Before you start chuckling about my reading choices, I will say in my defense that I downloaded this book by accident while trying out the different features on my brand new Huawei smartphone. Since it was on my phone anyway, I would read it periodically, usually while waiting for something or someone. And, I will admit, it grew on me. As for details that would help in tracking it down, my phone says that "this is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online". The publisher is listed as "George Routledge and Sons", located in London. The year of publication is 1878.
In the very beginning of the story (page 8) I encountered the following sentence: "'Milady* must see nothing of this fellow,' continued the stranger". The asterisk is in place of a footnote, explaining that while the title "Milady" is usually followed by a name, it will be used on its own in the book as the name of the famous femme fatale. However, because a "page" on my phone can only contain about a quarter of a page of the original book, I had to "flip" forward four times before I reached the explanation. Since I didn't bother to search for the footnote right away, encountering it four "flips" later forced me to think back to the instance the footnote was referring to, creating a rift in the nearly seamless progression of the story.
While this is a small issue that didn't significantly affect my enjoyment of the book, it did highlight the importance of format, and the issues that can arise when an item undergoes a change of format. Despite the ability to "flip" pages and see the "cover" of the book on my phone, this little footnote made it very transparent that this is not, in fact, a bound book, but rather a scanned imitation of one.
In the very beginning of the story (page 8) I encountered the following sentence: "'Milady* must see nothing of this fellow,' continued the stranger". The asterisk is in place of a footnote, explaining that while the title "Milady" is usually followed by a name, it will be used on its own in the book as the name of the famous femme fatale. However, because a "page" on my phone can only contain about a quarter of a page of the original book, I had to "flip" forward four times before I reached the explanation. Since I didn't bother to search for the footnote right away, encountering it four "flips" later forced me to think back to the instance the footnote was referring to, creating a rift in the nearly seamless progression of the story.
While this is a small issue that didn't significantly affect my enjoyment of the book, it did highlight the importance of format, and the issues that can arise when an item undergoes a change of format. Despite the ability to "flip" pages and see the "cover" of the book on my phone, this little footnote made it very transparent that this is not, in fact, a bound book, but rather a scanned imitation of one.
Polina, no need to defend reading The Three Musketeers! It's one of the greatest works of French literature ever! (Not to mention, the 1993 movie with Charlie Sheen and Kiefer Sutherland is awesome...and I'm pretty sure Professor Galey said that it's got the only instance of that machine we were looking at in class two weeks ago on film).
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to think about digital editions of books vs. digitized copies of paper books in this way. I'm a big fan of Project Gutenburg, because I love the idea of having digitized copies of books available, but I hadn't really thought about the limitations of their not being in a native digital format.
Reading The Three Musketeers is a formidable feat in itself, but reading it all on a smartphone is really incredible! I can barely stand to read a 3+ line text message on mine, let alone a 700+ page novel.
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