Book News
Print’s faster to read.
It takes longer to read books on Kindle 2 and iPad than a printed book, Jakob Nielsen of product development consultancy Nielsen Norman Group discovered in a recent survey.
The study found that reading speeds declined by 6.2 percent on the iPad and 10.7 percent on the Kindle compared with print. Nielsen said, however, that the differences in reading speed between the two devices were not “statistically significant because of the data’s fairly high variability” — in other words, the study did not prove that the iPad allowed for faster reading than the Kindle.
Twenty-four participants were given short stories by Ernest Hemingway to read in print and on iPads, Kindles and desktop PCs.
Users rated their satisfaction with each device; the iPad, Kindle and printed book scored 5.8, 5.7 and 5.6 on a scale of 7, respectively, while the PC received an average score of 3.6.
Participants also complained about the weight of the iPad, and Kindle’s weak contrast.
First Lines
Lucy, by Laurence Gonzales
Jenny woke to thunder. There was no light yet. She reached into the darkness and found a tin of wooden matches on the ammunition case beside her bed. She selected one and struck it on the case. The flame flared red then yellow and sulfurous smoke rose. Newborn shadows danced on the walls of the hut. She touched the match to the wick of a candle and a light grew up from it like a yellow flower tinged with blue. Smoke hung in the still wet air. The interior of the hut seemed at once bare and cluttered. The walls were unpainted board, the floor was buckled plywood. Against one wall was a crude desk made out of a door, a few photographs tacked to the wall above it: Her mother at home near Chicago. Snapshots of the bonobos. Her friend Donna with the bonobos at the zoo.
Jenny swung her feet to the floor and listened. She’d heard the hissing of rain all night. But now another sound had crept in. She pulled on her boots and stood, tall and tan and rangy in the yellow light. She ran her hand through her sandy hair and secured it carelessly behind her head.
She heard the sound again: Thunder. But now she heard the metallic overtones as the report echoed up into the hills, then returned. As she grew more awake Jenny realized that she was hearing guns. Big guns. The Congolese insurgents were firing rocket-propelled grenades.
Independent BestSellers
Fiction
1. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by Stieg Larsson
2. Sizzling Sixteen, by Janet Evanovich
3. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
4. The Passage, by Justin Cronin
5. Spies of the Balkans, by Alan Furst
Nonfiction
1. Medium Raw, by Anthony Bourdain
2. S–t My Dad Says, by Justin Halpern
3. The Big Short, by Michael Lewis
4. War, by Sebastian Junger
5. Women, Food and God, by Geneen Roth
