Reading Jennifer Homans’ Apollo’s Angels on the kindle for iPad.
Not enjoying the reading as much as I thought I would.
Woah, I mean, not like that, I Love the actual book! It’s fantastic! Love!
Just not loving the kindle experience.
It’s just that-
Ok-
When I read nonfiction I like to look at all the pictures first.
All of ‘em! Flip through and look at them all right away!
And when I reach a boring part, I like to flip to the pictures again. And then go back and keep reading.
And anytime they mention any person or location in any picture, I want to flip to the picture and have a good long stare.
And heres the thing- I had no idea I was such a picture-heavy reader until I caught myself trying to flip phantom pages along the edge of my iPad.
Hmmm. Things I learned today.
Also, I like to have a sense of how many pages remain. Two inches of pages? Great! Sally-forth, tally-Ho! A sixteenth-inch of pages? Time to read a little more slowly, conserve the experience. I like to pace myself.
Maybe there’s some feature I could turn on that would say I’m on page 64/357 or whatever.
Maybe.
See! I don’t even know how many pages the book is! All I know is I picked it up in a bookstore once and it was about 2 1/4″!
In kindle’s favor, the miser in me is thrilled at having spent ten buckaroos as opposed to fourty.
But the rest of me feels bummed every time my thumb heads over to the side to start flipping.
Also, cant read it in the bathtub.
Ladies, you feel me, right? Not being able to read your new ballet book in the tub is a Big Ol’ Bummer, right?
Can I get a Whut-Whut, or what?
Definitely with you on flicking back & forth to pictures. Sometimes, when I’ve read a book before and I can’t quite remember the bit of information I want, I read the picture captions – it’s usually in there! Picture captions are so useful!
So I’m reading “White Swan, Black Swan” by Adrienne Sharp using B&N’s Nook software. I actually have a Nook, but that’s beside the point – I usually read this series of vignettes while riding the subway home from work or out to wherever on my phone – and it is /way convenient./ I tend to do most of my reading on the go, and the phone is always with me. Fitting in 20-45 minutes of reading time on a long, crowded train ride is essential.
I have a dancer’s exercise book that wouldn’t be as enjoyable on a smaller screen, because the images are so important and they’re too small even on the Nook, so I completely agree with you.
Completely with you on the picture flipping! But also, a huge tome can be daunting – I got it for Christmas and haven’t picked it up yet….
YES! I am having the same problem with not only the pictures but also the footnotes in Apollo’s Angels, and I share your “how much is left?” frustration as well. Kindle practically requires one to read straight through from start to finish. But for research (I study 18th-century British lit.) I often want to read just one chapter of a book or look up a particular quotation that I’ve seen elsewhere. It’s really hard to do those things on Kindle, which is why I use mine exclusively for pleasure reading.
Come to think of it, I did not consciously realize that I picture-flip with nonfiction books till you mentioned it, but I got Stella Tilyard’s Aristocrats from the library last week and looked at all the pictures as soon as the book landed in my hands! It’s a sickness.
Awesome, you guys. So glad to not be alone here.
I hope you’ll do a review of Apollo’s Angels when you’re done reading it! My dad (he’s The Best) bought it for me for Christmas, though I am only to chapter three right now I think.