Smartphone Reading

The ebook will overtake the paperback and hardback as Britons' preferred format for reading their favourite novels by 2018, according to a report. The UK consumer ebook market – which excludes professional and educational books – is forecast to almost triple from £380m to £1bn over the next four years. The Guardian 6/3/14

The other night I took my iPhone with me to a restaurant in Honolulu. I normally take a book when I’m alone or simply enjoy the meal and the view out to the sea. As I deliberated about taking it, having never done so before, I recalled reading about a person who observed Philip Roth reading on his iPhone at a restaurant in New York. I thought: If it’s OK with Philip, it’s OK with me.

I was surprised by how much I liked it. The text was readable, not too small, the screen was bright and clear, as they are on Apple products. Really it wasn’t much different than reading on the larger iPad. I didn’t text anyone, read emails, or search the web. Of course, I didn’t get very far, as the meal was great and the sunset was dazzling.

I have a friend who listens to audiobooks on her iPhone, as she walks along the sunny avenues hereabouts. She says she likes it in a way I will never be able to. In my experience, most of the people who record audiobooks sound so bland and uninvolved in the tale. She assures me that isn’t true most of the time. I reply: Give me an author’s words on the page, not in my ears. I hear them better on the page anyway.

I confess it bothers me when most everyone I see in public places has their nose in a cell phone screen. Can’t they wait until they arrive wherever they’re going to see what’s up? What’s the urgency? Have we also lost the fine art of patience? We live in a beautiful place on this earth. Why not pay attention to it, think about it for a while? Surely we have plans and ideas to ponder. Why not reflect on them for a while? And stop bumping into me.

Serious reading is increasingly difficult in an age of so many distractions. You really have to concentrate for a dedicated period of time if you are to get much out of a book. I was raised long before the advent of cell phones, even before TV, to say nothing of the web and Internet those countless apps. How lucky I was. Sure, it was sometimes a struggle to find the time to read, but then the distractions were textbooks, essay assignments, class presentations, that kind of thing, all of which required concentrated reading.

As far as I can tell, none of these cell phone-users are reading a book. Perhaps I am wrong. Laura Miller writes on Salon (5/14/14):

Those who enjoy wringing their hands in Spenglerian despair whenever they see heads bent over glossy black rectangles in public might want to check their pessimism. For all you know, those smartphone devotees are reveling in the fruits of Western Civilization—rather than playing Floppy Bird while it crumbles around them.

It seems to me most of these people appear to be texting, thumbs typing away with jet-like speed. The younger, the faster. Or playing one of the mindless games that draw people to these gadgets. No doubt there are subway or bus readers, but I doubt those I see on the street wouldn’t be typing away if they were reading Bertrand Russell’s The History of Western Philosophy.

I have to also admit that there is something about a smart phone and other digital reading devices that have a Kindle App that is somewhat of an advantage. Namely, you can highlight notable passages, save them on your Amazon’s highlighting page, and then copy them in a Word document. In my case, they are then added to my commonplace book. There I can review them, use them if I want in something I am writing, and pass them on to others who express some interest.

I say it is “somewhat of an advantage” because I’m not sure if it really is. Perhaps it is better if I copy each one from a record I keep when I read a printed book. I know I don’t review each of the passages I’ve saved when I copy the Amazon highlights in one fell swoop. But I do when I re-type each one of them in a Word document. I suspect that consolidates their meaning, clarifies why I saved them in the first place and enables me to recall them much more readily than is possible with a single action of copying highlights.

In the past few years, I’ve changed my views about reading digital versions of books. When they first made their appearance, I was an ardent opponent. And while I still prefer reading printed versions of books, I no longer feel reading one on a smart phone or tablet signals the demise of literate culture. It is reading that’s important, not the format you prefer. It is also about what you read and what you make of the experience, if anything.

