Leafing Through Books : Why ereaders aren't worth a 600 y.o technology !

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Anthem

E-books (right now) really work best for the novel readers.

This is correct, and an important point. More specifically, e-ink readers provide the most complete experience for the traditional mass-market paperback novel. The farther you move away from this model, the more you will give up with current e-ink readers. Pictures and other graphics are problematic...and when they can be done, are inferior. Navigating other than linearly is inconvenient. And the page sizes are small - one (dual column) page of my old law school textbooks was the size of four paperback pages - and because it displayed two pages (the way that books do), I basically saw 8 eink screens at one time. Which made flipping through the book even easier.

The Honda Accord is a great car for most uses. But it's not ideal if you want to do a lot of offroading. The same is true of an e-ink reader. They are horrible for offroading!

Well, I mean, they are really good at some things, and not so good at others. And it's good to recognize this in advance.

[Maggie Leung]

I read mostly nonfiction and there are times when I miss being able to flip through print books. For instance, I sometimes want to compare parts of two history or business books when I read something that jogs my memory. Even with two devices side by side, it's not as quick or easy as flipping through two print books.

Flipping and using multiple books at the same time also came in handy during school, as I remember.

That said, there's nothing to stop me from buying print books, as well as e-books. It doesn't make sense to dismiss the advantages of technology when I don't have to pick between digital and print; I can use both to my advantage.

As for people who don't like digital reading: shrug. I don't care how anyone else prefers to read. If they read at all, I think that's great. I'm not interested in converting anyone to e-books. It's not as if their preferences reflect on mine, or vice versa.

[AndrewH]

Originally Posted by Huyggy

Granted there's the enormous benefits of the size in your pocket.
But imagine you've got a book with multiple references, placed as usual at the end of the book (as you find in all academic books, papers). Going back and forth from the paper to the references is quickly excruciating. You can always put a bookmark on the references, but how do you do when there are 30 pages of references to flip through?

My War and Peace ebook has a link for each footnote and a link at the footnote returning back to the text. It's really very basic HTML, and can easily be done with any e-document.

With internal links, search capabilities, a table of contents, the ability to go to any page, and user-created bookmarks/notations I don't see ebooks having any disadvantage compared to pbooks.

[Sydney's Mom]

The only time I leaf through a book (back and forth and back and forth) is research. For fiction books, the ereader bookmarks the page for me, so I have no reason to leaf through (to find my place). I kinda miss the ability to look before buying, but (1) no one is preventing me from going in to a bookstore to do just that and (2) I find samples, when I can get them (from Amazon) are a better indicator, and won't spoil the book for me.

[Connallmac]

Originally Posted by Anthem

But if you like some variety and you enjoy almost any sort of non-fiction where needing to flip back a few pages (OMG this is annoying to the point of murder on every e-reader I have tried), run end notes and footnotes (no digital equivalent worth mentioning), hold your finger in the index while you check out the pages indicated, and on and on, then you are in for a world of hurt.

I am crazy and I do end up reading the sorts of books where those types of activities are necessary on my e-reading devices and I almost always end up looking at myself in the mirror and wondering, "What is wrong with you?! Buy these in print you idiot!"

Actually I just read a memoir by a US Marine in the Pacific Theater of WWII which made use of end notes. The notes were hyperlinked and it was extremely easy to go back and forth between where I was reading and the end note I wanted to look at. I wish I had had something like this in college while majoring in History, it would have made my research MUCH easier.

[Fayth]

As someone who only reads fantasy novels, I absolutely love my ereader. I can't comment on technical books and what not but I think reading my fantasy books on the ereader is better than a physical book. I can search for specific passages far more easily than if I was looking through the actual book. I can quickly bookmark multiple important pages in the novel and go back to them at any time.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Anthem

As I have said in other posts here on MobileRead, e-book readers and e-books in general are in a very awkward position. They are real book impersonators at this point in time. They do a few things better, but many of the advantages that we associate with a bound book are most certainly missing and no digital equivalent feature has been devised to stem the bleeding. We can change the paradigms and relearn how to read a digital book and move away from the printed methods, but things need to be intuitive and far less of a mimicry. Like Doctorow said, Neither E, Nor Book.

I have to agree and disagree. They do some thing better and some thing not better. One thing they do better is the accidental turning to a page that spoils the book for us. Currently they do not work well with textbooks. They allow us to carry many more books with us then we would otherwise be able to carry. They give us the ability to have more privacy when reading where other may see what we are reading.

E-books (right now) really work best for the novel readers. If you don't look much beyond John Grisham, Nora Roberts, Harlan Coben, and others for your book entertainment then you are golden, e-books work great for reading these types of books. But if you like some variety and you enjoy almost any sort of non-fiction where needing to flip back a few pages (OMG this is annoying to the point of murder on every e-reader I have tried), run end notes and footnotes (no digital equivalent worth mentioning), hold your finger in the index while you check out the pages indicated, and on and on, then you are in for a world of hurt.

