Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Reading “books”

The Guardian book blog has an interesting post about the newly fractured reading experience. With books now outnumbering games in iPhone app downloads and the release of the iPad getting closer, it’s no wonder blogger Molly Flat is feeling a big frazzled by the numerous options she has in reading platforms. I can relate as an owner of a Kindle, subscriber to numerous magazines, frequenter of blogs and someone who has spent the past two weekends at Ikea buying new bookshelves for a personal home library. I suspect Molly and I are in good company, too.

How about it readers? Anyone else feeling overwhelmed by the many choices in reading platforms lately?

--Chasya

7 comments:

  1. Yes! I'm finding that I'm reading several books at once, and it's taken me far longer to finish them than when I was reading a few books a week, one book at a time.

    Fractured, indeed.

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  2. Yes. I feel like I need to go on a reading diet; realize that not all words are created equal and just choose the best stuff. I don't even have time for good anymore. There's just too much of it.

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  3. I can't say I feel overwhelmed. I've been reading ebooks in various formats for over a decade, and the format mess seems to be finally regularizing.

    Right now I have three readers on my iPod Touch (I used to have one on my Palm) and they basically are each for a different vendor. One is for the Gutenberg Project, another is eReader that I use for Fictionwise. I love both of these, and I don't mind having separate icons for them on the desk top. I have the Kindle app, but at them moment I seriously hate it. (Justified text on a screen is EVIL. Just a note to ebook app designers: Give people a choice on text alignment.)

    I think there will be a convergence soon. A cross platform format that any reader can read.

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  4. Oh, this certainly does ring true. With all the information available today in so many different forms, it's almost like we are suffering from information clutter. Eventually we'll have to weed out stuff and just focus on what matters.

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  5. I feel bombarded too. What drives me crazy is that I still get stuck all too often with nothing to read but supermarket fliers and the paperback I've just finished.

    It's amazing to think that just 100 years ago, a lot of people still considered themselves lucky to have their own dictionaries and bibles.

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  6. Having every choice in the world shouldn't feel unsatisfying, but it does. I find myself pinballing through the Internet, and the more it clangs, the less pleasure I know. My attention span withers. I'm combating this deliberately by not acquiring much (more) technology--not even a cell phone--and keeping what I do have plugged in, so I can walk away from it. That gives me back my time, with which I can read a book.

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