Week 7: Print Only Please!

The topic of this week's blogging question overlaps my post from last week about interacting with 'pages' in the current digital era. For the most part, I read everything in print, spending hundreds of dollars a year (whoops) on printing all the academic articles, essays, secondary research for each of my courses. You might think this is silly, or that my carbon footprint is huge, but the truth is I can't entirely concentrate while reading on a screen. There is something about the lighting, the size of the font, and the scrolling motion which turns me off from the entire experience. This is definitely supported by the plethora of research articles I have encountered discussing screen/e-readers and attention span. I'm sure that to some extent these findings are influencing my subconscious, and weakening my ability become a better e-reader, but to be honest, I don't really want to develop these skills and here's why: 

There are a couple different ways I engage with my reading that affect my concentration. On the one hand there are times I'm reading to scan for something specific, in which case I flip through and color the sections with some awful neon high lighter. Other times, I'm skimming because I have too much to read and close reading would take too much time. In this case, I mark the reading with a post it note (date, class, week of the reading and topic) and archive them with the rest to return to at a later date. I agree that these two reading styles don't really require strong concentration and that e-reading would be suitable to search for key terms using the 'Find' function. However, I still find that my experience with this 'quick' reading style is much too airy and speedy on the computer. 

On the other hand, the times when I am deep reading (which is most of the time to be honest), I find myself working at an exponentially slower pace -- re-reading and kneading through various sections of the text. I also extensively annotate my readings, something I don't enjoy doing on the computer because it feels formal with all the grammar, punctuation and perfectly readable typed text. Most importantly I would like to stress again that I like to keep all my readings so that I can go back at a later date and reread, reuse for a relevant essay, or recommend them to a friend (which is quite often). 

All this aside, as I mentioned last week, I read the bulk of my world/political, weather, and (sometimes) gossip news on the computer. I don't ever use my phone or engage with any apps to read because I find the screen and text too small (my poor eyes). I do enjoy the interactive media such as a videos, image galleries, or hyperlinks available on e-articles, but this phenomenon that will always remain second to the print source. 

The other day I came across an article that discusses the environmental impact of a printed book vs. an e-reader and it definitely made me feel a bit better about my reading habits: