nutella:

A book is made of paper pages bound together  inside a cover and a kindle is an electronic device.

I disagree.

When someone says 'oh I've read that book'

or 'they made that book into a film'

they're not talking about the paper pages but about the story.

 To me that's what a book is - it's content & nowadays it comes in electronic as well as paper form.

If I read a book on my Sony Reader & Theo reads it on his kindle and you read it on paper - the words are the same for each of us, that's what a book is - it's words! (at least to me)

So, Nutella...

If a friend sends me a Word document with the first few chapters of her novel for me to proof read - have I not read the first chapters of her book?

If I read Amazon offer a chance to 'look inside' the latest offering by an author and I read it online - have I not read a few pages of that book?

What about a Newspaper - they print a few chapters of the latest thriller in their colour supplement (and then offer me the chance to buy the whole novel at a 50p discount...and then add on p/p!)...have I not read the first thrilling chapters of the book (the newspaper certainly claims as much).

nutella:

Ah, but not to me. I'm fussy about where the words are.

So do they have to be on paper?...in which case board books and cloth books are not books?

Do they have to be in the original edition - so a paperback version, or an abridged version or a revised edition are not books?

There are many versions of 'books' including e-books stored and read on an e-reader!

The dictionary definition of a book is thus:

Noun:  A written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers.

An e-book is defined as:

Noun:  A book composed in or converted to digital format for display on a computer screen or handheld device.

An e-book would appear to be a type of book, by all accounts, and therefore permissible within the confines of the book club.

We could ask for the book club to be renamed 'Book and E-book Club', to save confusion.  Or we could, accepting that such pedantry would be a little weird and sad, just keep things as they are.

576:

If you're more fussed about the format of the book then you can sit and quietly read the phone book and let people here who care more about the content to discuss good and bad books (in all their formats)

Is that addressed to me, sunshine?