there's more to a book than its content
Jun. 6th, 2004 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThere are a lot of things that are good about the chumash (torah text+commentary) that our congregation uses. The editor (Gunther Plaut) pulled together a lot of good commentary, historic and modern, along with a more readable translation of the text. But two publishing-related decisions (or one publishing and one editing, perhaps) prevent me from using the book. First, they insert pages of commentary in the middle of each torah portion (usually multiple times). That's fine for study, but a primary use of a chumash is to follow the public torah reading, and while you're turning pages looking for the continuation, the reading is proceeding and -- especially if you're not fluent in Hebrew -- you'll find it hard to find your place again. (No, the insertions don't line up with the aliya breaks, either.) The other bad decision, and it compounds the first in a way, is that the paper is very, very thin. So it's difficult to turn one page; you may turn a few at a time without realizing it. So I ignore an otherwise-worthy book for reasons having nothing to do with content. Fortunately, Eitz Chayim was published a few years ago and it is an excellent chumash.
This came to mind Shabbat afternoon when I was reading Back to the Sources, a prerequisite for the course this summer. This book should have everything going for it -- a book about Judaism's source material from Tanakh to talmud to later works, about both how it developed and how to read it critically and in context. While the text is a little dry in places, it's interesting content. But the font is small, and the book is physically large (so there are many words on a single line, which is harder to read), and the paper is brownish rather than whitish -- and the result is that it's very tiring for me to read. Sigh.
Even if all the books I wanted to read were available electronically, suitable for a convenient, easy-to-use hand-held reading device, that wouldn't really solve my problem. That I couldn't use it on Shabbat is relatively minor, actually; the main thing is that I actually like books. I like to hold them, to insert post-it notes or bookmarks wherever I want (I rarely scribble), to use page numbers as navigational aids. I have a visual memory, such that I'll find something in a book (that I've read) more quickly than I'll find it in an electronic file, because of the context (including left/right page, how far down the page, how far through the book, etc). These just don't translate well to electronic media.
So I guess what I want is not electronic books but print-on-demand to my own specifications of font, paper, and page size. Pity that that will never be economically viable...
(On another subject, I've posted a round of responses to my previous post.)
This came to mind Shabbat afternoon when I was reading Back to the Sources, a prerequisite for the course this summer. This book should have everything going for it -- a book about Judaism's source material from Tanakh to talmud to later works, about both how it developed and how to read it critically and in context. While the text is a little dry in places, it's interesting content. But the font is small, and the book is physically large (so there are many words on a single line, which is harder to read), and the paper is brownish rather than whitish -- and the result is that it's very tiring for me to read. Sigh.
Even if all the books I wanted to read were available electronically, suitable for a convenient, easy-to-use hand-held reading device, that wouldn't really solve my problem. That I couldn't use it on Shabbat is relatively minor, actually; the main thing is that I actually like books. I like to hold them, to insert post-it notes or bookmarks wherever I want (I rarely scribble), to use page numbers as navigational aids. I have a visual memory, such that I'll find something in a book (that I've read) more quickly than I'll find it in an electronic file, because of the context (including left/right page, how far down the page, how far through the book, etc). These just don't translate well to electronic media.
So I guess what I want is not electronic books but print-on-demand to my own specifications of font, paper, and page size. Pity that that will never be economically viable...
(On another subject, I've posted a round of responses to my previous post.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-06 08:20 pm (UTC)Yeah, if I could have an actual book made out of this paper, with a slot where I plug in the memory card or USB cable or whatnot to load the data (with an interface to specify font etc), that'd go a long way toward making me happy.