A few thoughts on ebooks

[catmagnet]

I got a Nook, Barnes and Noble's ebook reader, for Christmas.  Since then I've carried it around with me everywhere, and read more books than I have for quite a while.  I'm mostly re-reading old classics I haven't read for decades, and I'm enjoying that.  I also put as many of the works nominated for the Nebula award this year as I could find free

Comments

[catsittingstill]

Does the Nook not allow you to search? I find the inability to flip back through a chunk of a paper book somewhat offset (somewhat, admittedly) by the ability to search for a phrase on my Kindle. So if I'm reading along and the book names a character and I can't remember who she is, I can type in her name and see every occurrence of it in the text, in order, with a couple of lines around it.

This search ability is less pronounced in pdfs, but I still found it useful while reading the instructions for form 1040 a few days ago.

I thought the Nook could do this too; am I misremembering?

[catmagnet]

Yes, it will search, but if it's a concept, not a name or word, you are searching for, that doesn't help. A lot of times I remember things by their place on the page, about how far through the book that page was--things like that. And there's a lot less to show you what page you're on with an ebook reader. I sometimes look down at the bottom bar that shows me how far along in the book I am, but that's about it.

[catsittingstill]

Oh, hmm. I see why this would work less well for you.

I can sometimes come up with a word or phrase that will be frequent in discussion of a particular concept and rare elsewhere, but it requires that I interrupt my reading and "switch to a different kind of thinking" which is more disruptive than paging back anyway.

[catmagnet]

I tried the search function on my Nook yesterday (I'm reading a nonfiction book about the Hopi), and it works well. Odd that I hadn't even tried it before. . . .