Quote:
Originally Posted by Chiron scriba
Well, you know the difference between gulping down a glass of wine and sipping it to savour the fine nuances of taste... the latter is more or less my way with e-books: first I buy a book - or more often, as I like old stuff too, I download it from Project Gutenberg or other free sources; then I edit it to remove the rubbish, browse through it without paying much attention to the contents but looking attentively for blatant typos and scan hiccups, correct them, check for spelling errors and patch them up, brush up the overall appearance, re-convert the book to a compatible format and upload it to my e-reader.
Only then I can read it through and enjoy it fully, unhampered by those nasty little nuisances that are so unusual in good old printed books and pop up so frequently in ebooks.
That's probably because I'm a relic from the past, a past that has spoiled me for so many decades with plenty of well-paginated, well-proofread, well-printed and well-bound stuff.
Whereas I guess that the current way of e-reading is mostly to turn on the crap-filter and concentrate on the contents disregarding the form it's served in. It's probably the (current) lack of such a crap-filter that makes me the unbearable hair-splitting pedant I am...  |
Wowza,
Chiron scriba, you sure made a lot of assumptions about my reading habits. Incorrect ones, I might add. For example, I happen to be both a fast reader and a quick study, but I'm by no means "frantic". I concur with
shalym and
meeera's responses to your earlier posts and will let those speak for me.
Your most recent post (which was not necessarily directed to me) highlights both commonalities we share and some differences. To wit:
- I don't "gulp" down ebooks like a wino who indiscriminately consumes whatever quality of booze she can get her hands on, not distinguishing between MD 20/20 and Moet & Chandon's top-tier champagne. Rather, like you, I'm a connoisseur who appreciates and savors the fine nuances of well-crafted content.
- Also, content aside - like you, I have little tolerance for reading any works that are poorly-paginated, poorly-proofread, poorly-printed, or poorly-bound.
- On the other hand, 'though I have no qualms about changing an ebook's cover, refining its metadata, or changing its format to accommodate the platform I plan to read it on, the only times I'll invest the time and effort you described to a bring poorly-paginated, poorly-proofread, poorly-printed, or poorly-bound work up to snuff is when I'm being paid to edit it or grade it, or I'm helping a loved one polish his/her work.
- Whereas you would download a free book and "edit it to remove the rubbish, browse through it without paying much attention to the contents but looking attentively for blatant typos and scan hiccups, correct them, check for spelling errors and patch them up, brush up the overall appearance," I would delete such a book posthaste and replace it with a better-quality edition, perhaps by using the above-mentioned search methods you decried (e.g., Worldcat and Inkmesh, each of which searches multiple sources simultaneously).