Is book browsing a dying art?
Written by Free Audio Books - Free audiobooks on October 14, 2009 – 5:35 am -The success of online booksellers indicates that getting our hands on a book really isn’t necessary anymore. We buy online using different criteria — cover design, publishers’ blurbs, four stars from James in Minneapolis.
Does this mean we’ve lost our need for the physical encounter with a book? Like a child saying “let me see” and extending an open hand, touching a book seemed to carry with it a kind of knowledge. Holding the thing meant knowing the thing. Having a personal, chance encounter made it yours — say, your eyes caught on the line “This morning I go to the Big Slot and find it goatless,” and you thought with a start, Wait, slot? Goat? for just a moment before deciding you must read on to know what, exactly, this George Saunders person was up to.
Seeing with our eyes and our hands, having our own individual interaction with a book’s pages, used to be important components of making a decision about what we wanted to read or buy. But maybe we don’t need to let our fingers do the stumbling anymore. Perhaps the only kind of browsing we need comes from Explorer, Firefox, Safari or Google Chrome. LA Times Blog
Tags: book browsing
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By Amadio Arboleda on Oct 15, 2009 | Reply
In Japan, browsing is still definitely in. The art of “Tachi-yomi” (reading while standing) is still undergoing refinement. If you sit you must buy the book or stop reading it. However, it allows you to read a reasonable portion of a book and then buy it out of guilt if you continue. Of course, by reading so much you have a good idea of whether or not you want to buy it. Most tachi-yomi browsers end up buying something.
Yes, browsing is still definitely in.