eBook Reader Design Fosters Studying And Collective Thinking

[Lin2412]

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One of the most consistent critiques of eBooks coming from book lovers is that they isolate readers. Peer-to-peer lending is still a new concept, and most eBook readers are far more likely to just buy an ePub file ‘new’ from giants like Apple or Amazon. Serious readers miss the experience of being gifted a book by a friend – with their inscription and/or marginalia – or buying one from the bookstore with mysterious and sometimes enlightening marks. A new eBook reader called Addr, however, promises a return to the glory days of social reading.

Addr’s philosophy rejects the skeumorphism of typical eReaders by refusing to limit itself to a book page that fills the screen. This allows it to foreground notes far more than any other reading app. Instead of being trapped in popovers that no one looks at, notes are visible in the margins with the text, like with a real book. To add a note, you just drag your finger over a block of text. You can share these annotations even with people who don’t have the app using email.

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[Apache]

I never wanted to receive books as gifts. Most people, including relatives and close friends, never knew what I had already read or even what I would be interested in reading. Now when gift cards started being given as gifts that was another matter.
Apache

[Terisa de morgan]

Isolated? Only big publishers? Miss marks in books? Miss getting books? Sorry, wrong study for me.

[Terisa de morgan]

And, as a friend said, we come back to the scrolls

[fjtorres]

The headline alone scares the bejeezus out of me: "foster collective thinking"?
Brrr...

Shades of HELLSTROM'S HIVE!!!


(Nope. Not for me.)

[QuantumIguana]

Serious readers miss the experience of being gifted a book by a friend – with their inscription and/or marginalia – or buying one from the bookstore with mysterious and sometimes enlightening marks.

Do they now? Do "serious" readers really enjoy other people's writing in the margins? I find this profoundly arrogant. If you prefer books that aren't written in you're not a serious reader? With an e-book, I can turn on or off people's highlights. E-books are not isolating at all, regardless of the format we read, we can still discuss the book, it's the same book in paper or e-book. It's not as easy to share, true, but when you try to shove books on people, they seldom read them.

I do not reject an e-book being text on a screen, I embrace it. It's the best way to read the author's words. I'm not interested in someone else's scribblings.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

I do not reject an e-book being text on a screen, I embrace it. It's the best way to read the author's words. I'm not interested in someone else's scribblings.

Same here. One of the first things I turned off on my Kindle was "Popular Highlights." Until I found that setting I hated that my book was "marked up" before I even read it. It was a complete distraction. Used paper books don't have a higher value when they're heavily underlined -- they have a much lower value.

[Purple Lady]

When I first had a Kindle and saw the popular highlights I couldn't continue reading until I figured out how to get rid of them. I also want the smallest margins possible - it's not a paper book so I don't need the same margins. My device already has a bezel.

[QuantumIguana]

Marginalia is often touted as an advantage to e-books, but I believe most people prefer to have books that aren't written in. There is perhaps an exception is the marginalia is written by a famous person, and perhaps an exception for textbooks, if the previous owner was especially good at highlighting the most relevant sections.

Some people also swear by the smell of a paper book. I was recently reading a paper book, and I decided to take a sniff. I smelled nothing. The only time I have noticed a smell from a book was when the book was old and musty, and it wasn't a good smell.

Collaborative is probably a better word for what the article describes than collective. But if people need to collaborate, e-mail is better than marginalia. This is a solution in search of a problem.

I don't really mind the popular highlights, but it seems that often the most trivial things get highlighted. I think to myself "Really? You found that to be profound?"

[fjtorres]

Whether fiction or textbook I prefer my books pristine.
I can decide for myself what I think is important or particularly meaningful, especially in textbooks.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Whether fiction or textbook I prefer my books pristine.
I can decide for myself what I think is important or particularly meaningful, especially in textbooks.

I think most people would agree, they would prefer an new unmarked book over an old book that had been written in. There are people who like marginalia, but they should understand that is pretty, well, marginal. If this is what people want, they should go for it, but some people don't seem to get that not everyone wants what they want or that it may be that few others want what they want.

[speakingtohe]

I was always aghast at anyone writing in the margins of paper books, especially library books. Worse than defacing public property or money IMO.

And why would anyone want to hear peoples opinions interspersed in their reading? Would be distracting and you can look that stuff up if you want to.

I can see it being of some use in a study guide or a scholarly research thing, but only a PITA in reading for pleasure.

Helen
Helen

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Lin2412

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Please attach the images so we can see them and please post a proper link.

[Jessica Lares]

I have been playing with Addr. It's nice, but it's not going to go anywhere besides as a concept. We all saw what happened to Readmill.

I turn off Kindle Popular Highlights too.

[rkomar]

In my first year of university, other students showed me how highlighting made studying so much better. I bought a highliter marker, and started highlighting all those paragraphs that I found to be illuminating and important. Returning to those sections over the term, I would finally get what some paragraph was trying to tell me, and then highlight that too. By the time I was well into studying for the final exams, I realized that I had highlighted those parts I understood, and that it was the bits left unhighlighted that were the most subtle and important in the texts (at least for anticipating the tough questions in the exams). That was an embarrassing revelation, and I stopped highlighting after that. So, there's no way I'm going to highlight stuff for anyone else to see, either.