It seems I am in good company. Margaret Drabble writes of her “deep attachment to my e-reader…It enables you to read, anywhere, anytime, almost anything. It enables you to purchase or acquire texts at midnight, in the small hours, on a train to Tauton, at a bus stop, in a bunk on a ferry in the Arctic Circle.” Now, there is a devoted e-reader.

She claims her device, one that I believe is the Kindle Paperwhite, is almost perfect and, like myself, she too began and still prefers reading printed books. She admits there are so many ways of reading now, it no longer makes sense to ignore the advantages or e-readers, among them highlighting, traveling, being in a town without a bookstore, etc. She concludes, “…but I can feel myself being tempted into colour. The future is bright.”

Print or Electronic?

At Gadgetwise, a New York Times blog about technology, Jenn Wortham writes about her experience reading Jeffrey Eugenides’s latest novel, The Marriage Plot, on her Kindle. She had “adored” his previous works, couldn’t wait for his latest to be shipped, so she downloaded it to her gadget.

But reading the novel was surprisingly disappointing. Of course, she wonders if it was due to the e-reading experience or to the novel itself, a question that is impossible for any single reader to answer. Nevertheless, she decides to borrow a friend’s printed copy and attempt to see if her experience was any different.

Wortham concludes by asking her readers if they like reading certain kinds of books on their e-readers or any work of fiction or non-fiction? As of 11/12/11, 79 individuals have responded. The fact that so many have done so speaks to the significance many readers attach to the transition from print to electronic books.

Setting aside the biased sample of New York Times blog readers, more than half, 45 (57%) said they either preferred reading on the Kindle or that there wasn’t any difference between a printed or electronic version of a book. “Reading is reading. The words are what matter. You can read writing on a wall, on a can of soup, in pages, or on an electronic screen.”

In response to my query, the author of the literary blog So Many Books wrote: “I get just as much pleasure reading on my Kindle as I do in reading a print book. You know when you are into a story and all your surroundings drop away and the world could explode and you wouldn't even know it and you don't even notice you are holding a book let alone turning pages? The same thing happens on the Kindle. When I am reading a good story, the world falls away and the Kindle in my hand disappears too. There is no difference in the experience of the story.”

Still another 16 (20%) said there was a notable difference and they preferred reading on the printed page. “I simply cannot find the same emotional connection to reading something on yet another piece of soon to be obsolete tech equipment.” They offered several additional reasons: they retained more of a printed book, missed its feel or tactile sensation, found it difficult to skip around on digital readers, or they didn’t handle footnotes and page numbers well.

Only two readers expressed my major concern about e-readers. Both said it was impossible to easily make notes in the margins, although one of them wondered if that was really such a loss.

Finally, 18 individuals (23%) didn’t answer the question. They weren’t sure, preferred audio books, noted either is a trade off, or mentioned a totally unrelated subject.

Perhaps the best summary of the matter was offered in this comment: “I've had a Kindle for about 3 years and would not be without it. The advantages are: 1. It's easier to cart around than a book, so it's always with me 2. Being able to change the type size really helps with my aging eyes. 3. It's easy to hold, sometimes large books hurt my arthritic hands. 4. It can be read in bright sun. 5. You don't need bookshelves to store the books you want to keep - a real plus in small apartments. But there are disadvantages too: 1. You can't loan your books to a friend or pass them along to a charity. 2. It's very hard to skip around in the pages 3. Diagrams and illustrations don't work at all. 4. The Kindle Fire may solve the color problem, but now they don't even bother selling the art books I love. 5. Not every book I'm likely to buy is available - not by a long shot.”

While I’ve been a long-time critic of e-readers largely because of the difficulty of note taking and marking up pages, I confess I returned to my iPad recently and found reading the New Yorker app a genuine pleasure.

I made notes on a separate pad of paper or computer and, unlike printed books, was able to listen to poets reading their poems or musical groups being discussed and view a video preview of a film or a dance group that was reviewed. These were not the least bit distracting. To the contrary they enhanced the reading experience for me, although it is still not possible to highlight passages or print articles with the app.

