I've been reading a rather difficult book in my iPad using the Kindle software.  I have to give these technologies credit for helping me get through a book which I would otherwise put aside by now, although not for lack of interest, but from fatigue.

I've been reading up on neuroscience, not the easiest of subjects. So far, I had read only paper versions of these books but I've been reading the latest one, Affective Neuroscience by Jaak Parksepp as a Kindle ebook on my iPad.  What a difference!

Warning: if you are a paper book lover, don't read this post.  It will ruin your day.

It Made Me Do It

In fact, I bought the iPad because of this book. I got the book after listening to a Brain Science Podcast with the author, Jaak Parksepp. Most of the book reviewed in that podcast are pretty accessible to a general audience  (i.e., me).  Kindly enough, the host, Dr Gene Campbell warned that this book was "more technical" than the others, but I went ahead and got it anyway.  In fact, the promise of it being a challenge made it more interesting.  However, when I first opened it, my heart sunk.

The book is big and heavy and is laid out in two columns, with tiny text.  It has copious notes and three appendices.  In other words, it promised to be a long and slow read.

Twenty pages into it, I was ready to give up.  There was no comfortable way to hold the thing for long.  The tiny print meant that it took a long time to get finish a page, leave alone a chapter.  The shear number of notes meant that I had to flip back and forth several times in each page.  And, of course, the material is difficult, with lots of unfamiliar neurochemistry.

On the other hand, after twenty pages, I wanted more.  Dr Parksepp is very thorough and detailed.  His command of the material made it all the more the more attractive.

Those two motivations dovetailed nicely with a third one: I've been looking for an excuse to get an ereader!

I looked at a Kindle and Nook.  Unfortunately, I didn't like either very much.  They both have very slow displays and their user interface are clunky.  Turning a page was slow enough as to interfere with the flow of reading.  Neither had a touch screen, so, highlighting (which I do a lot) requires you to use the keyboard to 1) move the cursor to the start of the text to be highlighted, 2) turn on highlighting, 3) move the cursor to the end of the text and 4) stop highlighting.  The process is pretty much the same for writing notes (which I also do a lot—in a sense, I don't read books as much as I have a "conversation" with them).

The Kindle keyboard is a joke, laid out to look neat rather than for usability.  The Nook's keyboard is a bad joke, implemented as a soft keyboard in a small color display at the bottom of the device.  Neither of them is very usable except for very short strings.

The other alternative was the iPad, where I could run both the Kindle and Nook software to read books in their respective formats.  The big "con" was the screen (the iPad projects light, whereas the other two reflect light and look—and feel—more like paper).  Oh, and the iPad costs more than $300 more that the other two devices.

In spite of the "cons," I went with the iPad because it gave me the most choices. I can get books from Amazon, B&N and iBooks (although, so far, the iBooks store has very little serious material as far as I can tell).  I can also use it to read PDFs from anywhere as well as everything else on the Web.

The iPad also makes it very easy to add highlights and notes thanks to its touch screen.  The Kindle for iPad software makes it super easy to flip back and forth to the notes.

Once Apple upgrades this thing to iOS 4, life will be even better.  Right now, it is easier to check Wikipedia and apps like 3D Brain in my iPhone while I keep the book open on the iPad.

The Brain, the Brain

Getting through Affective Neuroscience is still a slow process, but now I am more limited by my own brain rather than the mechanics of a big, heavy book and tiny print.

I am getting through it faster, which makes it more rewarding.  As I get through more material at a time, I find it easier for concepts to come together in my head more easily, which encourages me to stick to it.  The more I read, the more I learn, the more I want to read.

I find this encouraging not just for me, but for students in general.  Those people who worry about the "death" of the book can stop worrying and pick up an ereader instead.  I think they'll be encouraged by their potential to promote learning.  My thanks to paper and ink as the technologies that got us this far, but I think we can now move forward.  (See, I told you not to read this post.)

Having said all that, ereaders have a lot of room for improvements.

Tragedy of the Commons

First and foremost, democratic, open societies cannot allow knowledge to be sequestered in proprietary silos.  If the market doesn't force the issue, then governments needs to step in and mandate that formats be made universally compatible.  We cannot allow books to be tied to specific ereaders, as is the case today.

At this stage, we have the equivalent of the days before the Internet became widely available, where content was locked and buried in individual, proprietary systems.  AOL, Lotus Notes, Novell Networks.

Imagine that we had developed systems of proprietary roads where only certain make of vehicle could operate.  GM roads, Ford roads.  Toyota roads in Japan.  VW, BMW and Mercedes roads in Germany and Fiat roads in Italy.  Oh, and only verified car owners could operate their vehicles—no such nonsense as loaning your vehicle to somebody else or even letting your spouse drive the thing.

I should be perfectly capable to loan or give my Affective Neuroscience book to anybody else, whether they have an iPad, a Kindle, a Nook or some device that has not been invented yet.  Of course, I would not have access to the book once I have done so—that's fair, too.

Unprofessional Layout

A minor issue by comparison, the layout of these books need to improve and quick.  It boggles the mind why the electronic version of the book looks so much crappier than their paper equivalent, particularly when it comes to images.

For example, in the paper version of Affective Neuroscience, the images, as in most books, have descriptive text underneath.  This text is smaller in size and it's laid out so that it is obvious that it goes with the image and is not part of the main text.  Not so in the electronic version where this text looks just like the main text and it's hard to tell which is which sometimes.  I've noticed that in several ebooks, not just Affective Neuroscience.

Now, given that the paper book is first "set" electronically, why can't this good looking lay out be used for the ebook?  Are they going out of their way to make it look bad?  Or is this the case of one department not talking to the other?  Whatever the reason, it seems that publishers are counting on the fact that early adopters will buy these books no matter what they look like.  Either way, this needs fixing.

It Is Not Electronic Paper, It Is a @#$%^ Display

My number one major beef with all ereaders is that they force the "page at a time" paradigm on me.  I can understand that they think that they have to provide this mode of reading to wean over the reluctant majority. But could the rest of us scroll through the material, please?  Besides, they would make more money by letting us scroll!

With scrolling, you can hold the ereader on your lap, fix your gaze at around the middle of the screen and then scroll the material in front of your eyes.  In the paging modality, you have to physically move the device up and down (not easy as all three devices are heavy enough) or move your head up and down (which is not an easy thing to do with bifocals).

Thus, the paging model is more fatiguing.  The more fatiguing, the longer it takes me to get through a book.  Which means that it then takes me that much longer to buy the next book.  In other words, this page-at-a-time crap is costing publishers money.

If I could, I would capture books with Instapaper just to be able to scroll through them.  Instapaper even lets you scroll through material hands-free by tilting the device—check it out, it is really cool.  I am surprised that none of the ereaders have copied this idea or just buy Instapaper outright.

Publishers don't seem to have figured out the potential of this new platform and how much more they can do with these "newfangled books." But that's the subject of another post.

What's Your Experience with Ereaders?

I am interested in hearing about other people's experience with ereaders.  Please, let me know by adding a comment here or via Twitter at @matt_perez.

A Final Note

Even though this is my first book on the iPad, it is not my first ever electronic book. I read John Boyd on my iPhone. It wasn't as bad as you may imagine. But it would have been a lot better on an iPad.