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Originally Posted by bookbinder
On account of legibility, of course. Eye-strain. Reading in an uncomfortable position. No portability. The analogy is weak.
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I didn't suffer eye-strain, nor discomfort, and I was porting my computer around in the early 80s just fine, thank you very much. By the late 80s I was carrying devices that could hold (small) books in my pocket, and did. I also spent days at a time (more than I should have -- there were a few > 24h sessions) in front of them reading endless streams of text.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bookbinder
How? Is reading a book just like looking at a work of art or listening to a concert or going to a museum? "Frivolities" is your word, not mine.
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It most certainly is for me.
The setting of the (content/art/music) provides a frame for the entire experience. That setting helps form the character through which the story is told. A change of lighting can make the difference between Meat Loaf and Olivia Newton-John, just as a change in air temperature and humidity could make the difference between whether you experience this image:
http://pdnedu.blogs.com/photos/uncat...cture_1_11.jpg
as a horse in morning mist, or a horse in volcanic dust.
As with music and painting/photography, there are entire forms of writing that depend on the setting, particularly in poetry.
Books -- even cheap ones -- develop a character, almost a personality. I find the same with machines -- cars, computers, calculators, eventually my reader, probably. It's frequently the case that I'll pick up a book and carry it around, just feeling its weight, or the texture, or the creases I tried not to inflict. But the weight, even ungainliness of some omnibus editions help tell the story. I thin book reinforces a generally light story; a small book talks about small things at a time (sonnets, perhaps); a large tome feels as epic as the story it tells. The finer crafted books gives more of a sense of importance to the story, and prompts the mind to give more thought to it. Common paperbacks are stories not necessarily important -- Star Trek vs Dune, perhaps.
Keeping the books also provides a meta-memory. They act as mnemonics for my own life -- where I was, who I was, what I was doing even over the space of a few minutes. Trading the book in for a newer copy often disrupts that mnemonic. Reducing it to an ebook completely removes it, as I've experienced in the months I've have my reader.
I'll do the same with music, and I've spent years looking for particular performances just because of the familiar hisses or scratches present. Not even the best performances, but they're the ones I grew to love. I'll play a track or two and (often) remember reading, say, a Battlestar Galactica novel (Gun on Ice Planet Zero, I believe) to an old recording of Tchaikovsky, under a nightlight on an extension cord hanging in a cramped reading nook I made under my bunk. I'm not sure I would enjoy that story as much again without the music, come to think of it, just as reading something like Gnomes or The Hobbit, is something I enjoy best in the winter, at night, in bed with all the lights out.
So, if you'll forgive me, the generalization that the characters printed on the paper are the sole experience is pretty much rubbish. For myself, and certainly it seems for others, there's quite a bit more going on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bookbinder
Can you elaborate?
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In polite company? I'll try not to be graphic...
But reducing reading to a stream of words is like reducing a date to watching porn. Sure, it may get the job done, and they may even be some great times to be had. But, in the end, I'll be damned if I ever replace dating with gadgetry. After all, the package can be just as fun as the contents.