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Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

What I want out of books is to be able to work them into a sequential feed workflow. I don't think it's likely to happen without hacks in my lifetime due to DRM.

But it would be great to get chapters of books woven in between long and short form textual content whose sources are personally curated. If someone thinks they can either work out a deal with Amazon or otherwise get around the DRM issue in a commercial product, drop me a line, I'd love to build V1.

Think about it, all text content, sliced and diced for maximum consumability. It just might make feed readers sexy again.

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I have no idea what anything you wrote means. Can you explain in everyday language, assuming I'm your grandma?

Why do you want to slice chapters from separate books together and insert 'textual content' inbetween them?

Books, sliced by chapter, in an RSS feed reader.

So I can read, say, a NYT article, then chapter one of a book, then maybe a blog post, then chapter one of a different book, then a long-form article, then chapter two of the first book.

you are missing the point of reading anything long form

Are you saying you never put a book down and pick it back up later?

Yeah you sound incredibly ADHD.

If I was does that mean it wouldn't be worth building an app to help?

I see what he's getting at.

Last night I watched an episode of True Detectives. Tonight I'll look for a hockey game on TV. Tomorrow I might watch some Game of Thrones. I also have a couple episodes of Better Call Saul on my DVR. I watch (and read) the thing that appeals to me at the time I want it.

Another benefit would be the same UX for all text content consumption.

If that's how we're looking at it, wouldn't that be the same essential idea as leaving a bookmark and juggling a few books at once?

Of course, but if you are lost in a good book, you don't notice when one chapter ends and another beings. You are lost for hours, and don't think about changing to some other article or paper.

Sure. And with the Netflix model you can binge on episode after episode. There are a lot of similarities.

I really like this idea and it overlaps slightly with my side project. I'd love to give it a try even if it's just with DRM free content initially.

Sadly, it doesn't even slightly interest me if I can't insert anything I have on my pile into the feed. It's an all-or-nothing thing. When I get interested enough, I'll probably do something really hacky.

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