Historical Fictionistas discussion

Just stumbled on this article on the USA Today feed:

New study finds that audiobooks elicit stronger emotional response than movies, TV
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2...

I struggle with diary/letters format, such as “Where’d you go, Bernadette” and The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Society”. Unless it’s an audible book. I really prefer an narrator.

Kirsten wrote: "Just stumbled on this article on the USA Today feed:

New study finds that audiobooks elicit stronger emotional response than movies, TV
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2......"


Brava Kirsten. One must use one's imagination.

Depending on the production, audiobooks can be really good. Audible produces a lot of their own. I recently listened to The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy and narrated by Alan Rickman!!

It was great!!

The format makes a huge difference for me. I do read things on my ipad, but this is a different experience than reading a "real" book. In a real book I can find a passage I want to review by the approximate page location in the book and the location on the page. I have not gotten skilled at using the ebook tools to mark interesting passages.

The worst experience I have had is the kindle version of "A Gentleman in Moscow" - a truly amazing book. The kindle version handled the footnotes in a haphazard fashion, so I missed the theme running through the footnotes. I did notice some and was frustrated by how difficult it was to retrieve them. Finally I got a "real" copy and reread the book from the start. Fortunately Gentleman was worth the reread.

I guess I am 'old school' as I still prefer the smell of a book in my hands. However, I have made an exception on a few driving trips and purchased a few audio books. One in particular was a great historical fiction novel about Edgar Allen Poe. The guy reading the book was more acting out the book than reading it; so I agree: the right person can bring the book to life in a way traditional reading sometimes can't. Another fantastic example of this is Jim Dale who read the entire Harry Potter series. He was completely captivating - at times I did not want to leave my car.. Anyone who can conjure up 300 unique voices for 300 unique characters is certainly special in my book!

I would love to be able to listen to audio books all the time. So often the narrators pick up on nuances that get "lost" when just reading the book - snarky humor in Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon series, the soft Southern accent in Julia Spencer-Fleming's Rev. Claire Ferguson. I will occasionally listen all the way through an audio book, but most times find myself getting a physical copy of the book from the library and reading ahead in the action.

I've also gotten to the point where I'll look for particular narrators when choosing my next "listening" book - Recorded Books/RBDigital pros Barbara Rosenblat & George Guidal are a given, and Jennifer Ikeda and Mark Bramhall are pretty great as well.

For me, format depends on where and what I will be doing...when I'm traveling, it's so easy to use my kindle, less space, easy downloads etc... but when I'm camping, at a beach or pool, I want the book in my hand.
And just like Calvin said, "...I still prefer the smell of a book in my hands." There is nothing like the smell of a brand new book!!

With age I have found it harder to read massmarket books. I still buy the larger paperbacks.

I love my kindle. Light to read in bed, pages don’t blow in the wind nor is there glare in the sun. I can carry my whole library on a plane. I prefer the old version and don’t find sorting into collections for retrieval as easy in my new touchscreen version. Pity
My collections were lost when I got my new kindle though all
Books purchased are still
There. My old kindle did run out of space which became a problem. The new one hasn’t I have thousands of books.

I don't like spaces between paragraphs, and the first line at the beginning of chapters in e-book versions is usually indented unless it begins with someone speaking. This is an unfortunate pain unless you can find a way to trick the system.

Calvin wrote: "I guess I am 'old school' as I still prefer the smell of a book in my hands. However, I have made an exception on a few driving trips and purchased a few audio books. One in particular was a great ..."

Me, too. I prefer the smell of an actual book in my hands, and I focus better with an actual book.

Maybe I’m the odd one out! I find paper books clumsy and problematic. They don’t keep your place, the pages blow in the wind, they are heavy in bed, I can’t instantly find out about interesting words with one click! I could go on… I’m somewhat hard of hearing so audiobooks don’t work for me. I love my kindle. I have my library of several thousand books with me wherever I go and I can read several books at once and always open to where I last read. I don’t need vaste amounts of shelf space, though I do still have lots of print books. I do love my print books for identifying such things as birds, flowers, trees, animals and insects. Every Christmas I give away once greatly loved books without a qualm I love my gardening books too but since I’m not studying kindle works brilliantly for me. I’ve read 110 books so far this year. With Goodreads to manage my reading and kindle to manage my books I’m
Truly sorted

I still prefer to read hard copy. But when taking a trip I always load e-books on my tablet.

