[personlurking]

Interesting, the trend in calling regular books "dead tree books" and in leaving out the "e" in e-books. I have my own ideas as to why this is happening though I fear they would derail the conversation on the article at hand, thus I'll just leave it as food for thought.

[zokier]

I think it just means that the concept of book has separated from it's transfer medium. So "book" refers more to the content than the physical (or digital) representation. Compare to movie vs dvd.

[CWuestefeld]

There's ample precedent for this, as newer improvements become the norm. You won't often hear someone saying "color TV" or "unleaded gasoline" or "touch-tone phone" anymore. They became the standard, and we began to use modifiers to describe the older, rarer products.

[dkarl]

I agree "dead tree" is a little bit derogatory, and unjustifiably so. Until e-books are strictly superior, until they are as good as physical books in every important way, we should respect what we've got.

I think my primary motivation for putting down dead tree books is that the e-books I've bought and haven't read are invisible. They don't sit on my bookshelves openly shaming me for not reading them :-O

[gala8y]

I really like being surrounded by books I haven't read. Books I've read - I put them aside. Put some around and think of it as of an invitation.

In Lem's Solaris they have paper books even on space station. (Love Tarkovsky's movie.)