Jackson Ossea Usually Reads E-Books, But Sometimes He Chooses Print

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           As I’ve mentioned before, I used to be something of a Luddite when it came to reading off of a screen. Throughout my undergrad, I bit the bullet and read off of my laptop or any other screen when I had to but I always considered it a chore when compared to reading the print book or journal that I could hold in my hand. Flipping the physical page had seemed more appropriate than scrolling down or tapping the screen and watch a new one simply appear where the previous one had been seconds before.

            Even now that I’ve had my e-reader for over a year, I haven’t abandoned the printed page entirely. The method I have for deciding which format to use for reading is, regrettably, dependent on convenience. The majority of the books I read for leisure come from the Toronto Public Library’s (TPL) catalogue so I’ve learned to take advantage of their electronic materials available in the catalogue.

Of course, due digital rights issues, it is currently impossible for TPL to obtain multiple digital copies of the print books in their collection. Thus, as disappointingly simple as it sounds, most of my decision making regarding text or hypertext is little more than a matter of availability. For leisure, the e-book is still my go-to format. 

But there is an additional factor that pertains to the decision. Last week, I talked about how hyperlinks have been changing the way we absorb books, the research which led to the final product. In my experience with e-books, the most frustrating part of it has been trying to use footnotes. Depending on which font the reader decides, it can be tedious for a reader to hit the same number repeatedly and for the machine to then perform sixty-two different functions except for the one you are trying to command it to do.

I don’t often encounter this problem with a print book. When reading an academic text – such as Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth – work that insists that the reader looks at the author’s notes, the digital e-book has yet to be a sufficient replacement. Perhaps it’s a usability issue with the way current e-readers, but the solutions with which my Kobo uses for footnotes and other the classic case of fixing something which isn’t broken. Like the book itself, this process has survived and outlived most of the ways which have tried to replace it.

None of the decisions I described are the objectively correct way of going about it. They all come from personal bias and experience. They are true enough for me and I haven’t found a persuasive enough reason to change.