Author Stephen King with a Kindle 2 e-reader. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters
Reading maketh a full man, said Francis Bacon.
But he hadn't tried it on a mobile. I have done a lot of digital reading, including an entire novel on a laptop - an excruciating experience that could put you off books for life. I have read parts of books on e-readers (Sony, Kindle etc), which shattered my prejudices about the unique nature of the book - proving that it is not books that count, but the content. I have read parts of books on mobiles - including the iCue, which hurls words at you one by one - but never a book all through.
Until last week, when I forced myself to read our book club's choice (Cormac McCarthy's The Road) on an iPod Touch.
Finding a copy wasn't easy among numerous iPhone/Touch applications that can download books from the internet. Google's wonderful book search, with more than half a million titles (mainly free and out of copyright) didn't stock it and the highly popular Stanza kept refusing me entry. I bought it from Barnes & Noble at $9.95 (£6.80) - pricier than as a proper book from Amazon for $7.99.
I opted for 21 lines to a page - which can be changed to suit your eyes - giving about seven words on each line. It was a drag not being able to skim across pages as you can with a "real" book, but - dare I say it - in key ways it was a much more efficient way of reading. You can hold it with one hand, using a thumb to turn pages while using the other to drink coffee, eat, or write notes. You can read on a train, an escalator, in fading light - even in a bus queue.
You can check words in its dictionary or make notes and it remembers where you last finished. Reading is time-shifted from when you happen to have a book to when you happen to want to read, as it can hold hundreds of titles.
When Google has scanned the world's books - all accessible from a mobile - why would research students need a library? They could work from a cafe, reading with one hand and taking notes with the other.
It even proved comfortable reading in bed. You don't need to light up the whole room just for the small area of a book. The backlit screen does that for you and at night you can reduce brightness, thereby cutting your carbon footprint further. But the backlit screen is also the bane. Apart from using up power, a background light makes reading less appealing than a real book or the new ebooks that use static "e-ink", which mimic the actual experience of reading type on paper, using up energy only when a page is turned.
It even proved comfortable reading in bed. You don't need to light up the whole room just for the small area of a book. The backlit screen does that for you and at night you can reduce brightness, thereby cutting your carbon footprint further. But the backlit screen is also the bane. Apart from using up power, a background light makes reading less appealing than a real book or the new ebooks that use static "e-ink", which mimic the actual experience of reading type on paper, using up energy only when a page is turned.
Read the rest here.
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