6 ms·

> I often re-read or consult books (or chapters) I've read on a whim. If I had to e.g. take my library on vacations to do the same thing I can trivially do on a

> I often re-read or consult books (or chapters) I've read on a whim. If I had to e.g. take my library on vacations to do the same thing I can trivially do on a Kindle I'd need to travel with a minivan full of books. Isn't that a FOMO argument, though ? As a consumer the advantage of e-books are: ease of organization and ease of buying, no page flipping sounds in bed, ease of transportation. But what I really want ? A real, thick book, with something like 200-400 sheets made up of magical e-ink so I can have a physical map of the book I am reading.

cheschire 7y ago
Imagine a ribbed touch sensitive bezel on a regular single-screen e-reader. When you rub your thumb across it, it flips the pages in the reader by a proportional amount.
nirvdrum 7y ago
A multi-page e-ink book would be nice. I love my Kindle for certain types of reading, but when I read, I like to flip back to previous sections. Search doesn't work because I rarely know verbatim what I'm looking for or the search terms are flooded with answers from the entire book, when I really want it narrowed down to a particular area. With physical books, I just remember roughly how far into the book it was and can jump back there and start searching. I'd love to successfully replicate that with a Kindle.
- toast0 7y ago
  Can you use the table of contents on your kindle? It's not the same, of course, and some books don't have a usable chapter system (too many or too few), but if you've got an idea of where you want to go, it should get you close.
  - nirvdrum 7y ago
    Unfortunately, I really only know roughly how thick the stack of pages was. I realize it's an imprecise metric. And I might be able to convert to a rough percentage and figure out a page number from there. But, then the page turning is just slow enough to make rapid scanning like that annoying.
- Veedrac 7y ago
  KOReader for the Kobo has a skim feature which works OK for this purpose, though you're always going to run against framerate issues on these devices until CLEARink or such becomes widely available.
falcolas 7y ago
> A real, thick book, with something like 200-400 sheets made up of magical e-ink so I can have a physical map of the book I am reading. The value provided by a physical map of a book is knowing how far along you are in the book, yet that's also available in a visual form in an ebook as well. You can even riffle through pages on most e-readers as well, seeing a preview of the page as you move quickly forward or backwards. Aside from weight, what value is the physical map really providing?
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  > The value provided by a physical map of a book is knowing how far along you are in the book No, it provides more. Actually your brain maps physical properties of the book to actual content, creating an overlay map over the story or the content (and our brain is really good at mentally mapping things). This is that map that is being used to know where in the book a particular piece of information is. Reading on e-reader is more linear than reading a paper book. See: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-scr... https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.236/ https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.236/ and https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/19/readers-absorb-less-kindles-paper-study-plot-ereader-digitisation https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/19/readers-absorb... Besides, no e-reader today can let your riffle through pages as fast as paper book. When you are in a novel, or in a manual, you have some kinetic and touch feedback to build memories of where's what. The book becomes an extension (à la proprioception) with much less friction than an e-read for which you have to wait for visual feedback (screen refreshing). With paper books things are at the tip of your fingers. E-reader have more friction. That's a reason why I only read novels on e-reader and jot notes in a notepad for non-fiction books. If I had the budget I'd only have physical books.
  - falcolas 7y ago
    > your brain maps physical properties of the book to actual content Any resources detailing this? It's the first I've heard of it. > Besides, no e-reader today can let your riffle through pages as fast as paper book. True, though the iPad is actually somewhat faster than a physical book, in my experience. > you have to wait for visual feedback (screen refreshing). At least in my experience, the time required to flip a page is at least identical to (greater than, in most cases) that of a modern e-reader showing the next page. > With paper books things are at the tip of your fingers. > E-reader have more friction. I simply can't agree with this. A well indexed ebook is easy to follow cross references in (such as footnotes), you can do an actual search on the content, and the lack of weight is something that can't be understated. A specific example: I went through the "Physically Based Rendering" book a few years back. I simply can't understate how painful it was to deal with the physical book. It was the size of a large text book (it was a large textbook), heavy enough it never left my desk. More specifically, it was always flat on the desk, making it difficult to read. It also had glossy pages that, to this day, want to stick together (not to mention being challenging to write on). Finding content in it that wasn't a chapter title included going to a glossary with a ton of page numbers, and flipping back and forth constantly (see comment about sticky pages) to see if page N was the one I was looking for. There was no 'proprioception' between myself and the book, there was no convenience, there was only inconvenience. Even the authors recognized this, providing a digital copy of most of the code so you wouldn't spend all day typing code. An e-reader version of the book could only have provided a better experience.