Reading books and long essays on an e-reader is another matter.

The Apple Tablet

I am not immune from all the hoopla and media frenzy about the latest Apple product. And as I am sure you know by now, the new Apple Tablet, now known as the iPad has been duly announced and will be available for sale at the end of March.

Questions concerning the nature of reading on the iPad loom large in my thinking. Some have now been answered. It is known that the screen will be 9.7 in, midway between the 3.5 in screen of the iPhone and the 15 in MacBook Pro but larger than the 6 inch Kindle screen and the same as the larger Kindle DX.

However, the lighting on the color iPad screen will be bright and sharp unlike the dull gray of the Kindle. And like the iPhone, the screen is said to be very responsive to scrolling, tapping and flipping into a horizontal view.

Aside from everything else it can do (see Apple.com) what will reading a book, magazine or newspaper be like on the iPad? This is the central question I have about the device.

We know now that there will be an iBookstore where you can purchase books for the iPad from five publishers that have signed up to date-- Hachette, Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan. And I am sure it won’t be long until other publishers sign on too.

We are told that the publishers will be able to charge $12.99 to $14.99 for most general fiction and nonfiction books, which is more than most, but not all, Kindle books, although a good deal less than the printed book.

As David Pogue noted in his initial impression of the iPad: "The iPad as an e-book reader is a no-brainer. It’s just infinitely better-looking and more responsive than the Kindle, not to mention it has color and doesn’t require external illumination."

Will you be able to highlight or mark passages? And will it be possible to save them so they can be subsequently downloaded to your computer? All of this is possible with the Kindle, but as I earlier noted, the procedure is cumbersome and time consuming, requiring several less-than-simple steps. And the same questions apply to making notes on the pages of the materials to-be-read on the iPad.

Apple has several accessories for the iPad that appeal to me. One is a cover that both protects the screen and opens in a way that makes it “feel” like you are opening a book and holding each side with your hands.

And by flipping the screen in a horizontal position, the iPad creates two separate pages on the screen in the same way you view side-by-side pages of a printed book. Very cool and very unlike the Kindle.

But what books are you able to download from the iBookstore and will they also be downloadable to a Mac computer or iPhone? That is also of critical importance to me. However, to date almost all the books I want to read are not available in an e-book format.

I am also intrigued by the IPad dock that places the screen at a slightly tilted vertical angle, like a laptop screen, while at the same time making it possible to charge the device once its connected to an electrical outlet or your computer.

I am been cautioned that this marvelous new gadget is just another toy, that I should stick with the old-fashioned book and not fall sway to the latest digital fad. And I will probably take this advice.

Nonetheless, we still have a great deal to learn about the new Apple Tablet especially from the first-hand reviews of those who have an opportunity to actually test it, which apparently no one outside of Apple have been able to do yet, and we learn more about the books sold at the iBookstore and what limits will be placed on the devices that can download them.

We'll Always Have Books

During the holidays, I received a Kindle. I opened the box with great anticipation, read the directions, and started to “play” with it for a while. I couldn’t wait to return it the very next day.

I found the screen very dull, grayish. No doubt, the bright screen of the Mac, as well as the much brighter and more readable printed page has spoiled me.

Going back and forth between pages in a printed book, say between page 10 and page 40, which have been noted for some reason, is difficult with the Kindle.

I missed the physicality of the book, the attractive cover, the typeset that that was employed, its particular odor, and sheer presence on my shelf.

The screen is much smaller than a printed page and, as a result. there’s much more “turning” of e-book pages, if you will. This takes a little bit of time, while the blank screen gathers in the next page.

Saving passages, essential to my reading routine, is a cumbersome procedure that involves several steps. First you need to scroll to the start of the passage, which requires knowing how to scroll. Then you press a button whereupon you scroll to the “Add Highlight” selection. Once that’s figured out, you are told to scroll to the end of the passage you want to save. Press the scroll button again. You’ll see on the Kindle page that the complete passage appears in a box. The box is automatically added to your “Clippings” file.

