all. It's got a small flashback to the main character going to a brothel and then backing out at the last minute, but that's it.

You could try reading VNs, those are basically books but with some illustrations and a soundtrack. And maybe if you get used to that then maybe the transition will be easier. Plus visual novels are just really good in general, its a shame they're not more popular.

Well, as a caveat to my description of VNs, there's quite a bit of variety, and in the west VN also gets used as a description for a shitty rpg. But the things that would be called 'novel games' are what I am talking about. Something like Fate, House in Fata Morgana, White Album 2.

Because Greece had more influence on modern western civilization than any other culture.

Even if the Greeks didn't personally make it to America in large numbers their influence certainly did