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I'm ambivalent about ToC links. I rarely use them, but when I actually do need to use them they're very helpful.
Jumping around an e-book is much more difficult than jumping around a p-book, so when I need to, chapter links can be invaluable in finding a specific place.
But sometimes ToCs can be really bothersome. I do really dislike huge ToCs. Some are humongous, and I appreciate that someone took the time to do it, but it becomes a mess.
For instance, when I read Walt Whitman's Deathbed version of Leaves of Grass, the ToC took up pages; I think it was around twenty pages or so. It was ridiculous. And what was more amazing was that someone bothered to take all the time to make links for each and every poem or section, but then just left all those links in a huge unmanageable jumble.
They weren't divided in any way whatsoever, so it was just twenty uninterrupted pages of single-space links, some in all capitals, some with no capitals, some capitalised correctly but with strange characters randomly included, some misspelled or with incorrect grammar, without rhyme or reason as to why (i.e. the all-capitals titles were not all capitals in the book at the actual poem).
If one were going to take the time-consuming task of making such a large ToC one would think more thought would be put into actually making it useful. I would first have a page of just links to the main sections, short and sweet. Then on following pages I'd have the links to the particular poems separated into groups of the larger sections of the book, well-formatted, with a new page break for each large section.
Not only was it a mess to look at, it also interfered with my reading the book. Somehow what they did slowed down the book for me, so that it was torture turning pages or making notes. I had to come here to mobileread asking for help on what to do (not understanding the problem and not being tech-savvy) and finally, with help realising the links might be the problem, load it into calibre and eliminate all the links and then it worked fine. This interference with the speed of the book in the e-reader is why I decided that I really dislike huge ToCs.
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