cheschire 7y ago

Imagine a ribbed touch sensitive bezel on a regular single-screen e-reader. When you rub your thumb across it, it flips the pages in the reader by a proportional amount.

nirvdrum 7y ago

A multi-page e-ink book would be nice. I love my Kindle for certain types of reading, but when I read, I like to flip back to previous sections. Search doesn't work because I rarely know verbatim what I'm looking for or the search terms are flooded with answers from the entire book, when I really want it narrowed down to a particular area. With physical books, I just remember roughly how far into the book it was and can jump back there and start searching. I'd love to successfully replicate that with a Kindle.

toast0 7y ago
Can you use the table of contents on your kindle? It's not the same, of course, and some books don't have a usable chapter system (too many or too few), but if you've got an idea of where you want to go, it should get you close.
- nirvdrum 7y ago
  Unfortunately, I really only know roughly how thick the stack of pages was. I realize it's an imprecise metric. And I might be able to convert to a rough percentage and figure out a page number from there. But, then the page turning is just slow enough to make rapid scanning like that annoying.
Veedrac 7y ago
KOReader for the Kobo has a skim feature which works OK for this purpose, though you're always going to run against framerate issues on these devices until CLEARink or such becomes widely available.

falcolas 7y ago

> A real, thick book, with something like 200-400 sheets made up of magical e-ink so I can have a physical map of the book I am reading. The value provided by a physical map of a book is knowing how far along you are in the book, yet that's also available in a visual form in an ebook as well. You can even riffle through pages on most e-readers as well, seeing a preview of the page as you move quickly forward or backwards. Aside from weight, what value is the physical map really providing?

johnchristopher 7y ago
> The value provided by a physical map of a book is knowing how far along you are in the book No, it provides more. Actually your brain maps physical properties of the book to actual content, creating an overlay map over the story or the content (and our brain is really good at mentally mapping things). This is that map that is being used to know where in the book a particular piece of information is. Reading on e-reader is more linear than reading a paper book. See: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-scr... https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.236/ https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.236/ and https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/19/readers-absorb-less-kindles-paper-study-plot-ereader-digitisation https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/19/readers-absorb... Besides, no e-reader today can let your riffle through pages as fast as paper book. When you are in a novel, or in a manual, you have some kinetic and touch feedback to build memories of where's what. The book becomes an extension (à la proprioception) with much less friction than an e-read for which you have to wait for visual feedback (screen refreshing). With paper books things are at the tip of your fingers. E-reader have more friction. That's a reason why I only read novels on e-reader and jot notes in a notepad for non-fiction books. If I had the budget I'd only have physical books.
- falcolas 7y ago
  > your brain maps physical properties of the book to actual content Any resources detailing this? It's the first I've heard of it. > Besides, no e-reader today can let your riffle through pages as fast as paper book. True, though the iPad is actually somewhat faster than a physical book, in my experience. > you have to wait for visual feedback (screen refreshing). At least in my experience, the time required to flip a page is at least identical to (greater than, in most cases) that of a modern e-reader showing the next page. > With paper books things are at the tip of your fingers. > E-reader have more friction. I simply can't agree with this. A well indexed ebook is easy to follow cross references in (such as footnotes), you can do an actual search on the content, and the lack of weight is something that can't be understated. A specific example: I went through the "Physically Based Rendering" book a few years back. I simply can't understate how painful it was to deal with the physical book. It was the size of a large text book (it was a large textbook), heavy enough it never left my desk. More specifically, it was always flat on the desk, making it difficult to read. It also had glossy pages that, to this day, want to stick together (not to mention being challenging to write on). Finding content in it that wasn't a chapter title included going to a glossary with a ton of page numbers, and flipping back and forth constantly (see comment about sticky pages) to see if page N was the one I was looking for. There was no 'proprioception' between myself and the book, there was no convenience, there was only inconvenience. Even the authors recognized this, providing a digital copy of most of the code so you wouldn't spend all day typing code. An e-reader version of the book could only have provided a better experience.