godofbiscuits

godofbiscuits, 7 months ago

@meshell @bookstodon If you like non-fiction, or even if you don't and want to try it some time, I will forever reccommend to people Simon Schama’s “The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age”. Tho the paper back version i had to re buy recently was utter crap, so I'd go for a hardcover. Weighs in at 698 pages.

godofbiscuits, 7 months ago

@adamvolle @meshell @bookstodon the print on the final page of the main body of text is a perfectly chosen one for Schama’s point. I laughed. I might even buy the hardcover just to get a clean image of it to get printed larger. I hope you enjoy it. For me it was transformative and opened up huge worlds.

godofbiscuits, 10 months ago

@DarkMatterZine @diazona @mlanger @EpiphanicSynchronicity @likewise @bookstodon are there disability considerations for books other than typesize or something that isn’t already addressed by dint of being an ebook? I’m just curious — don’t mean to intrude.

godofbiscuits, 10 months ago

@DarkMatterZine @diazona @mlanger @EpiphanicSynchronicity @likewise @bookstodon I know that there are also special fonts for dyslexic folks. The glyphs are particularly asymmetric and in specific ways to disambiguate for people who have that additional challenge. I worked on one of the first ebook readers 25 yrs ago (the Rocket eBook) and back then the only user-changeable thing was the font. Strangely, it was MORE customizable than today: any font (or maybe just most?) you had installed on your Mac could be rasterized and downloaded to the device and used to render your books.

godofbiscuits, 10 months ago

@DarkMatterZine @diazona @mlanger @EpiphanicSynchronicity @likewise @bookstodon companies were at it from the start. The ONLY reason there was a hardware book reader at first was because publishers refused to do business unless there was a “closed hardware platform” as the sole viewer/reader.

This was the device. Back then the device was called the ebook. Then again, so was each title you bought. 🙂

godofbiscuits, 10 months ago

@DarkMatterZine @diazona @mlanger @EpiphanicSynchronicity @likewise @bookstodon I still use Apple’s platform. They really screwed everything with the last update, stripped away many features. Enough people complained — even about them removing the “page curl” transition — and they put everything back. But not entirely as ergonomically as soundly as it used to be. Apple doesn’t really prioritize “delightful user experience” like they used to.

I like Apple Books because the annotation tools and bookmarking are so good. Those remained intact and even improved. I never liked Kindle. Hated the fonts, hated the device. And I had been buying dead tree editions from Amazon for years and years.