How we read these days
I wanted to read the latest Stephen King novel, Joyland, but hesitated because it was only available in paperback. It's been a long time since I read a non-electronic book and I wasn't sure if I'd still like it. I went ahead because I really wanted to read the book.
There are pros and cons, but mostly cons, of reading books on paper:
1. You have to re-orient the book as you shift from left page to right page.
2. Flipping pages is a more involved process.
3. I keep looking for the clock. Paper books don't have them.
4. Paper books are more bulky than electronic ones which just take up a bit of memory in my iPad which I'm generally carrying with me anyway.
5. What if I want to look something up? On my iPad (which is where I read my electronic books, even though I have a Kindle) I can quickly find something on the web. Or if there's a word I'd like to see defined, I just click and hold and am offered a chance to get a dictionary definition.
6. An advantage of reading a paper book -- you can feel how far into the book you are. I've had endings of books sneak up on me in electronic books.
Reading web pages could be improved too:
The way we read on the web, and on Kindle, is still fairly bound to the model of the printed page. Wouldn't it be cool if the computer could track your eye, and scroll the text so the last thing you read is always in the center of the page. Pages could be smaller. And if you take your eye off the page for a second, to grab your coffee, for example, you wouldn't have to devise tricks for remembering where on the page you were. (I generally select a bit of text at the point where I want to pick up.)
This idea would make reading better on small devices like a phone. It would take a bit of trial and error to get it right, but in the end I think there is a different electronic reading experience that we haven't seen yet.