To move your clippings (saved passages) to your computer you need to connect both the Kindle and the computer with a dual usb cord. The clippings file shows up on your computer screen in a Kindle box; then simply drag the clippings file to your computer to edit it, if you wish, or add the saved passages to those you are saving from other books you have read, say in your commonplace book, as I do. Whew! I need a nap.

I also write notes on the pages of a printed book or on the inside cover if the book calls forth an idea that I’d like to think about. There’s a way to do that on the Kindle that is somewhat similar and just as complex as the highlighting-transfer-to-computer procedure, which also requires using that itty bitty keyboard that I found takes as much time as making a long distance call to a friend in Ouagadougou, Burkina Fasso.

Give me a good old book and a pen any old time. Reading on the Kindle is clearly not for me. Frankly, I have no idea why it is or might be for anyone else. The paper book is quite simply the state of the art now and my hunch is it will be that way for the foreseeable future and beyond.

In my case, pretty much the same holds for reading any lengthy piece I find on the Web or the digital version of a newspaper or periodical. I wonder how many Kindles will be returned this year and once the initial novelty of the thing wears off, I wonder how many others will continue reading with the device. Of course, Amazon is silent on these matters.

I see a lot of people reading these days, far more than the statistics would lead you to believe, and while I don’t get around too much and they may not be reading Proust, never once have I encountered another person reading with an e-book.

The Convert

A few months ago Margie Boule, a widely read columnist for the Oregonian, the local newspaper in the town where I now find myself, says she would have “despised” someone who read with an e-book. Margie Boule is a reader, she loves books, and reports that she would have also called herself a “book murder, a destroyer of bookstores or something more colorful,” if she ever read an e-book.

But now in her column in the November 19th Oregonian she is reading “more books on a Kindle than on paper.” Do I sense a revolution in the works? Hitherto, she was comforted by her books, she “loves the feel of the pages, and the soft whoosh when one is turned. I love the smell of an old book. I love the crispness of the paper in a new book.” And yet…

She now reports a long list of advantages of the e-book. “The Kindle is light; it fits in my purse easily. If I come across a character I can’t remember, I can search the book and recall who the character is. If a friend recommends a book, I can buy it…and be reading the title page within a minute…And if I like the book, I can purchase another e-copy and have it sent to my daughter’s Kindle, as a gift.”

Moreover, a book from the Kindle store costs less than the hardback or even the paperback at the bookstores. And she claims there are many classic books at the Kindle store that are apparently free—Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Jack London, etc. That was news to me.

Booklover that she is, she also reports that she is still buying printed books, mostly biographies, cookbooks, decorating books, photography books. These are usually books with pictures or photos that she says, in agreement with other commentators, appear “gray and grainy on the Kindle.” She also misses the cartoons, and the charts and the book jackets, all of which are either absent or poorly reproduced on the Kindle. (I would also miss the ads that I understand are largely omitted from periodicals, like the New Yorker, as well as newspapers, like the New York Times.

And then there is the occasional social encounter with another person who wants to know if that’s a Kindle she is reading. She takes pleasure in demonstrating how it works and most assuredly the ensuing conversation too.

And yet…back to basics, Boule misses those times she used to spend browsing through small independent bookstores and terribly guilty at depriving them, at least those that have survived, of the income which must have been a rather sizeable sum, from the purchases she made in the good old days.

And in an e-mail exchange we had, Boule reported that she wasn’t sure if you could copy (highlight) passages and then download to them to your computer. That’s a deal breaker for me; I’ve heard some claim they could do this, even though it is cumbersome. But she did tell me something I didn’t realize--that she could e-mail long documents to a Kindle “which has its own e-mail address so that I can read them when I’m on the run.” I imagine this would really be useful to people on go but of little value to those who have trouble finding anywhere to go these days.

