How difficult is it to find a good version of David Copperfield?

Hollow Man · 12-07-2016, 01:57 PM

Sometimes downloading an eBook can be downright frustrating!

For whatever reason, I was never assigned to read any Dickens in school, so thought I'd finally spend time and read some. I noticed that there are two free versions of David Copperfield on Amazon (for my Kindle). As detailed in one of the threads on the Kindle forums, one of them doesn't do page numbers right for new devices, so I tried the other. That one does, but I noticed that it's missing the important formatting (i.e. italics. The sentence in question even mentions the fact that the character is putting emphasis on a word, but without the italics, the reader is all, "Huh?").

After the two free ones, there are limitless numbers of versions of David Copperfield available on Amazon for 99 cents. I've looked at the samples for a lot of them, and every single one seems to be missing the italics.

Has anyone else experienced this type of frustration? What do you do about it? I can't look at the reviews on Amazon, because they lump all of them into one mass review section, so you can't see which edition (both paper and electronic) people are even reviewing! Free or a dollar is great, but I'd be willing to pay a few bucks just to get an edition that has italics where it's supposed to.

-HM

AnemicOak · 12-07-2016, 02:03 PM

Harry T's version in the Patricia Clark Memorial Library here at MR...

Kindle
ePub

Hollow Man · 12-07-2016, 02:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Harry T's version in the Patricia Clark Memorial Library here at MR...

Kindle
ePub

I didn't even know there was a Library here! And it sounds like, as I would expect, that the people here care a lot more than the people who do the editions that end up on Amazon.

Thanks for the tip,

-HM

bgalbrecht · 12-07-2016, 03:20 PM

It's likely that all of those cheap David Copperfield editions at Amazon are derived from the Project Gutenberg edition, which was created back in the day when PG was ASCII text only, and did stuff like capitalize words that should have been italicized. It's funny, they've since updated it with illustrations, but not fixed the italics.

Hollow Man · 12-07-2016, 03:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

It's likely that all of those cheap David Copperfield editions at Amazon are derived from the Project Gutenberg edition, which was created back in the day when PG was ASCII text only, and did stuff like capitalize words that should have been italicized. It's funny, they've since updated it with illustrations, but not fixed the italics.

It's too bad, because there's definitely something more pleasing to the eye with the Amazon one I was reading. I don't know anything about all these formats, but I suspect whatever new thing Amazon is using is more full featured than the old mobi. In addition to having less lines per page, it seems that better decisions are being made with how to present each line of text.

-HM

12-07-2016, 01:57 PM	#1
Hollow Man Evangelist Posts: 401 Karma: 2000000 Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: Connecticut Device: Kindle Colorsoft, Oasis, Keyboard; iPhone 13 Pro, Air	How difficult is it to find a good version of David Copperfield? Sometimes downloading an eBook can be downright frustrating! For whatever reason, I was never assigned to read any Dickens in school, so thought I'd finally spend time and read some. I noticed that there are two free versions of David Copperfield on Amazon (for my Kindle). As detailed in one of the threads on the Kindle forums, one of them doesn't do page numbers right for new devices, so I tried the other. That one does, but I noticed that it's missing the important formatting (i.e. italics. The sentence in question even mentions the fact that the character is putting emphasis on a word, but without the italics, the reader is all, "Huh?"). After the two free ones, there are limitless numbers of versions of David Copperfield available on Amazon for 99 cents. I've looked at the samples for a lot of them, and every single one seems to be missing the italics. Has anyone else experienced this type of frustration? What do you do about it? I can't look at the reviews on Amazon, because they lump all of them into one mass review section, so you can't see which edition (both paper and electronic) people are even reviewing! Free or a dollar is great, but I'd be willing to pay a few bucks just to get an edition that has italics where it's supposed to. -HM Last edited by Hollow Man; 12-07-2016 at 02:00 PM.

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12-07-2016, 02:03 PM	#2
AnemicOak Bookaholic Posts: 14,391 Karma: 54969924 Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Minnesota Device: iPad Mini 4, AuraHD, iPhone XR +	Harry T's version in the Patricia Clark Memorial Library here at MR... Kindle ePub

12-07-2016, 03:20 PM	#4
bgalbrecht Wizard Posts: 1,806 Karma: 13399999 Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: US Device: Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Glo HD, Kobo Clara HD, Kindle 4	It's likely that all of those cheap David Copperfield editions at Amazon are derived from the Project Gutenberg edition, which was created back in the day when PG was ASCII text only, and did stuff like capitalize words that should have been italicized. It's funny, they've since updated it with illustrations, but not fixed the italics.

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