Reading assistant?

[Dbuns]

Hi guys!

I'm Daniel (new here), and I'm currently reading The Foundation on my Kindle Paperwhite.

As an on-off reader, coming back to the Foundation after a while feels overwhelming with all the different settings.. I was wondering if there is an app that could help the reading of such complex story. I'm aware of Kindle's X-ray, but I found here quite negative impressions. I think it would be nice to have an application that assists you in keeping track of different timelines, characters' stories, and relations... Is it just me or others here feel the same?

Let me know your thoughts.

[rantanplan]

In general, you should make use of note taking abilities of the device. Depending on the device, you can even have different shades / colors like with Pocketbook.

[tomsem]

I like the X-Ray feature. At a minimum, it lets you see snippets referencing characters and terms without leaving your current position in the book. And if you do navigate to read more of the context, it's pretty painless to return to the previous location.

Originally Amazon cannibalized user generated content at Shelfari (which they acquired in 2008) but I think most of it now is generated algorithmically, with minimal human curation. As such the quality is variable, and usefulness in any case varies with the book in question. Unfortunately there is no substitute for actual reading skills and being able to tune out distractions.

Tablets are better if you like taking out-of-band notes, ability to look things up, pull up maps and that sort of thing. On iPad you can use Slide Over or Split Screen for the 'other' apps, and you can copy and paste from the book, use an external keyboard, use voice dictation, etc..

In-line notes such as you can enter on a Kindle are useful as well (and easy to export) but you're very limited by the virtual keyboard. I wish they would at least make it possible to pair a bluetooth keyboard so it would be easier to type, and they could also add keyboard shortcuts for navigating to Xray, Notes, TOC, Home, jump to next previous chapter etc. (the Kindle Apps have some keyboard shortcuts but there could be more of them).

[BookCat]

I use highlighting for the first instance of any name, including place names, or other information which might be later referenced. Then if something/someone turns up and you can't remember who they are, just use the Go To feature and select Notes. This will show all your highlights - go to the first instance of the thing you're checking.

[Dbuns]

Hi guys!

Thank you very much for the answers. So note-taking is the best option for what I'm looking for right now? I don't know if I'll be able to catch all the important events, or over-do them, but I'll give it a try!

[spacepope]

Sometimes with the most popular of books, chapter-by-chapter summaries are available. I will read those if I've been away from a book long or just have questions about what I read.

https://asimov.fandom.com/wiki/Foundation
https://bookanalysis.com/isaac-asimo.../plot-summary/

These two seem to have decent summaries.


I also use the "search in book" feature, highlighting any name I don't recognize and searching to see the first few times it was used to remember who the character was

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by BookCat

I use highlighting for the first instance of any name, including place names, or other information which might be later referenced. Then if something/someone turns up and you can't remember who they are, just use the Go To feature and select Notes. This will show all your highlights - go to the first instance of the thing you're checking.

This is what I do too. If a lot of characters are introduced all at once (like when a large family is introduced near the beginning of a book) and I know I won't remember who everyone is and their relationship to each other, I'll either bookmark the page so I can easily find and flip back to it, or highlight the name and description of each person so I can open the notes and see them.

If I'm reading something like a mystery where the detective may meet different people as the story moves along, I might highlight the new person's name and description as they are introduced in case I want to refer to it later.

[Dbuns]

I use highlighting for the first instance of any name, including place names, or other information which might be later referenced. Then if something/someone turns up and you can't remember who they are, just use the Go To feature and select Notes. This will show all your highlights - go to the first instance of the thing you're checking.

Nice! I see that that's the majority's choice. I also started doing it myself, and it has been working so far. Thank you so much for the advice! When I asked, I was looking for something like this, but automated. Maybe I'm asking too much.