Future reading

Digital books stagnate in closed, dull systems, while printed books are shareable, lovely and enduring. What comes next?

From 2009 to 2013, every book I read, I read on a screen. And then I stopped. You could call my four years of devout screen‑reading an experiment. I felt a duty – not to anyone or anything specifically, but more vaguely to the idea of ‘books’. I wanted to understand how their boundaries were changing and being affected by technology. Committing myself to the screen felt like the best way to do it.

As we may read

From print to digital and back to print

Certain aspects of digital book publishing are liberating, astounding, tiny miracles

.. But on a whole, it’s a locked down universe if you start to look at it from even the slightest long-term, benevolent steward perspective. And one in which it’s very difficult to affect meaningful change in design or experience because of its closed nature.

The Joy of Hate Reading

My taste for hate reading began with “The Fountainhead,” which I opened in a state of complete ignorance as bonus material for a college class on 20th-century architecture. I knew nothing of Ayn Rand or of objectivism.

.. What stuck was the abiding knowledge that I was not, nor would I ever be, a libertarian.

.. It was only by burrowing through books that I hated, books that provoked feelings of outrage and indignation, that I truly learned how to read. Defensiveness makes you a better reader, a closer, more skeptical reader: a critic. Arguing with the author in your head forces you to gather opposing evidence. You may find yourself turning to other texts with determination, stowing away facts, fighting against the book at hand. You may find yourself developing a point of view.

.. loathing is mixed with other emotions — fear, perverse attraction, even complicated strains of sympathy. This is, in part, what makes negative book reviews so compelling.

.. the authors were too credulous of certain research, and in ways that served their thesis.

.. It can be interesting, and instructive, when a book provokes animosity. It may tell you more about a subject or about yourself, as a reader, than you think you know. It might even, on occasion, challenge you to change your mind.

.. an even more stimulating excitement comes from finding someone else who hates the same book as much as you do