6 ms·

A Kindle trick changes the reading experience

21 points by gabrielroth 18y ago

AndrewWarner 18y ago
A simple find feature -- which is what this article talks about -- isn't enough to crow about.
- mlinsey 18y ago
  It may not be a technically impressive feature for an e-reader, but if public shaming like this causes authors to adjust their writing style, that's pretty interesting. I'm not really sure if it will (do the kind of people who read these books really care about stuff like this?) but who knows?
  - PENIS 18y ago
    I think so.
- briansmith 18y ago
  Right now it is, since many of the competitors to the Kindle (including Sony Reader) do not have any search capability.
  - PENIS 18y ago
    Thats true.
- unalone 18y ago
  No, but the experience of beautiful digitized text is. The fact that I can carry a library around, for instance. Searching. Looking up words. I have Ulysses digitized and on my Kindle and it's a thrill to really get into Joyce's language. Much easier than with the physical copy I own.
  - PENIS 18y ago
    Yeah, that's awesome!
- gabrielroth 18y ago
  I think the point is that a feature that's technically trivial can have a profound effect when applied to an object like a novel, which has lacked that feature for its entire three-century existence.
biohacker42 18y ago
I've got a great secret trick for the astute kindle owner - read it on paper!
- unalone 18y ago
  I don't know how to say this entirely politely: where do you get off? The sheer hatred for this device staggers me. It's become a joke! People who've never used one call it ugly. They call it a waste. It's become a joke of the industry, and I have no clue why. It's selling well, isn't it? It's just selling to a niche audience of people who actually read things. So I guess the joke has to do with the implied functionality, like your wonderful joke implies. I am an astute reader. I own a Kindle to go with my miniature library. I enjoy cuddling up with my Kindle just as much as I would with any other book. The screen is gorgeous. The device is gorgeous. I've never understood the mockery. No, it doesn't feel "high tech" and gleaming, it feels very down-to-earth. It feels like a book ought to feel. Now, I'm the sort of person who likes Shakespeare. And it's much easier to have The Complete Shakespeare on a Kindle than it is to have it in a backpack. I also have The Complete Asimov, and I'm considering The Complete Sherlock Holmes. The Kindle got me into reading P. G. Wodehouse for the first time, because his stuff was free on Gutenberg. I managed to find a complete archive of Diana Wynne Jones stories: they're for teens rather than adults, but they're still very well-written and they're childhood favorites and I like that I can find them and read them when I couldn't purchase half of them physically on Amazon. When I got to a meet-up an hour early, I had my Kindle, and I could go and search for half a dozen novels and read excerpts from each one. It's like window shopping but you can do it anywhere. Not to mention the free wireless Internet I get everywhere, the NowNow asking feature (which I've used several times to get quick feedback on projects), and the music player, which I've loaded with Bach, and which isn't a brilliant player but which makes for pleasant background music while I read. I value my Kindle more than I value my iPod. So, you who would mock the Kindle, try planning out a 7-hour train ride when you read books often at the rate of one every 90 minutes. Try figuring out a better way to store 200 books in a dorm room without cluttering everything to hell. Try making a physical device that does as much, as unintrusively and as beautifully as the Kindle does. Then mock it. But I don't hear the Kindle users complaining, and isn't that the important thing? The fact that the people who actually use the Kindle enjoy their product a lot?
kqr2 18y ago
Imagine if the Kindle or other e-reader allowed plugins. Perhaps you could write a greasemonkey like script that automatically alters the reading experience for you. The reader could write a simple script to replace "heart in his mouth" with whatever metaphor he wanted.
- PENIS 18y ago
  I'd like that!
gravitycop 18y ago
"his heart in his mouth." [...] just how many times did Follett use that ONE metaphor in a single book? [...] And the answer is: 13. Actually 17, if you count the four instances of "her heart in her mouth." Searching at that book's Amazon Reader page, I counted 16 instances of hearts in mouths. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0451166892 http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0451166892 Maybe there were 2 instances on a single page.

