I have an e-reader. It’s not new I have it for many years. Don’t use it often, maybe once a week. And when I do I can’t help feel some sadness looking at all the books I have there that are unfinished. It makes think that I no longer remember the books I own or that I was reading. Should I blame it on the digital format? I certainly don’t remember having as many physical books left unfinished.

I decided to go through my physical and digital shelves to understand if my reading habits vary by format.

Unfinished digital books:

  • Elixir Patterns
  • The Software Architect
  • An Elegant Puzzle
  • Learning Domain-Driven Design
  • Radical Candor
  • Designing Elixir Systems with OTP
  • Designing Data-Intensive Applications
  • Modern Software Engineering
  • Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology
  • Ruby Under a Microscope
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow
  • Mastering Emacs
  • Eloquent JavaScript

Quite a long list. Mostly technical books.

Unfinished books:

  • Elixir in Action
  • The Pragmatic Programmer
  • Refactoring
  • The Master Algorithm
  • Instructive Chess Miniatures
  • Akira, volume I
  • The Incal
  • How to win at Chess

A shorter list but still, longer than I expected. Over time, I seem to have shifted my preference of technical books to the digital format. Elixir in Action was probably the last technical physical book I purchased before I went digital.

Books like Elixir Patterns or Refactoring, I don’t read from start to finish. I use them as reference books and consult them as needed.

All in all don’t think the format influences my reading habits or whether I’m more prone to leave a book unfinished. Maybe the ease and cheapness of ebooks just makes me have more of. If it wasn’t for it I don’t think I’d purchase them all.