[Chiron scriba]

Originally Posted by Froide

Wowza, Chiron scriba, you sure made a lot of assumptions about my reading habits. Incorrect ones, I might add.

I'm sorry Froide, please don't be piqued: one's attitude towards books is a matter of personal taste, I meant no disregard or criticism with my remarks.

For example, I happen to be both a fast reader and a quick study, but I'm by no means "frantic".

I'm a fast reader too, and whenever I have to do it I am frantic - but that's a sort of occupational disease: in my work I often have to go through huge amounts of dull material - on paper as well as on the screen - hastily discarding the ballast without missing the important details.
What I do in my armchair at home with stuff I like to read is (deliberately) quite another story.

. . .

• 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.

  Poorly-bound ebooks?
  

  . . . 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.

  Still a matter of taste: when I can afford reading for the sheer pleasure of it I prefer to see things arranged the way I like, and (as you perhaps already guessed ) I'm pretty finicky on the matter.
  
  

  Whereas you would download a free book and "edit it . . . 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).

That's more or less what I do, as long as a decent replacement exists at all. But, alas, that's not always the case with some of the old obsolete stuff I'm so fond of. And you certainly know how much overhead, underhead and middlehead must be removed from a Gutenberg-converted ebook before it becomes palatable. Not that the other sources, free or not, are all much better...