I also prefer hard copy. Partly because books that you can actually touch seem more "real." But also because I'm afraid that whatever e-reader format I invest in will become obsolete very soon after I buy it.

I read kindle on my iPad. I don't mind actual books, but I increasingly find that being able to enlarge the font matters!

This seems like a timely thread to me because I'm currently formatting my book for an On Demand paperback version for Amazon. The formatting is a whole other horror story, but I wonder if anyone has any preferences as to size. Amazon recommends a 6x9" format but that seems large to me for a fiction paperback. It seems fine for non-fiction, but I'm used to paperbacks being a bit smaller. The larger size also makes for a smaller book. At 98,000 words that should be somewhere around 300 pages but it's working out to around 215. I'd love to hear your thoughts on size preference.

Listening with headphones can sometimes feel very intimate. Like the person is whispering in my ear.

I have tried Kindle but did not enjoy it. Admittedly that was an early version but I’ve never been tempted to go back. Put me in the traditionalist camp too.I love the smell of a freshly inked page in the morning .

I like a physical book in general, because it is easier to look back (or ahead) but ebooks are great for trips. Also as I get older, the small print is an issue. I am in a couple of classics group, and I found that even though I owned physical copies of Dickens, Trollope and Austen, I liked reading them better on my iPad because I could adjust the font. I have had both nook & Kindle but now I just use those apps on the iPad. For classics, I have a wonderful app called Megareader. I don't know if it is still available. It cost a few dollars but has access to all Project Gutenberg books and several other databases. Sometimes it even includes the original illustrations.

As someone who can read another language (French) ebooks are a godsend. It used to be you had to order books from somewhere like New York or even Canada or France and pay a lot of shipping. Now classics are free and available, and even new books are relatively affordable. I did pay a few dollars to purchase complete works of Balzac and Zola thru Apple Books but it is amazing to have all that at my fingertips.

During the pandemic shutdowns, I realized how easy it is to get books online from a library or to purchase cheaply. There are several mailing lists like Book Bub that send specials every day. My problem was that I would forget I had the book because I never saw it, so I finally added them all to GR and noted which platform they were on.

Audiobooks are a whole other story, I adore them. They make it possible to read while driving, doing housework, exercising and other boring tasks. Some narrators are so wonderful that I will only do certain series on audio (the Spencer Quinn mysteries narrated by a dog, for instance.)

Format can definitely impact my enjoyment. I personally like short chapters, and a font that isn't swirly twirly or small. Also a pet peeve of mine, and something that happens often, is when the gutters are too skinny and the text ends up too far into the fold of the book!

I cannot admire books improperly formatted, even though I would like to sympathize with their authors.

Definitely. As a dyslexic I need a read that flows well.

I have just returned to physical books after years of using my Kindle. I also tried audible books for a year but kept falling asleep while listening.

I love my kindle. I find physical books clumsy and thry don’t have the functionality of kindle. I don’t read physical books if I can help it. Fortunately most of the books i want to read are on kindle. Physical books are better for bird books and books for identifying flowers where pictures are necessary. But for general reading I love my kindle. I have a library of over 1000 books in my hand, I can read several books Dt once and each keeps my place, I can look up meanings of words with the inbuilt dictionary and it links to Wikipedia too and of course links to Good Reads, and I can control the font and print size! WhT would one want to read a print book with pages blowing in the wind and so heavy in bed! Here’s to the wonderful invention of the kindle 🍾

Apologies for typos

I find with dead-tree books I keep glancing to the top of the page and find it astonishing the time isn't displayed there.

And having to go to the back of the book to read the notes is irritating

Since I do a good deal of online-reading for work, in my leisure-time, I appreciate a trade-back or a paperback book. Print without electricity is easier on the eyes, and I like to be able to read it anywhere. When I'm finished with a paperback, I can trade it with other readers.