I agree that current readers do work best for books yo read straight through. Non-fiction and flipping back is not an issue with today's readers. In fact, you can now take notes and highlight sections for when you want to flip back to refer to them. As for footnotes, you make them as end notes and you are usually OK. You just select the link, go to the end note, read it and then go back to where you were reading. It's not hard and it's very easily doable with toady's readers. So as far as footnotes/end notes go, I have to disagree with you 100%. I also have to disagree about non-fiction where you may want to flip back a few pages.

I am crazy and I do end up reading the sorts of books where those types of activities are necessary on my e-reading devices and I almost always end up looking at myself in the mirror and wondering, "What is wrong with you?! Buy these in print you idiot!"

Maybe the problem is that you don't like the way the K3 does these things. Maybe you should try a Sony 650 and see how you get on with that. The touch screen may make some of these activities easier to deal with.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AndrewH

My War and Peace ebook has a link for each footnote and a link at the footnote returning back to the text. It's really very basic HTML, and can easily be done with any e-document.

With internal links, search capabilities, a table of contents, the ability to go to any page, and user-created bookmarks/notations I don't see ebooks having any disadvantage compared to pbooks.

The OP has a K3. maybe the lack of page numbers is a problem for him. With ADE/ePub, you can remember a page number, read further on, and just go to that page. The K3 has locations which are not as easy to deal with when flipping between parts of a book.

[The Terminator]

Have you heard of table of contents?

[OtterBooks]

It's been four years. Start complaining in another hundred or so.

Eventually they'll have bound "books" that are a stack of hundreds of flexible paper-thin screens that display an entire book of your choosing. The entire surface of the cover will be a display as well. Maybe. Also flying cars and sexbots.

In the meantime they have not replaced paper books for me. It's a nice addition. Hurry up sexbots.

[Huyggy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The OP has a K3. maybe the lack of page numbers is a problem for him. With ADE/ePub, you can remember a page number, read further on, and just go to that page. The K3 has locations which are not as easy to deal with when flipping between parts of a book.

Hey, I am the OP. I've got a HP TC1100. A tablet PC with Touchscreen, 10.4 display, RAM up to 2 Gb, and even a retractable keyboard. Invented 5 years ago maybe. I am still laughing at the alleged breakthrough of their Apple's iPad.

Originally Posted by THE TERMINATOR

Have you heard of table of contents?

If all the books/papers in the scientific fields have hypertext references, hypertext table of content, maybe my appreciation would change a little.

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

It's been four years. Start complaining in another hundred or so.

Eventually they'll have bound "books" that are a stack of hundreds of flexible paper-thin screens that display an entire book of your choosing. The entire surface of the cover will be a display as well. Maybe. Also flying cars and sexbots.

In the meantime they have not replaced paper books for me. It's a nice addition. Hurry up sexbots.

I've seen flying cars (look more like plane than car nevertheless...), sexbots are on the rise (3D porn is the beginning, with the support of that , and you are done).
But what about flexible paper-thin?

[flake]

This thread may just be the start of new possibilities! I read tech books too, and ereader is not adequate for this use, I agree. Maybe once the battles for 'bigger screen', 'faster processor', etc have been won, the technical market segment may get more attention.
May be somebody could start looking at how to e- flip pages :-).

May be somebody could split the screen in 2, and 1 part of the screen is the current page, and the other half is thumbnails of previous/next pages. Or, 'page flow', like iTunes album flow.

There is definitely a market for ereader with e-flip, if designed right. :-)

[unboggling]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

Hurry up sexbots.

Originally Posted by Huyggy

that

[jehane]

Originally Posted by Huyggy

If all the books/papers in the scientific fields have hypertext references, hypertext table of content, maybe my appreciation would change a little.

That's a problem with the publishers in your field, not ereaders. :P Seriously, I *have* used electronic scientific reference books and papers, and the ones that have hyperlinks and the ability to add your own bookmarks, highlights and annotations are fantastic. But the best thing about them is that I can access them easily - mostly I'm at a small branch office and currently I'm at a remote site so I don't have easy access to a good scientific library. Back in the day I used to ring the librarian at Head Office and asked them to photocopy papers out of journals or post me the books, but these days, particularly with journal articles, I can just go online and download them.

I think I'd still prefer to read them on my computer rather than my sony, but TBH I bought the sony specifically for leisure reading and it's not fancy. I have no idea whether the sony will handle hyperlinks - I've never tried, and since it's a 5" screen I don't plan to read too many scientific papers on it.

[unboggling]

There are thin, flexible keyboards now. I think thin flexible displays will be here in less than 5 years, and will get increasingly thinner and more flexible and more capable eventually including the processors and data storage sandwiched in nanomolecules within the thin, flexible material so that there will be no separate computers, displays, keyboards, mice, touchpads, etc. Not to mention that they'll be cheap and disposable eventually.