5 ms·

Personally I find that I just don't get as much out of digital books. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but the closest I can describe is that it feels like I'm

Personally I find that I just don't get as much out of digital books. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but the closest I can describe is that it feels like I'm looking through a window at a book rather than actually viewing it directly.

marvindanig 7y ago
Fair point. I agree that the incumbent digital avatar is more of a file and less of a book, a classic enterprise solution for a consumer category of products. And yes, experience of relaxed intake with page turns in between does open a portal to another dimension!
sl1ck731 7y ago
Honestly, and I dislike admitting it, but paper books instill the same feeling as any other "collection" hobby for me. I take more pride in reading them knowing that my bookshelf is growing.
eric_h 7y ago
I find retaining information in digital books much more difficult. I think the lack of a tactile third dimension when reading eliminates a search index in my memory and it really effects how I parse the book. I tried reading the most recent GoT book in digital form and I just could not keep track of everyone (admittedly it had been several years since I read the previous installment in dead tree form, so I didn't have a current index of all the characters fresh in my memory). I gave up about 1/4 of the way through and just watched the tv show :)
filoleg 7y ago
I found that for certain types of books, digital works fine, while for others it is a disaster. For novels, poems, and other non-textbook books without tons of graphics, ebooks are great. For textbooks or other materials where you are expected to flip back and forth through pages trying to digest the material, as well as for books with tons of graphs and diagrams, ebooks are indeed suboptimal. My personal rule is that I read most of the books in digital, and then buy a hard copy if I end up liking the book a lot. This way I don't have shelves filled with a ton of dead tree books that occupy precious space in my dwelling, I have all the books I care and love in a physical format that will never go away or get DRMd, and the authors (of the books I ended up liking) get rewarded more than if I just bought a single digital or a physical copy. P.S. Same for me with music. Listening to a ton of stuff in digital, buying vinyls and concert tickets for artists I end up liking a lot.
- marvindanig 7y ago
  Any kind of book is possible on web. Here's a photobook (only graphics) by Satyendra Sharma, for example: https://bubblin.io/cover/ladakh-by-satie-sharma#frontmatter https://bubblin.io/cover/ladakh-by-satie-sharma#frontmatter Disclosure: I'm the developer behind the project.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    It's the interface and interaction of physical books which is lost. I can keep my hand between two sections and flip between them, insert colored post-its, or bokmarks or index cards. Dog-ear pages, make marginal notes, star, underline, or (shudder)highlight. The one thing missing is full-text search, though a good index is a 90% solution (and so: not optional). Text and other element placement is static, so spatial memory works. Fluid layout is great for screens, but lousy for recall. And the interface is consistent across books, authors, publishers, and centuries. Whilst, yes, various ebook formats offer facsimiles of many of these features, they are just that, and mediated to bot. Want to highlight? Better hope that's a rendered or OCRd (and reliably) PDF, or you're SooL. Source; A tablet with over 5,000 epub-type docs, of various sources and provenance, from single page to multi-volume book length. I appreciate the weight and space savings, but miss much physical books deliver.
    - marvindanig 7y ago
      > Text and other element placement is static, so spatial memory works. Exactly! This results in _referential accessibility_ [1]. You might want to look up for the Superbook format [2] perhaps? Though not everything physics is required to be solved with it. [1] https://bubblin.io/blog/referential-accessibility https://bubblin.io/blog/referential-accessibility Disclosure: I'm its creator.
      - dredmorbius 7y ago
        No, spatial. I remember roughly how far into a book, or chapter, passages are. Where on a page, or with relstion to other elements, how or where a line breaks (especially if that's awkward). Where the book itself lives within my collection. Where I was when first reading (or later re-reading) it. Etc., etc. Spatial associations. Consistent pagination is useful, but it's a small subset of the whole.
jimmaswell 7y ago
That's just familiarity. You could get used to digital books if you had to.

marvindanig 7y ago

Fair point. I agree that the incumbent digital avatar is more of a file and less of a book, a classic enterprise solution for a consumer category of products. And yes, experience of relaxed intake with page turns in between does open a portal to another dimension!

sl1ck731 7y ago

Honestly, and I dislike admitting it, but paper books instill the same feeling as any other "collection" hobby for me. I take more pride in reading them knowing that my bookshelf is growing.

eric_h 7y ago

I find retaining information in digital books much more difficult. I think the lack of a tactile third dimension when reading eliminates a search index in my memory and it really effects how I parse the book. I tried reading the most recent GoT book in digital form and I just could not keep track of everyone (admittedly it had been several years since I read the previous installment in dead tree form, so I didn't have a current index of all the characters fresh in my memory). I gave up about 1/4 of the way through and just watched the tv show :)

filoleg 7y ago

I found that for certain types of books, digital works fine, while for others it is a disaster. For novels, poems, and other non-textbook books without tons of graphics, ebooks are great. For textbooks or other materials where you are expected to flip back and forth through pages trying to digest the material, as well as for books with tons of graphs and diagrams, ebooks are indeed suboptimal. My personal rule is that I read most of the books in digital, and then buy a hard copy if I end up liking the book a lot. This way I don't have shelves filled with a ton of dead tree books that occupy precious space in my dwelling, I have all the books I care and love in a physical format that will never go away or get DRMd, and the authors (of the books I ended up liking) get rewarded more than if I just bought a single digital or a physical copy. P.S. Same for me with music. Listening to a ton of stuff in digital, buying vinyls and concert tickets for artists I end up liking a lot.

marvindanig 7y ago
Any kind of book is possible on web. Here's a photobook (only graphics) by Satyendra Sharma, for example: https://bubblin.io/cover/ladakh-by-satie-sharma#frontmatter https://bubblin.io/cover/ladakh-by-satie-sharma#frontmatter Disclosure: I'm the developer behind the project.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  It's the interface and interaction of physical books which is lost. I can keep my hand between two sections and flip between them, insert colored post-its, or bokmarks or index cards. Dog-ear pages, make marginal notes, star, underline, or (shudder)highlight. The one thing missing is full-text search, though a good index is a 90% solution (and so: not optional). Text and other element placement is static, so spatial memory works. Fluid layout is great for screens, but lousy for recall. And the interface is consistent across books, authors, publishers, and centuries. Whilst, yes, various ebook formats offer facsimiles of many of these features, they are just that, and mediated to bot. Want to highlight? Better hope that's a rendered or OCRd (and reliably) PDF, or you're SooL. Source; A tablet with over 5,000 epub-type docs, of various sources and provenance, from single page to multi-volume book length. I appreciate the weight and space savings, but miss much physical books deliver.
  - marvindanig 7y ago
    > Text and other element placement is static, so spatial memory works. Exactly! This results in _referential accessibility_ [1]. You might want to look up for the Superbook format [2] perhaps? Though not everything physics is required to be solved with it. [1] https://bubblin.io/blog/referential-accessibility https://bubblin.io/blog/referential-accessibility Disclosure: I'm its creator.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      No, spatial. I remember roughly how far into a book, or chapter, passages are. Where on a page, or with relstion to other elements, how or where a line breaks (especially if that's awkward). Where the book itself lives within my collection. Where I was when first reading (or later re-reading) it. Etc., etc. Spatial associations. Consistent pagination is useful, but it's a small subset of the whole.

jimmaswell 7y ago

That's just familiarity. You could get used to digital books if you had to.