Quote:
Originally Posted by DrMoze
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I am curious if many people actually interrupt their reading to look up words. I've been a voracious reader since elementary school (almost 40 years) and have never done this.
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It is hard to say, and even with people like me replying "I do!" there's not really going to be any clear consensus. Clearly a lot of people like the dictionary lookup feature (me included).
For me, as with yourself, dictionary lookup while reading has been an inconvenience, even with a dictionary sitting next to me - you're going from one book to opening and looking up another, and I'd likely find it annoying. About the only exception to this was Primo Levi's
If This Is A Man/The Truce where precise understanding of meaning was essential to me (and even then I used dictionaries in my PDA phone).
Saying that, the dictionary lookup feature in Mobipocket (I use an Iliad, though it's obviously applicable to the Cybook too) works, for me, seemlessly with the reading experience because you never leave "the book". You tap on a word and then pick the dictionary you want to look the word up in. It shows you the meaning, and then you tap out and you're back in the text you're reading. I never feel I've left what I'm reading.
For me, it's approaching the exquisite reading experience (it's not perfect - it's far more instantaneous and "seemless" on my laptop then it is on the Iliad). As I age (though my years are less than yours - I'm approaching 40), I find a need for precision in my reading experience. I find myself less forgiving on the books I read and less forgiving on my own comprehension (I don't let context or broad definition allow me to pass a word up that may have allegiances and origins behind it that add to, or specify, assumed meaning).
I suspect it's an anchovies thing, and I empathise quite strongly with your "immersive" reading experience, even if I do not experience the dictionary lookups as an interruption myself (people who keep talking to me while I'm trying to read are another matter entirely, of course.
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As for being in a minority, well, if I was you I'd glory in it. It has its negatives (trends tend to follow the majority, for instance), but individuality is a far greater compliment, in my mind, than that overwhelming smear of beige-ness sometimes called "normality".
Cheers,
Marc