eReading: An Explorative Rant

by Maria O’Toole

I should begin by saying that other than the negative impact it is having on print newspapers in our economy, I have no problem with online newspapers and magazines. Breaking stories are promptly updated and prominently placed, searching to find other articles you want to read is easy, and the articles are of a length that makes reading them on your computer screen very doable. Given my very accepting opinion of such online media, I focused my research for this assignment more on the e-Book side of things, with which I have infinitely less experience.

Before beginning this class, my main opinion about full text on the internet was, “Isn’t that great, the kids can print their own copies of the short story and feel free to annotate all over them.”Until visiting Literature Page and Web-Books, I had no idea that there were so many full text novels available online. It really was great to see so many universally taught titles accessible. I found Literature Page more enjoyable to use and also found it to have more classic titles available. I was viewing with my Honors Survey of American Literature class in mind, and there were still major holes: no Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Hemingway, or Faulkner, for instance. I pretty much ruled out the use of Web-Books when I realized that to read them online without downloading, you have to backtrack to the chapter menu page to move on in the book.

Literature Page has the texts formatted into “pages,” one of which fits easily within the realm of your computer screen – a nice feature. You can then easily use the arrow icons below to flip through to the next page. They do also have a chapter menu that you can access should you want to find a specific section of the book. The website also allows you to keep up to 10 books on your online “shelf” at a time, so that you can easily come back to them. In order to make the text more comfortably readable, you can select a serif or sans serif font in 5 different text sizes. The largest serif font seemed to offer the most book-like look, which was my preference. You can also change the color of the “page’s” background; color options range from white, to various shades of pale blue, to an overly vivid bright blue that left me wondering who would ever choose to read it that way. My only real issue with the site was that there was no way to make the book text take up the whole screen, and the side toolbar was very distracting to me. I did also realize that the format online creates too wide of an expanse of text. The words extend all the way across the page, which is hard to follow for long periods of time. Hard copy texts, of course, tend to be taller and less wide and/or they utilize multiple columns of text.

Could I read an entire book on the web? My answer is a pretty emphatic “no.” I have glasses for reading eye strain, and what really bothers me extended time in front of computer screen glare. It was very hard to follow the text across the page. But also, I don’t like to be chained to my computer. I like to move around wherever and however I wish while I’m reading, and it somehow just feels impersonal to not have something physically in your hand when reading a novel. I do also firmly believe that it would be much harder to remember on what page you had read something when reading in a digital format. There is a certain part of the brain that seems able to photograph text pages, allowing you to flip back to the spot you want easily.

As a teacher, I think the biggest advantage of full-text books being available online is that there is one less excuse why a student cannot do his/her reading. A book conveniently “forgotten” at school, can be easily found and read on the internet. I also think that the having the full text available is great for searching for particular quotations or vocabulary words in the text. And my original opinion that it is great for the kids to be able to print out the text and write notes all over it still holds. No, I would never ask them to print out the entire novel, but I could ask them to print a particular chapter and write annotations and reader response comments directly in the margins. I do not ever see myself asking my students to read an entire novel online. I think that the experience would ultimately be painful for them, and many of them find reading in general painful enough as it is.

eReaders, I am far less opposed to. I have very recently been having a major debate with myself about whether or not an eReader could be right for me. I love the idea of having so many books available in one compact device, but I do love the feel of crisp paper pages in my hand. I recently got an email from Barnes and Noble linking me to their page for their new eReader, the nook. The nook does not officially come out until next month, but preorder sales are taking off. I have to say when I took a look at the online features page, I was very impressed by what I saw and have found myself hinting to my husband that I might like a nook from Santa this year.

In thinking about how I would respond to a question or make a recommendation to a patron about eReaders, I decided that I probably did need a little more information, so I investigated three different readers produced by trusted companies: the Sony Reader Pocket Edition, the Amazon Kindle, and Barnes and Noble’s nook. My investigation only confirmed that the nook would be the right choice for me and for most people.

The nook has the exact same price point as the Kindle and the same or better features. The Amazon Kindle is negligibly thinner and lighter than the nook. Both have Vizplex screens with E Ink for easy, glare-less reading. But, the nook includes a touch screen as opposed to buttons. You can scroll through cover images of your books to make your selection. The nook’s screen is also full color. Both eReaders have 2GB of internal storage, which holds about 1500 books, but with the nook, you can easily add even more storage space with Micro SD cards. This can increase your digital library to up to 17500 titles (which I concede, is almost overwhelming). Both the Kindle and the nook, allow you to bookmark pages, highlight, and annotate in the margins (something the Sony Reader cannot do). With built-in dictionaries, you can also learn the definition of unknown words simply by hovering over them on either the Kindle or the nook. Both the Kindle and the nook allow you to download books via 3G wireless capabilities – no computer necessary. But the nook is also the first eReader that can use Wi-Fi. Both services allow you to sample books for free, but Barnes and Noble offers free reading of entire books within the confines of their store, 600,000 free titles, and over 1 million total titles from which to choice. This data makes Amazon’s 360,000 available books seem pretty measly. Barnes and Noble also allows you to share your purchased books with friends for up to two weeks, and they can be shared with another nooks, an iPhone, an iPod touch, a Mac, a PC, or a Blackberry. The Kindle is compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch only. The Kindle and the nook both hold MP3 files (in case you’re one of those very strange people who are able to listen to music and read simultaneously) and audio books, but the nook also lets you upload JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP files to create your own personalized screensavers. To me, it is clear that the nook gives you more bang for your buck when compared with the Kindle.

I would perhaps consider recommending the Sony Reader to a patron, however, depending on that person’s needs. The Sony Reader Pocket Edition is priced at a slightly more affordable $199.99 and could be right for someone who is a bit more of a minimalistic and does not care about all the bells and whistles of the nook. It has a five inch display screen (one inch smaller than those of the Kindle and the nook), and like its counterparts, has Vizplex and E Ink technology. You can purchase books from the Sony eBook store, use free public domain titles from Google, and download public library eholdings. But you do have to load digital texts onto the Reader via a USB computer connection, as the Sony Reader does not feature wireless. The Sony Reader Pocket Edition has storage space for a sparser book collection of 300 but does have an equivalent battery life to the Kindle and the nook.

Personally, I still think you get a lot more for only a little more money with the nook, and I will be continuing to ask for one from Santa. Incidentally, I think eReaders have a lot more promise for effective use over traditional bound texts in school than laptops.