Poll: How often do you use X-Ray when it's available?

[Rizla]

It's a gimmick that was cheap to implement and that Amazon could laud as a new feature.

Originally Posted by Haesslich

I've bought one book where it was enabled. It wasn't enabled for the rest of that series... I basically forget i'ts there.

Originally Posted by xendula

Never. I tried it out maybe once and didn't even understand what I was supposed to get out of it. I guess for a book like Ana Karenina it may be useful: I got confused about all the different names.

What they said. It seems to be so RARELY implemented in the books I buy that I don't even look to see if it is available anymore. And I really found it to be nothing of interest to me. But to be honest I rarely read fiction. I mostly read histories, biographies, and scientific works, and it is unlikely to be implemented in those kinds of books.

[vxf]

As someone said above.... it's great for any Russian classic in which half of the character are named Alexander-something.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

The poll needs a "Frequently" option; that's how often I use it. The more complex the book, the more I use it. For a long book with lots of characters, it really helps to keep them straight in my mind.

I've also noted that not all X-Ray options are created equal. Some just tell you on which pages certain characters can be found while others give a brief biography of each character.

And a "sometimes" option. I would have liked to use it for looking up names for some books but unfortunately it was not available for these books.

[negris123]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

I rarely use it, but when I do, I love it!

But here is my conundrum: I sometimes have a hard time keeping track of character names. This seems to happen to me often in mysteries, so it's very useful for me to be able to look up a character name and quickly refresh myself as to who that character is. But I feel that the little frequency distribution graph can be a kind of spoiler. Let's say I look up minor character Mr. X. If Mr. X occurs very frequently toward the end of the book, then he was probably in on it! If he only occurs once or twice for the rest of the book, then he's a red herring.

So I'm torn between loving the convenience of it, and wanting to avoid any possible spoilers. When I had my Sony reader, I sometimes had to search backwards on a character's name to remind myself who that character was. Better than a print book, but not as convenient as X-Ray.

eP

Agree with everything that you said.

I will add that though I rarely read fiction, X-RAY would have come in VERY helpful way back when I read The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Those were the most difficult to keep track of characters and their names. I have trouble remembering names anyway, especially when they are from made up languages imagined in the mind of Tolkien!

[Snorkledorf]

I used it exactly once and it immediately listed something that hadn't happened yet in the book. I can live without an auto-spoiler function.

[tubemonkey]

Never

[jbcohen]

Of all the thousands of books that I have read with my paper white I have never had xray available.

X-RAY has to be added by the book author/publisher. Amazon added a feature that most publishers don't seem to support. I don't blame the publishers though as it is a lot of work to add X-RAY to their books.

[sparklemotion]

I never use it.

[barryem]

I use X-Ray constantly. I've always had trouble remembering character names and X-Ray is a great help. In a book without too many characters I still find myself using it some. In a book with a lot of characters, which a lot of the books I read are, I use it constantly.

When I read "Under the Dome" I'm not sure I'd have remembered half of the huge number of characters by the time I was half way through. X-Ray was a real life-saver.

It's true that most books don't have it yet. I read a lot of older books and I always give preference to those that do have it. And I've noticed that it keeps getting added to more and more books.

One book, I don't recall which now, updated itself because I have the auto-update feature turned on at Amazon, while I was about halfway through the book, adding X-Ray.

I think this is an important and a very major feature and I suspect as time goes by it'll become a selling point, encouraging more publishers to take it seriously.

Barry

[jbcohen]

One of the reasons for this is I only occasionally buy from amazon, most of mine come from Baen.

[negris123]

Although I like this feature, you have to be careful of spoilers. I was reading a book by Stephen King and when I looked up one of the characters, x-ray revealed plot information from later chapters and it spoiled some of the surprise in the story. After that, I have felt less inclined to use it.

[edwardasf]

Spoilers are a huge issue with X-Ray. It can reveal major plot points that you have not reached yet. This happened with "Mockingjay" for me. I would not use it again unless I was rereading a book.