#5: The Case For E-Books, and Obsessive Book Tracking
The one where I, a hardcore book purist, start to advocate for the digital format
I found a book I liked the other day and immediately went to purchase it on Kindle. After that I stopped for a moment, wondering when it was that my go-to option for buying a new book became an e-book rather than a physical copy. It didn't have anything to do with the lockdown either. This pattern began even when I had the option to look for the book in my local bookstore first.
After going over my reading habits and the books I've read recently, I noticed that almost all of them were digital e-books and very few were actual physical copies. When I think about it, I even seem to prefer e-books over physical copies these days. If I were to go back in time and tell this to my 18 year old self, and tell him that I even passed on a physical copy to buy an e-book this one time, he would’ve probably clutched his pearls and cried blasphemy.
Don't get me wrong, I still love (and prefer!) the feel of holding paper in my hands, turning the pages, the smell of a new book, having an actual physical copy of a book I love on my shelf (something changing the colour on your Kindle shelf can never match up to), but I find myself, more and more, preferring e-books simply because of the practicality and the ease of access it provides. The most recent example for this was when I purchased a copy of Atomic Habits a few months back. I found myself highlighting passages extensively, and at one point remembered thinking that there was no way I would be able to easily search a passage I wanted, or would have this book with me at all times, and so I proceeded to buy a digital copy of the same book (look at me, Richie Rich) and started highlighting all my passages there.
Another instance of the ease of viewing highlights and notes came up when I was writing my previous two newsletters, in which I referenced Herzog on Herzog and Flow. I was instantly able to resurface the passages that stuck with me by simply going over to the highlights tab and seeing an overview of all of them. Compare this to flipping through the pages of a book, and add in my tendency to only highlight passages with a pencil, I would've probably skipped over many of the places I highlighted. Not to mention how much more time-consuming this process would've been. An added (and might I add, the biggest!) benefit I found while using an e-book for research purposes, is the CTRL+F feature to find any word or passage across the entire book. I was able to easily resurface passages I hadn't highlighted and wanted to refer to simply by typing in a few keywords.
Another huge selling point for me is the fact that each book syncs across multiple devices and I can pick up where I left off anywhere and across any device, even in places where it's inconvenient to take out a book to read (flashback to those crowded Mumbai local trains). So whether I feel like reading on my iPad in bed, or on my PC during work breaks, or on a phone while traveling, I never have to think twice about it.
There's the obvious benefit that people talk about when comparing e-books to physical copies; that of the ability to have tens of thousands of books available to read at any time. But that concept never really appealed to me, because at a certain time I am always reading one, or at most, two books, and so carrying around one or two physical books was never much of a problem.
The thing that really converted me, however, was the device I read on. Over the years, I've constantly read e-books on my phone or on my laptop, but both were for scenarios where a physical copy wasn't available. A mobile phone, in my opinion, is too small for prolonged reading, and laptops/computers are too large to be sufficiently portable. Reading on an iPad or Kindle seems to be the perfect fit in terms of size and flexibility. I also tend to read before sleeping under dim lamp lights, something that would've been difficult to do with a normal book.
All that being said, my love for physical copies can never be diminished and my bookshelf will always remain my pride and joy. This article mostly serves as an explanation letter for my 18-year old self if he ever meets me and doesn't recognize the person he has become. I hope you understand, buddy.
Speaking of e-books and highlighting passages, I recently signed up for a Readwise subscription, and felt even more justified in allocating my time and money to e-books. For those unaware, Readwise consolidates all your highlights across Kindle, Medium, Twitter (and various other platforms) and sends you regular emails resurfacing a few of those highlights. I love this concept because so often I forget all about a book after reading it, and this transports me right back to the feeling and state of mind I was in when I highlighted a particular passage and why it resonated with me. Sort of like a gift from me to my future self. Plus, since I've subscribed, it has subconsciously made me start highlighting things I read in books and in Twitter threads more often.
Book Tracking Through The Years
If you know me, you know how I love to obsessively track and document everything I'm doing. Tracking all the books I read was never an exception. In fact, I remember it being one of the first things I'd ever made a conscious effort of tracking. Up until last year, I had been tracking them on Evernote in a very rudimentary fashion, and tracked some of them on Goodreads (add me here!) as well.
About a year ago, I started using Notion and since it was so overwhelming for me to navigate back then, I figured the easiest thing to do to learn how to use it would be to create a simple book tracker (which I use to this day!) since I was due an update to my system anyway.
I followed this step-by-step guide by the wonderful Zoe Chew that gave me much more control over everything I read. So now I'm never at a loss whenever someone asks me for book recommendations across any genre or asks me what my favourite book is (Okay I'm still at a loss whenever someone asks me this, but at least now it's not because I immediately forget everything I've ever read when someone asks me that)
I began actively tracking my reading since 2016 so unfortunately books I've read prior to that aren't part of my tracker, which looks like this
I mostly prefer viewing my list of books by the year in which I've read them, so I have a separate view for each. The 'Database' view allows me to filter by author or by genre, so it's easy to find out how many books by a particular author I've read, or what kind of books I usually read.
The 'Status' view gives me a quick glance of my to-read pile and since it's a Kanban board, I can easily drag a book across to its relevant status (whether I've started reading or completed it).
Here's the link to view my Notion Book Tracker
Now that I've signed up for Readwise, the next step for this tracker is to export all highlights to Notion to its respective book, so that it can all be accessible from a single place.
Updates this week:
This week was spent obsessively refreshing the COWIN page everyday at ~7:30 pm in hopes of finding a vaccination slot. Sad to report that there has been no luck on that front, although I did come close today by reaching the Captcha input screen before they were fully booked. Here's hoping I can report back with better news next week.
I watched INVINCIBLE a few days back (mostly just to understand the "Think, Mark" meme doing the rounds) and it cemented my belief that every adaptation needs to be animated to do it complete justice. One of the most fun shows I've watched in recent times and the minute I saw the voice cast I knew I had to watch the show (J.K. Simmons and Sandra Oh were magnificent). Probably gonna check the comics out till the next season.
I've been thinking again about how Adobe art softwares have been letting me down in the past. I tried the Illustrator app on the iPad but it didn't match up to the computer experience. Affinity Designer is still the superior vector drawing app on the iPad. Not to mention it only has a one-time affordable purchase fee like Procreate, unlike the predatory recurring monthly subscription model of Adobe software. (I'll probably dedicate an entire newsletter article to the different digital art software I've used someday)
Stuff I'm Listening To:
I listened to Björk for the first time and I'm mad I never checked out her stuff before. I've only scratched the surface till now and am excited for what more is in store.
The This Is Björk playlist on Spotify is, as always, a great place to start
Links of the Week:
This Twitter thread with a bunch of solid life advice
For artists, this website is a great repository for drawing perspectives, proportions, poses with 3-D controllable models
Another website for finding reference angles based on gender, age and emotion. Super easy to use
Another great Twitter thread to fall into a rabbit-hole in
Take care until next week,
Raef