I'll frequently read something and want to go check something 100 or so pages back. It's so easy with a physical book you hold the place and scan backwards. Much more difficult with an ebook.
I did this often during school, looking up information in textbooks - I'd remember roughly the chapter/page, recognize the exact page, and know where on the page something was, even if I couldn't directly remember the thing itself.
> But in a physical book, I often remember that a phrase was at the top or middle or left side of a page, or that I was sitting in a particular chair when I read it.
Exactly! And for reasons I cannot explain this helps me with better recall too! Like when I remember something I read, I know roughly where in the book that stuff was physically printed and what other stuff were around it and how they relate to each other.
With ebook too I still know how things relate to each other but the clarity feels much less. I can see it much less in my mind's eye. I don't know why! And it drives me mad!
The perfection of ebooks will be when you have one physical book with virtual pages that can change, but other than that it feels like a real book.
When I'm reading a book, some quiet part of me is always aware where in the book I am - from the weight distribution of the book, from the pressure on each palm and finger, from the visual feedback. I know before I pick up the book roughly where I left off, and my fingers often find the page on their own somehow. Recollecting info later, I might not even know exactly what I'm looking for - but I know where it is.
Reading a digital book cuts a lot of that entirely out, and I can't help but feel that it diminishes the experience (before, during, and after) far more than people realize.
This seems weird to me. Does your ebook reader not have a "page" concept? I read China Mieville's Kraken on a Rakuten Kobo about 6 months ago and I distinctly remember the layout of the page where the protagonist does something that shows the culmination of his personal growth throughout the novel, or the page where you find out who is burning the past and why. I also remember distinctly where I was sitting when I read both of those passages.
The biggest difference between the eBook and physical book experiences for me is the smell--I miss the smell of the binding glue when cracking open a new book, or the pleasantly-stale paper smell of an old library book. I'm not saying that the eBook and physical book experiences are equivalent at all. I'm just saying the specific examples you're pointing out seem odd to me.
I'm also highly skeptical of the observations that come from a mind perceiving itself; one of the most striking takeaways from all the neuroscience I've read in the past few decades is that a lot of previous philosophy and psychology theory on how the brain works based on self-perception is blatantly just wrong.
I can take a book from a shelf that I only read once years ago and find a specific passage in a minute or two using this approach. For an ebook I have to try to remember a phrase and search for it, which doesn't always work if I remember just the physicality and sense of it, but not the specific phrasing.
- I just won't carry around some door-stopper printed books, so I am less likely to read them in printed editions.
- So much of what I want to read isn't in print anymore.
I am in the habit of writing in the margins of print editions as I read, but I haven't started doing this for ebooks. One sometimes remembers the place on the page and page in the book, the smell, the tactile experience, but I can't regard these as real criticisms of ebooks or true benefits of printed editions.
In my experience, having a digital copy of the book is, often enough, the difference between reading it and not reading it.
As a result, I generally have an easier time locating things in digital books. I'll occasionally read a physical book and then start looking for the search button... tap words, pinch to zoom... etc. I get really irritated when I realize I can't change the font. XD
I still wish I had a unified way to take and export notes. If I could read a book on my ipad, make annotations and highlight, then export those highlighted excerpts + annotations to say, markdown, I'd be so happy.
With audiobooks, I find I remember better if I’m walking somewhere new. It also provides context. I can recall details of the book by remembering where I was walking when I heard it.
I personaly see less use of feeling the weight of the book or the physical artifacts (even for the position in the book, the ratio on the scroll bar is to me a good enough replacement).