A friend told me last night that she had tried reading a blog of dense literary criticism, and finally gave up. Then she ran across the same material in book form, and loved it. Of course it is possible that the writer cut and polished before the book was published. But long blocks of dense prose– novels, criticism– may be just too much for the eye to deal with in the flickering ambiance of the screen.
We agreed that poetry works well on the web– for example, I know a poet who sends a poem “by someone else” once a week or so to his email list. Sometimes it’s a famous poet, sometimes not, but it’s always a single poem. Flash fiction works well on the screen.
And the word on the street is that reading e-paper (the Kindle, Sony e-readers, etc.) is just like reading tree-pulp paper.
After the Gutenberg Revolution, did monks and priests have nostalgic dreams about the flow of illuminating ink over the crisp surface of parchment?
Note: Here’s the latest from the Authors’ Guild on the Google book scan issue.