Category Archives: eReading, eBooks

eReading, eBooks reflects on the qualitative nature of reading on digital devices, the *experience* of eReading.

Gutenberg.org eBooks

ebooks, eReading

ebooks, eReading

02 Feb 09 Gutenberg.org eBooks

Probably about 80% of the over 1200 ebooks I have are from Gutenberg.org, from where I’ve been collecting books since at least about the early 1990s, mostly in ascii text format.

The Sony Reader handles Gutenberg files very well. Since I read a lot of poetry, I don’t even have to format them in any way, just load them on. Some of the prose, fiction, etc., word wraps weirdly, as you may be familiar with. I’ve never understood why all the computer people can’t get that fixed…. Anyway, if you copy and paste the book into a word processor and then save it as an RTF file, the generic format that all word processors have available, the Reader will handle them just fine. It’s an easy fix. There are several formats too that work well on different devices.

The frustration I’ve had with Gutenberg.org over the years is with the quality of the text. On a scholarly, editorial level, I don’t feel comfortable with their policy of sometimes using two or three sources to “produce” the “best” text. That leaves too much latitude, to say the least, for people with little or no literary or textual sophistication to “create” and misedit the classics and other books of essential importance. It seems to me too that it’s a problem that the academic community ought to confront and help educate the public about. Unless one believes it’s not important to have the book as the author wrote it, but a conflation….

Frederick Glaysher

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under eReading, eBooks

eReading Huckleberry Finn

ebooks, eReading

ebooks, eReading

February 1, 2009 eReading Huckleberry Finn

I have a Sony Reader PRS-505. In March of 2007, I saw one at Barnes & Noble on display and sat down and played with it for half an hour, and that was it. I had to get one. (I don’t have any affiliation with Sony or B&N.) It’s a very comfortable device to read books on. I found myself forgetting I was on an electronic thing, and was just drawn into reading one morning in my favorite chair by a sunny window….

New users might find it harder to make that transition, but I’ve been reading books for years on my Palm PDAs. Actually, I remember now that the first time, and only time, I’ve ever read Huckleberry Finn was on the first Palm I had, a much more primitive device than Sony’s Reader. That experience was much more frustrating for a number of reasons: a very small screen, colored green, and a very sloppy text from the University of Virginia’s early etext database. And yet, I knew a threshold had been crossed, one that made me think and look to the future….

Frederick Glaysher

Leave a Comment

Filed under eReading, eBooks

The Experience of eReading

ebooks, eReading

ebooks, eReading

January 30, 2009. The Experience of eReading

I’ve created this blog, eReading, now a Category on The Globe,  to reflect on the qualitative nature of reading on digital devices. This is something I’ve thought about for nearly a decade. I want to record my thoughts and chat with people who might similarly be interested in serious literary books, and what it’s like to read them digitally, if you will.

I’d be happy to hear from people and eReading aficionados, on all types of devices, e.g., Sony Reader, Kindle, Palm, Phones, etc.

I’ve read and *experienced* reading etext from various sources and in numerous formats for books, from Gutenberg.org, Archive.org, Google, and so forth.

Again, “eReading,” for me,  is about the *experience* of reading on electronic devices. Is the quality of the experience the same, different, richly imaginative and fulfilling, informative, as with a traditional book?

What do you like or prefer about eReading? Dislikes, difficulties? If the hardware is interfering in your reading, how would you like the devices improved?

Provocations:

Does eReading complement and augment the traditional book and library or replace them? What of the Luddite mentality that seems to be working against the acceptance and inclusion of eReading into the realm of legitimate ways of reading? Is that a tiresome question? Have things not moved already beyond that debate? It seems to me that eReading makes some very significant improvements on the experience of reading…. Form follows content, content follows form? I would agrue for a new synergy.

Several months ago I created a discussion group on LibraryThing, but no one there seemed interested in discussing the *experience* of reading, but rather the gadgets, which is fine to a degree but doesn’t really touch on, as I’ve tried to convey, what I’m actually trying to probe and understand more.

All points of view are invited: eReading

Frederick Glaysher

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under eReading, eBooks