11 June 2011

Reviewing Kindle books

I am about to commit to print some reviews of books that I read when I was travelling.
What they have in common is that they are all books that on my Kindle.

I am toying with the vague feeling that reading them on my Kindle affects the style of review I am able to write.
 
For example, checking up on some detail is not as easy on the Kindle as with a made-from-paper book where you can quickly flip over pages to locate some words you remember as being on "top left".

I described some of my techniques in an earlier post.

I try to compensate by making annotations and marking text on the e-book as I go and then by checking these after I've finished reading. But that really depends on whether I've marked the text in the first place. I have finished reading some books and found I have not marked or annotated anything.

Of course you can search the e-text itself for particular references but that is a rather slow method as the Kindle will throw up all bits of text containing that search term. When there are 100s, this not particularly useful.

While I was travelling I got into the habit of writing a draft review in a notebook immediately after completing the book. I hope that helps.

If you are also reviewing books you've read in e-book format, you might like to leave a comment about how you feel these reviews compare with reviews you've written of books in other formats. Are they skimpier? Is the format influencing your style of review?

3 comments:

Marce said...

Interesting post. I find reading from the kindle is better reviews because of highlighting text, words, etc. I do not do that with printed books.

Also when I have ideas I can type it in and save as a note on the page.

I think there were 2 I remember you saying you were going to read, I look forward to your review.

Hope vacation was amazing.

Bernadette said...

Like Mace I find it easier to write reviews from eBooks because I do a lot of highlighting as I read and then at the end I can just look at all the highlighted bits of text. With print I try to remember to have post it notes with me (I won't highlight for real even on a book I own).

bibliolathas (skiourophile) said...

I think I might quote bits of the books more for Kindle reviews just because I can cut and paste without retyping. Lazy!

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