From a booklover who despised someone reading an e-book to one doing that very same thing is quite a turnaround. While I surely don’t feel anything close to despising an e-book reader, I haven’t felt especially compelled to give it a try. But Boule’s column today does give me pause. While I remain on the fence, I confess her column was extremely persuasive.

After reporting these details to my lunchtime companion, I was firmly cautioned not to buy the thing just yet on the grounds that Christmas is just around the corner and “I never have anything left to give you, since you always run off and buy things yourself.”

Kindle Smindle

I do not have a Kindle and remain uncertain if I will ever read a Kindle edition of a book. If I saw it or any other e-book as an improvement of reading experience, I would most assuredly. But I await such evidence before taking the plunge.

For evidence, I must rely upon the reports of friends who have the device or writers who have evaluated their own experience reading an e-book. Nicholson Baker, reports in The New Yorker, that his attempt to read books on the Kindle2 was thoroughly underwhelming. “I squeezed no new joy from these great books though.”

He downloaded several classic and contemporary novels and read of little of each one, but not more. The gray screen (“a greenish, sickly gray”) annoyed him and he says some readers claim the Kindle2 is harder to read than the Kindle1. It unsettled him that a Kindle book “dies with its’ possessor.” There’s no book to put on his shelf, even though it is surely overflowing with more than enough already. Baker reports that illustrations, tables and photographs are difficult to read on the Kindle’s relatively small gray screen.

The preservation of a book strikes me as extremely important matter. Jean-Francois Blanchette from the Department of Information Studies at U.C.L.A. takes up this issue in a letter to The New Yorker:

“Nicholson Baker’s excellent piece on the Kindle foregrounds a thorny issue in the shift from print to digital media—that of preservation). … Even more significant, what the preserved items will look like is unclear, as data formats, computing platforms, and reading devices ceaselessly morph into their next market-driven incarnations. Imagine if the only copy left of “Imaging in Oncology” were the Kindle version, with its garbled tables and lost color coding? Or, a more likely scenario, if several copies of the book existed in different formats, each with a different visual presentation? In each case, the authority and usefulness of the cultural and scientific record would be severely impaired.”

I read The New Yorker each week and the Times each day. Both can be read with a Kindle, as well. But the Kindle versions are not exact reproductions of the print editions. In the case of The New Yorker, I understand there are no advertisements, some of the cartoons are missing, and not every article is reproduced. Baker reports that much the same is true for the Times:

“The Kindle Times…lacks most of the print edition’s superb photography—and its subheads and call-outs and teasers, its spinnakered typographical elegance and variety, its browsabless, its Web-site links, its listed names of contributing reporters, and almost all captioned pie charts, diagrams, weather maps, crossword puzzles, summary sports, scores, financial data, and, of course, ads, for jewels, for swimsuits, for vacationlands, and for recently bailed-out investment firms.”

For Baker, the Kindle version of the Times is by no means a savior of the newspaper. Quite to the contrary, it kills the joy of reading it.

When I buy a book on Amazon, I often check to see if a Kindle version is available. More than half the time it isn’t. Baker’s experience is the same for books (at least 25) that he purchased recently for which there is no Kindle version. It all depends on what you like to read. If romance novels are your cup of tea, the Kindle will satisfy all your needs. If you prefer lofty works on abstruse philosophical and scientific issues, you are unlikely to find them at the Kindle store.

Finally, Baker managed to force himself to read a complete book (The Lincoln Lawyer) on the Kindle2. Clearly it was a struggle and done “out of a sense of duty.” He notes “It was like going from a Mini Cooper to a white 1982 Impala with blown shocks.”

Although he has a long history of reading printed books, my sense is that Baker tried to read a Kindle book with an open mind. But in his view it was by no means an improvement on a printed version and my hunch is that is also the case for other long time readers of his generation. Whether or not it will be true for younger individuals, who have grown up peering at small screens all day remains to be seen.