21 points by gabrielroth 18y ago

AndrewWarner 18y ago

A simple find feature -- which is what this article talks about -- isn't enough to crow about.

mlinsey 18y ago
It may not be a technically impressive feature for an e-reader, but if public shaming like this causes authors to adjust their writing style, that's pretty interesting. I'm not really sure if it will (do the kind of people who read these books really care about stuff like this?) but who knows?
- PENIS 18y ago
  I think so.
briansmith 18y ago
Right now it is, since many of the competitors to the Kindle (including Sony Reader) do not have any search capability.
- PENIS 18y ago
  Thats true.
unalone 18y ago
No, but the experience of beautiful digitized text is. The fact that I can carry a library around, for instance. Searching. Looking up words. I have Ulysses digitized and on my Kindle and it's a thrill to really get into Joyce's language. Much easier than with the physical copy I own.
- PENIS 18y ago
  Yeah, that's awesome!
gabrielroth 18y ago
I think the point is that a feature that's technically trivial can have a profound effect when applied to an object like a novel, which has lacked that feature for its entire three-century existence.

biohacker42 18y ago

I've got a great secret trick for the astute kindle owner - read it on paper!

unalone 18y ago
I don't know how to say this entirely politely: where do you get off? The sheer hatred for this device staggers me. It's become a joke! People who've never used one call it ugly. They call it a waste. It's become a joke of the industry, and I have no clue why. It's selling well, isn't it? It's just selling to a niche audience of people who actually read things. So I guess the joke has to do with the implied functionality, like your wonderful joke implies. I am an astute reader. I own a Kindle to go with my miniature library. I enjoy cuddling up with my Kindle just as much as I would with any other book. The screen is gorgeous. The device is gorgeous. I've never understood the mockery. No, it doesn't feel "high tech" and gleaming, it feels very down-to-earth. It feels like a book ought to feel. Now, I'm the sort of person who likes Shakespeare. And it's much easier to have The Complete Shakespeare on a Kindle than it is to have it in a backpack. I also have The Complete Asimov, and I'm considering The Complete Sherlock Holmes. The Kindle got me into reading P. G. Wodehouse for the first time, because his stuff was free on Gutenberg. I managed to find a complete archive of Diana Wynne Jones stories: they're for teens rather than adults, but they're still very well-written and they're childhood favorites and I like that I can find them and read them when I couldn't purchase half of them physically on Amazon. When I got to a meet-up an hour early, I had my Kindle, and I could go and search for half a dozen novels and read excerpts from each one. It's like window shopping but you can do it anywhere. Not to mention the free wireless Internet I get everywhere, the NowNow asking feature (which I've used several times to get quick feedback on projects), and the music player, which I've loaded with Bach, and which isn't a brilliant player but which makes for pleasant background music while I read. I value my Kindle more than I value my iPod. So, you who would mock the Kindle, try planning out a 7-hour train ride when you read books often at the rate of one every 90 minutes. Try figuring out a better way to store 200 books in a dorm room without cluttering everything to hell. Try making a physical device that does as much, as unintrusively and as beautifully as the Kindle does. Then mock it. But I don't hear the Kindle users complaining, and isn't that the important thing? The fact that the people who actually use the Kindle enjoy their product a lot?

kqr2 18y ago

Imagine if the Kindle or other e-reader allowed plugins. Perhaps you could write a greasemonkey like script that automatically alters the reading experience for you. The reader could write a simple script to replace "heart in his mouth" with whatever metaphor he wanted.

PENIS 18y ago
I'd like that!

gravitycop 18y ago

"his heart in his mouth." [...] just how many times did Follett use that ONE metaphor in a single book? [...] And the answer is: 13. Actually 17, if you count the four instances of "her heart in her mouth." Searching at that book's Amazon Reader page, I counted 16 instances of hearts in mouths. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0451166892 http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0451166892 Maybe there were 2 instances on a single page.