Thread by @ChrisAldrich

Ian Bogost has a nice look at the UI affordances and areas for growth in the e-reading space.

A🧵 of annotations
theatlantic.com/books/archive/…

definition: bookiness

Does this only come out because there's something that's book-tangential or similar and it needs to exist to describe the idea of not-book, book-adjacent, or book-like on some sort of spectrum of bookishness.
hyp.is/jbsr7Bi2EeynDQ…

Some discussion of early book prototypes.
#BookHistory
hyp.is/5iDMBhi2EeyXQZ…

Aside from reading words to put ideas into my brain, one of the reasons I like to read digital words is that the bigger value proposition for me is an easier method to add annotations to what I'm reading and then to be able to manipulate those notes after-the-fact.

I've transcended books and the manual methods of note taking. Until I come up with a better word for it, digital commonplacing seems to be a useful shorthand for this new pattern of reading.
#DigitalCommonplacing #Annotation
hyp.is/TcjpLhi3Eeyoxf…

It is an odd circumstance that tail bands are still used on modern books that don't need them. From a manufacturing standpoint, the decrease in cost would dictate they disappear, however they must add some level of bookiness that they're worth that cost.
hyp.is/7HCuVBi3EeywJ3…

Having helped others to self-publish in the past, I definitely do spend a bit of time putting the small sort of bookiness flourishes into their texts.
hyp.is/dgP4Vhi4EeyoyS…

This may be the first time I've seen uncanny valley applied to a topic other than recognizing people versus robots or related simulacra.
hyp.is/zOmbdhi4EeyVbb…

It would be quite nice if a digital reader would allow actual writing in the margins, or even overlaying the text itself and then allowing the looking at the two separately.

I do quite like the infinite annotation space that @hypothes_is gives me on a laptop. I wish there were UI for it on a Kindle in a more usable and forgiving way.

The digital keyboard on Kindle Paperwhite is miserable. I've noticed that I generally prefer reading and annotating on desktop in a browser now for general ease-of-use.
hyp.is/fXUpBhi5EeyqWr…

Also, I don't see enough use of mise en abyme. This is a good one.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_a…

Intriguing reference of a book as a memory palace here.

The verso/recto and top/middle/bottom is a piece of digital books that I do miss from the physical versions as it serves as a mnemonic journey for me to be able to remember what was where.

I wonder if @IBogost uses the method of loci?
#mnemotechniques
hyp.is/EBsZKBi6EeyZvB…

I do dislike the running headers of digital copies of books as most annotation tools want to capture those headers in the annotation.

It would be nice if they were marked up in an Aria-like method so that annotation software would semantically know to ignore them.
#A11y
hyp.is/i9Vg-hi6Eey8TC…

This is related to an idea that @TomCritchlow was trying to get at a bit the other day. It would definitely be interesting in this sort of setting.

https://twitter.com/tomcritchlow/status/1438899963837169664

hyp.is/hn__2Bi7EeyJcL…

Amazon is definitely not catering to my reading, annotating, and writing experience.
hyp.is/q9lOOBi7EeyfNq…

And if you prefer to read these on my own website, try
boffosocko.com/2021/09/18/557…
Or read them in context on the original article at
via.hypothes.is/www.theatlanti…