Texts, as Opposed to Books

Verlyn Klinkenborg:

All the e-books I’ve read have been ugly — books by Chang-rae Lee, Alvin Kernan, Stieg Larsson — though the texts have been wonderful. But I didn’t grow up reading texts. I grew up reading books. The difference is important.

Even with cheap printed books, you can tell that someone proofed every page. With many e-books, they’ve clearly just been run through a converter with no proofing whatsoever. This is especially true for backlist Kindle titles from Amazon — the formatting is just atrocious.

★ Sunday, 30 May 2010