Friday, March 23, 2012

Not yet kindled...

Joanna Trollope, chair of this year's Orange Prize, has said that she found reading all the books on her Kindle or iPad a most unsatisfactory experience:
The machines homogenised everything. No matter how striking the prose, the little grey screen subdued everything to sameness... The sheer heft of a book in your hand ... is not only pleasurable but informative. You can tell a great deal just by the look and the feel. (Guardian - can't find a link, I'm afraid)
I've so often said that it's the words that matter, not the trappings with which they're conveyed, but now I'm thinking I agree with Trollope about the Kindle. I got mine for Christmas but, although I've done a fair bit of reading to say that I've also been writing hard, I can't say I've used it much.

I must say I had a bad experience to begin with: I downloaded a PDF I needed for research, and it was hopeless: when the screen showed the whole page, the print was impossibly tiny, and zooming in gave me a frustrating section of a page only, whereas if there was one thing I needed to do with this document, which was the report of a tribunal, it was scan whole pages and skip. I ended up printing out the whole hundred A4 pages, which gave me the chance physically to divide it all up, and put together the sections I really needed, and mark bits with different coloured highlighters according to order of importance. Well, that was a PDF, but then when I came to download a novel next, I discovered that that ability to skip back and forth is crucial to my reading of novels, and it wasn't so easy on a Kindle. Get to a point in a novel which refers you back to an earlier moment which you then want to glance at again quickly, and with a paper book you can usually do it in an instant by remembering how far the book was physically open at the time. Try that on a Kindle, and you're pressing one button after another, and your reading experience is suspended and clotted... And I know some people think it's sacrilege, but I like to scribble copious notes in the margins at top speed...

Maybe I'm just not used to it yet, and maybe I'd be thinking they weren't problems by now if most books since Christmas hadn't however presented themselves to me in print form. I've been sent several print novels for review and comment (and offered a sackful more). I read two books for my reading group, but I had both on my shelves already - and only one of them was available on Kindle in any case. I've read a beautifully produced new hardback - just the opposite of an ebook, with its carefully appropriate artwork, and its creamy pages with good black print so easy on the eye - and I've since been sent the paperback edition. I've been working on proposals for drama adaptations of novels: only one of those books was available on Kindle, and I already had a copy of its print edition. As for those I didn't have, I was back in that old sweet-smelling world of the second-hand bookstore, and the joy of the cover artwork of earlier eras.

On the whole, I can say that the Kindle simply hasn't yet entered my life. However, as Joanna Trollope concedes, 'A Kindle is a brilliant tool, a clever adjunct to reading on the move.' I'm going away at Easter, and I've downloaded a novel ready. We'll see...

6 comments:

A. J. Ashworth said...

Great piece, Elizabeth. I can't bring myself to buy a Kindle - I have no desire for one at all really. I like the fact that a book feels like a living thing. Its pages curl, its spine starts acting up, it ages, perhaps its pages get age spots after time - the world is affecting it in the same way it affects us. Physical books are also sites of protest - we can burn them or ban them if we want (not that I ever would), but they do inspire emotion. I imagine reading on a Kindle would be as you and Trollope describe - kind of empty and emotionless, bland. When the robots take over the world I'm sure they'll love them but I'm not sure they'll ever be for me.

nmj said...

There *is* certainly something sterile about reading on a Kindle, I got one for Christmas too (unsolicited!), and I keep almost forgetting I've got one (though I downloaded a friend's new novel - published as an ebook - this week and loved it, once you are drawn in, you kind of forget the format). But ebooks are just not as seductive on your bedside table, no way.

Still, I am trying hard to embrace the concept of 'both' rather than either/or. I do miss being able to flick back and forth, it is so clunky with the Kindle, I've just learned how to make 'notes', it still feels clumsy though. When I see people with a Kindle on the bus, it feels a bit alien, and I have rarely taken mine outside. But I can't deny I am also pleased people can read my own ebook, though it took some getting used to - it didn't feel like they were reading the book I wrote.

You might like this link to a wee film on traditional printing: http://vimeo.com/38681202

Makes you want to throw your Kindle away!

Bob Jacobs said...

I love my Kindle. I don't use it to read PDFs, none of the novels or anthologies I've bought are in that format. With Kindle format books I can change the font size to suit my preference and the text wraps appropriately.

Unlike yourself I don't skip back and forth when reading a novel, so that's not a problem for me.

The convenience of owning a book seconds after ordering it from Amazon is brilliant. Some authors have already benefited from this, where I've bought their books because it was so easy, and may not have done so otherwise. Others have missed out because their books weren't available in Kindle and I don't want to order paper versions (I looked for Too Many Magpies in Kindle format recently but it's not available, so I didn't purchase).

As much as I've always loved paper books, and still do, for me they're a thing of the past. I have a bunch of them waiting to be read, which I'll get through eventually, but I don't plan to buy them in future.

Dora Dee said...

My son bought me a Nook for Christmas and was excited to have it thinking I'd be able to read as many books as I'd want without lugging them on the bus, etc., but so far I've only read one book. I'm not loving it as much as I thought. I too miss holding a book in my hand and having the ability to go back and forth easily without bookmarking, etc. I don't think publishers will ever stop selling regular books. I think they need to sell both though. I would rather spend twenty dollars on a book and get a hard copy or wait for a discount than pay thirteen dollars of more on an ebook! So far all of the books I've downloaded are free classics or because they were a lot cheaper than the hardcover book. I haven't even ventured yet into the land of the ninety-nine cents! PDF files are atrocious as well. Most of the reading I do these days is on my Blackberry - short stories, blogs, twitter, etc. I'm too busy working on my own work unfortunately and don't really have too much time to do much book reading.

nmj said...

... oops, I forgot to say I think the instant gratification of owning a novel is quite addictive/delicious and I have downloaded many samples, still to be read. This is a definite plus of Kindle.

And, yes, PDFs are horrible, unreadable!

Elizabeth Baines said...

Thanks you all for your comments. I must say I have no problem with the greyness of the format (as Trollope does) in that many paperbacks are in fact pretty hard to read (light print on grey paper, spines that don't open properly etc.) And, you're right, Nasim, that once you are really involved you hardly notice the format anyway (apart, for me, from the problem of not being able to skip easily). Plus, I think that some of the problems of clunky time-consuming buttons will be resolved or at least improved on with the next generation of touch-screen Kindles. And I must agree, as I said in my post after Christmas, that that ability to get a book in an instant is unbeatable. As I also said in that post I thought that that would definitely affect whether or not people converted to Kindles would bother at all with books not on Kindle, and worried that my own books, which aren't on Kindle would lose out. I am of course gutted to have been proved right by you, Bob! My publisher tells me that all their books, including mine, will eventually be on Kindle, but they haven't said when, I'm afraid, and although they concede that this is the way the industry is going, they aren't too happy about it, as Amazon have pushed the price of ebooks down so low publishers just can't charge enough to make their books viable.

Here's the link to my earlier post:
http://fictionbitch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/ebooks-and-slog-of-publishing.html