My reason for hanging out on a couple shooting forums is because I live on a figurative island- I'm surrounded by a lot of good people but rarely am I able to talk about this stuff with anybody. If I wish to "talk guns/hunting" I have to either drive a good way, telephone, or resort to the Internet. Heck, the last decent local gun shop here in Annapolis closed a while back ending my chances to kibitz with like minded souls.
As for paper versus electrons, for reading give me the tactile joy of a real book any day. I never heard anybody say they looked forward to going home and curling up by the fire with a good Kindle. My favorite genres for leisure reading (to the tune of two or three books/week) is mystery fiction, thrillers, and spy novels. My source: the public library, but a few select authors I willingly buy as their new stuff comes out: James Lee Burke, John Sandford, Lee Child, Gerald Seymour, John LeCarre to name a few. For the rest I'm happy to let the County buy them and me borrow them. One thing I refuse to buy are paperbacks, but do so once a year for something to tuck into the game pouch of my Woolrich hunting coat. When I actually buy a book it is with the intent of keeping it and putting it on my shelf- paperbacks get tossed or given away so why spend good money on them?
I have three eight foot long, floor to ceiling shelf systems- all filled to capacity with reference stuff, gun books, fly fishing books, military history, classics, and select fiction- and still there are little piles of books scattered about. Would all those words fit in a compact digital device? Yep, but having all those books fills me with unbounded pleasure.
I agree with what seems to be the majority here regarding magazines. I take a couple subscriptions but only organization newsletter/magazines such as the Cast Bullet Association, American Single Shot Association, and the American Rifleman of course. I swap stuff around occasionally and garner some of the slick gun rags but the content of them has become rather boring to me and seem to pander to a far different gun loony than what I am, so I never buy them. Handloader and Rifle are exceptions, but only when there are articles I really want to read.