Kindle2

A friend writes me from time to time about her beloved Kindle. Of course it didn’t take long for her to order the “new and improved” version, the Kindle2. Today she informs me that it is now possible to receive The New Yorker wirelessly on the new Kindle. At $2.99 a month, that’s a bargain compared to the weekly newsstand price. And the fact that is sent early each Monday allows a reader on a remote island in the Pacific to receive it eons before it is seen on the newsstand and several eons before a subscriber receives it in the mail.

I have resisted the Kindle ever since it appeared. There is, of course, my long history of reading the printed page with the covers of the book held between my hands. However, I imagine in time one could get used to the new routine, leaving open the question of how long that would take.

I had always assumed it was impossible to place marks in the margin or its Kindle equivalent next to the noteworthy passages a reader might want to record. This was the central concern I had about every ebook. And I had also assumed it was impossible to save the passages so marked and then eventually transfer them to a Word document on a computer so that they might subsequently added to the reader’s commonplace book.

I have now been duly informed I was wrong on both counts. It appears that it is not only possible but rather than the cumbersome process I imagined it to be, it is, in fact, unbelievably simple. At least, that is what my friend says and that is what is confirmed in the Kindle2 manual.

In response to my doubts, my friend writes: “Why is it cumbersome? It is better now because the manual says you can save starting from a single word and go from page to page (rather than having to start at the beginning of a line and start the highlighting over again on the next page). But it was never difficult—you just clicked to highlight a passage and then clicked when you reached the end of the passage. You just hook it up to the computer and copy the file. A lot easier than typing everything all over again.”

Well, it is true I spend a good deal of time typing the passages I mark in a book or periodical. I have rationalized this by saying it gives me a chance to review the passages and give them further thought. Of course, I could do that anyway, without having to spend all that time typing the passages on the keyboard.

And the Amazon website makes this quite clear: “By using the QWERTY keyboard, you can add annotations to text, just like you might write in the margins of a book. And because it is digital, you can edit, delete, and export your notes.” And that’s not all.

“Using the new 5-way controller, you can highlight and clip key passages and bookmark pages for future use. You'll never need to bookmark your last place in the book, because Kindle remembers for you and always opens to the last page you read.”

This is all pretty amazing. Can it be this simple? Does it really work so easily in practice? Can I ever get used to it? Understand that I am no longer a young, electronic wizard.

A couple of other features appeal to me. I understand there is a built-in dictionary. What a good idea. How often have you come across an unfamiliar word that you want learn its meaning? And how often has this happened while you are lying in bed with the dictionary on a bookshelf two floors below? At least, you thought it was there but come to think of it, you can’t be sure now. The word remains a mystery, unless you make note of it in some way and then remember to check the dictionary when you eventually find it somewhere downstairs.

Again, from the Kindle2 website: “The New Oxford American Dictionary with over 250,000 entries and definitions, so you can seamlessly look up the definitions of words without interrupting your reading. Come across a word you don't know? Simply move the cursor to it and the definition will automatically display at the bottom of the screen. Never fear a sesquipedalian word again--simply look it up and keep reading.” Another miracle of sorts.

Finally, the gadget offers wireless access to Wikipedia, a feature that is less interesting to me but I imagine can be useful in a pinch. Amazon informs me that: “With Kindle in hand, looking up people, places, events, and more has never been easier. It gives whole new meaning to the phrase walking encyclopedia.” Can you believe that?

To be sure, I do often have a question about someone or some book or some issue and more often then not Wikipedia gives me a provisional answer. Usually I go to the computer to get the information. Now I need never get up out of bed or leave my poolside lounge chair with “latest generation” of Amazon’s new super-thin, wireless, “reading device.”

In the old days we used to read books. Now we read, if we read, “reading devices.” What could possibly be next?