The How of Reading: iPad v. print

It's no secret that I love books--print books. Even though I've had a Kobo for years, I kind of hate reading on it. (No offense to Kobo or those who love e-readers--it's just a personal preference.) So when I got a tablet, I kind of assumed I'd be doing very little reading on it.

But then I saw that Stephen King's 11/22/63 was on sale in the iBooks store. Hmm. It'd been on my TBR list for ages, but it was both a) relatively expensive and, more importantly, b) HUGE. I had figured I'd save that book for a beach trip so I wouldn't have to lug it on the subway every day. I couldn't pass up a chance to read it in a lightweight and easily transportable format, so I bought it.

Turning a page on the iPad by Mike Baird (CC)

I spent the past couple of weeks reading it, and I have to admit that I got used to the different reading experience. Eventually, I stopped compulsively checking how many pages were left in a chapter. (Seriously, why does e-reading make me so obsessed with where I am in the book? I don't constantly check the page count when I'm reading a print book. It's weird.) I learned not to brush the edge of the tablet with my thumb, lest I flip dozens of pages ahead by accident. (It kind of sucked the morning I zoned out on the train and flipped a hundred pages ahead by mistake. Oops.) And thanks to the long battery life, I only had to put the book aside to charge once.

I was all set to go back to the pile of print books crowding my shelf, but then I spontaneously downloaded a copy of Amber McRee Turner's MG Sway (which is fabulous). So I'm still reading on the iPad--although I swear after I finish this, I'm going back to print for a while.

I guess this means I'm becoming an ambidextrous reader, and that's a good thing! I think both formats have their place.

But one aspect about e-reading does continue to bother me: I feel like I read much faster when I'm reading on an screen, and I don't think it has anything to do with the content. There's something about digital that makes me skim and scan much more than when I'm reading a printed page. I linger in paperbacks and hardcovers, and I race through ebooks. I know some studies have suggested that people process information differently when they are reading digitally, so I wonder if that's what's going on. Would I have absorbed more of these stories if I had been reading a paperback? Who knows.

How do you do most of your reading? Do you have strong feelings about the format of books? Do you read differently when you read on a screen?

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