E-readers

(I wrote this back in September but I haven't changed my opinion - F)

E-readers

Popular historian Lisa Jardine announced on Radio 4 that she was a convert to e-books, despite her previous admiration for nicely packaged conventional books (hardbacks presumably). The book that converted her was Blair’s memoirs.

I don’t have an e-reader; I usually carry a paperback for journeys. If I’m proof-reading, reading onscreen has its uses (Find and Replace) but it’s hard on the eyes if done for long. I also spot many more errors when I’m reading the paper printout and my brain processes the information better so I spot duplication and inconsistencies I missed in my shallower reading on screen.

BUT I’ve got a Blackberry, which came free with a Virgin package and yes, you can read books on it. Scrolling past all the romance and teen vampire stuff, I headed for Classics. “A Tale of Two Cities” was my first choice, found it quite impossible; too much thinking and understanding involved, and I like to know where Dickens is heading before embarking on one of his long paragraphs. I next tried Jack London’s “White Fang” which I'm ashamed to say I hadn't read before. I’m finding it perfectly readable even on a small screen - simple phrasing, short sentences, clear narrative. Whether I could keep it up for long, I don't know. But I was recently away for the weekend and had forgotten my book. The only even slightly readable (by me) books available were a Catherine Cookson and a 1957 Mills and Boon, and in those circumstances I would have resorted to my on-screen Jack London. (As it was I watched TV, which I rarely do otherwise.)

So is the answer that simple language works OK on an e-reader but complex stuff doesn’t? I don’t plan to read Blair’s oeuvre but I doubt he’s especially profound; full of cliches seems to be the usual view. There’s been a lot of research showing that the more complex and engaging the book you are reading, the more parts of your brain light up. Possibly e-readers are only suitable for books that are only meant to light up a small bit of your brain?

I’d be interested to hear other people’s experiences of reading on e-readers.

Two more things: I’m used to flipping back to check earlier passages, first appearance of a character, etc, and I generally know it was two-thirds of the way down a left-hand page or whatever. I don’t think I could do that on an e-book, and “find” isn’t going to work unless a name is given on all occasions.

The other thing is that on considering what I’d read in “White Fang” (two men travelling with a dead man in a coffin in a frozen landscape, short days & long nights when the wolves close in, another dog vanishing every night), I realised I’d understood it and been interested but I hadn’t reacted emotionally. Wouldn’t I have reacted more if I’d read it on paper? I plan to do that and find out!

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Yes, I found it a totally different experience reading the same words in a book - I'd lost the rhythm and repetition and atmosphere of it on the small screen. When I'm reading a book, I hear the words aloud in my head and visualise what I'm reading. I hadn't even noticed the repetition of "long and narrow oblong box" and I hadn't visualised the scene. In fact I suspected I had been reading a severely abridged version and went back to check! (But it wasn't). So, for me, reading on a Blackberry is better than nothing, but it's pallid in comparison with reading a book.

I'm not going to buy an e-reader just to find out if I can range ahead on them, the way I can on a book, and take in a lot of words in general while processing the ones I'm reading, but I'd like to know what other people have found. - Felicity