Years ago, when I was relatively new to Electronic Products Magazine (there was no Internet yet), the editor/publisher told me that no one curls up next to the fire to read Electronic Products . Some time later I attended a focus group at which an engineer described that he had a pile of electronics magazines at his desk and that he would pick each one up, one at a time, and rip articles of interest from each publication, and then discard the part of the magazine he no longer needed.
Which is the best way to “read” a book: from paper, from a Kindle, or with your ears? We explore several ideas.
Whole studies are done on this subject, such as one done recently by The Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/53d3096a-f792-11e3-90fa-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3ERCf6i00) about reading on paper or from e-books. That article asks the question “is there any more to the decision than cost and convenience? On this question, the answer suggested by numerous studies into the neuroscience and psychology of reading in different formats is an emphatic yes.” A Kindle, say, allows “deep reading” (getting immersed in the text) and paper allows “active learning” (making notes in the margin).
Ripping out pages from the magazine certainly invites making notes, such as so-and-so contact is no longer with a particular company. Ripping out pages makes for a much messier office, but that is perhaps another subject.
Long before Gutenberg invented movable type and launched the publication world as we knew it until about 20 years ago, the question was one of Reading vs. Listening, a topic that sparked lots of comment recently in the Writers Hangout group on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/):
Here's the initial question: “With the increased popularity of audio books, I have to ask ─ does listening to an audio book count as 'reading' it?”
The question sparked 51 comments. A sampler:
“I fail to see the difference. Either way, the reader gets the story.”
Another response disagreed: “I'm not sure. One is an active process while the other is passive. When reading, your mind controls the pace, controls the “tone of voice,” controls the weight of the words. Active involvement could really change the perception of the story.”
Still another perspective: “People with multifarious activities and hardly find any time to read books may seek asylum with audio books. But hearing an audio book cannot be equated with reading a book, because, the latter is more useful to a person especially an aspiring writer, to learn more new words with their spelling, the context in which they are actually used, sentence structure, use of punctuation etc and these are totally missing in hearing an audio book. Above all the joy of reading is certainly missing. Perhaps, an audio book, being only a mechanical device, may help a person to know what the book is all about. But again it cannot be equated with your mother as a storyteller. To put it in nutshell, the utility of an audio book is inferior to actually reading a book.”
And of course the discussion went on, and on. The Internet can take us away from paper (although every site has a “print” button), can put us on to paperless reading, or re-introduce us to an old, old technology: listening.
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