[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

All I hear is blah, blah, blah.

The fonts look fine to me. I didn't even know there WERE any fonts embedded until you mentioned it. They still look fine to me know that I do know.

Doug, you know that I love ya better than my luggage, but...on a Kindle eInk, that font is not lovely, to my eyes. I put it on my latest and greatest Kindle, a Voyage, and while it's not AWWWWFUL (or offal!), it's far from great. When I look at this, what I see is eyestrain, after a few hours. Simply because it seems to have issues with kerning (not kerning pairs); the l/c r's seem to kern too tightly to the letters on both sides of it, ditto the l/c n, etc. In fact, if I didn't know better, I would guess that this was a serif Compressed font, due to the tightness between the letters. (AND, while I'm at it, the resulting rivers. It's actually distracting me, in looking at it--all those words, kerned tightly, and then rivers. Gadzooks!)

Most folks who don't mess with fonts for a living (or a rabid hobby, like {mumble}) don't realize that a lot of what "happens" surrounding fonts isn't perceived by the eyeball, really. It's not whether you see it and have a visceral reaction; "oooh, I love that," or "Ewwww, I hate that."

Instead, it's something that happens back in the primordial bits. Anyway, if I had to read this particular font, I truly think that my eyes would start to hurt (or I'd get a headache, or I'd think that I was "tired" because I was rubbing my eyes, they felt heavy, etc.) after a bit of time.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

That's the part that sounded like "blah, blah, blah" to me.

Suhweeeetie! I know that our curmudgeon, Jon, can certainly beat the cr*p out of a dead horse, but...

I've never encountered a professionally prepared book (E or P) in all of my life that used a font that prevented/distracted me from reading it.

Oh...I've seen a few. NOT as many as Wolfie, admittedly, but I fear I've seen a handful.

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I tried reading with Free Serif, only adjusting size, not weight and I have to say, I wasn't a fan. It was too thin. I think it's a pretty font, but I switched back to my favorite, Noto Serif PDQ.

The one that's in the Kindle version of TM is weird, as I mentioned, above. Pretty in fonts is like pretty in people: pretty is as pretty does. I'm actually going to try reading this, in the original K version, and see what I think after a period of actual exposure, rather than my kneejerk reaction.

Originally Posted by jackie_w

But not if you're trying to read Andy Weir's book in a language other than English (or other Western European language). I expect the Publisher is hoping for a new worldwide blockbuster, so picking a font which supports many more languages makes their life easier.

Well....they'd have to redo it to accommodate different countries, anyway, but while they COULD use this as a base for those other versions, there are other fonts that are widely, widely used in numerous languages (Garamond, anyone?), so I would argue against that reasoning. It could have played into their thinking, but if so, they screwed the pooch in picking this one over any number of other multi-languagee options.

And, to wrap:

IN MY OPINION, only.

Hitch