I'm not trying to become a spokesperson for the Kindle, but it does change the reading experience.
One of the Kindle's features is that it allows you to highlight text or add notes to it. You can also share your highlighted text on Facebook or Twitter. (Edited to add: the book is automatically cited.) And if you're reading a book that other people have shared highlights from, you can see those as well. (You can turn public highlights off if they distract you.) What I like about the public highlights is that they make me feel like part of a community reading a book.
(I don't interact with a lot of SF readers in my daily life, and I don't belong to any SF book clubs. There are probably forums out there where I could discuss my reading, but as a writer, I'm not comfortable posting about other writers' books. If I say anything negative, it could come back to haunt me.)
I also like sharing my highlights on Facebook. I'm currently rereading my beloved Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig on Kindle, so if you're friends with me on Facebook, expect to see a lot of passages from that book popping up on my profile over the next few days.
Do you mark up your paper books? I generally don't, but ZMM is the exception for me. Do you like the idea of sharing your favorite passages with others? If so, would you do it for fun or publicity?
Hiya
ReplyDeleteI have a Kindle, and have grown to really like it, but I didn't know about that highlighting ability. How cool is that? Yes, I mark up my paper books, particularly those that I use to teach freshman lit: Candide by Voltaire, The Seagull by Chekov, 1984 by Orwell.
One thing I like to do with Kindle, is to sample lots of stuff, rather than read through any one text. I've also uploaded my friends' manuscripts. For that, the highlighting aspect would be quite useful.
Cheers!
Hi Catherine,
ReplyDeleteI generally don't mark up my paperbacks, but when I was in school, I marked up my textbooks/readers. Maybe someday ereaders will be standard, and students will be able to share their highlights with each other.
Marking books is like committing sacrilege.
ReplyDeleteNever, ever do I write in a book. But I do seed it with an assortment of paper slivers and post it notes so I can go back to that spot.
I like that you can highlight on the Kindle. That would be a huge selling point for me.
I don't mark up paper books, but I could see how that would be handy on the Kindle. I've never used mine in that way.
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