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B. wrote an article for the March Mythprint discussing what it's like to use an e-reader, and including comments from various people, using various different models, from a discussion on the MythSoc groups list.
She also mentions: "I let my husband try it, and he liked being able to search out a phrase in the book. (This came in handy when he was in a panel on a science fiction convention discussing the book.)"
This is true. During the Potlatch panel discussing Earth Abides, I had both my hard copy and the e-reader open to the text, and a couple times during the panel when someone remembered a passage but not its location, I was able to look it up on the e-reader and find it. That was convenient. Then, from the page number on the e-reader's display, I could calculate its rough location in the (differently paginated) hard copy, find the passage, and hand that copy to the person.
I did my final pre-con re-reading of the book on the e-reader, because I wanted to try out the device, not just to hold it in my hands and admire it for a minute, but to really use it under combat conditions, and on this occasion in particular because re-reading a novel I already know well is the circumstance under which I think it'd be easiest.
The result was that I found it fairly palatable, but I'm still not sold; it's not going to become my device of choice any time soon. There were a number of things that were not fatal, but annoyances I'd have to get used to.
1) I'm a context reader. I need to see a lot of words around me besides the ones I'm reading at the moment, and to flip back and forth among pages easily. The e-reader is slow and clumsy about flipping pages, and even with smallish print the number of words per page is fewer than I'd like. (One reason re-reading favorite novels is easiest: I already know what the words say, so I need less context.)
2) In circumstances when I'm being interrupted frequently, it's hard to know when to put the e-reader in standby mode. I was helping run a convention. I might think I'm going to return in just a minute, but not get back to it for hours.
3) Somewhat surprisingly, I found it deeply disconcerting not to know where I was in the book, even one I'd read before. Yes, the e-reader displays that you're on page N out of Y, but that just tells you where you are. You don't know it, in the kinesthetic sense you do with hard-copy books. I suppose you don't really need that, and I might get used to doing without it, but it'd be a wrench.
If I had an e-reader, the first thing I'd put on it would be the complete comic novels of Donald Westlake, since they're my first choice when I just want something old and familiar for casual comfort reading. That's assuming they're all for sale at a reasonable price in this format. But it wouldn't save space on my shelves, for, unlike the Jane Austen novels (which I'd also want), if something went wrong with the e-reader, finding replacement hard copies of the Westlakes would not always be easy, and I wouldn't want to take the risk of not having them.
She also mentions: "I let my husband try it, and he liked being able to search out a phrase in the book. (This came in handy when he was in a panel on a science fiction convention discussing the book.)"
This is true. During the Potlatch panel discussing Earth Abides, I had both my hard copy and the e-reader open to the text, and a couple times during the panel when someone remembered a passage but not its location, I was able to look it up on the e-reader and find it. That was convenient. Then, from the page number on the e-reader's display, I could calculate its rough location in the (differently paginated) hard copy, find the passage, and hand that copy to the person.
I did my final pre-con re-reading of the book on the e-reader, because I wanted to try out the device, not just to hold it in my hands and admire it for a minute, but to really use it under combat conditions, and on this occasion in particular because re-reading a novel I already know well is the circumstance under which I think it'd be easiest.
The result was that I found it fairly palatable, but I'm still not sold; it's not going to become my device of choice any time soon. There were a number of things that were not fatal, but annoyances I'd have to get used to.
1) I'm a context reader. I need to see a lot of words around me besides the ones I'm reading at the moment, and to flip back and forth among pages easily. The e-reader is slow and clumsy about flipping pages, and even with smallish print the number of words per page is fewer than I'd like. (One reason re-reading favorite novels is easiest: I already know what the words say, so I need less context.)
2) In circumstances when I'm being interrupted frequently, it's hard to know when to put the e-reader in standby mode. I was helping run a convention. I might think I'm going to return in just a minute, but not get back to it for hours.
3) Somewhat surprisingly, I found it deeply disconcerting not to know where I was in the book, even one I'd read before. Yes, the e-reader displays that you're on page N out of Y, but that just tells you where you are. You don't know it, in the kinesthetic sense you do with hard-copy books. I suppose you don't really need that, and I might get used to doing without it, but it'd be a wrench.
If I had an e-reader, the first thing I'd put on it would be the complete comic novels of Donald Westlake, since they're my first choice when I just want something old and familiar for casual comfort reading. That's assuming they're all for sale at a reasonable price in this format. But it wouldn't save space on my shelves, for, unlike the Jane Austen novels (which I'd also want), if something went wrong with the e-reader, finding replacement hard copies of the Westlakes would not always be easy, and I wouldn't want to take the risk of not having them.
