Okay, I admit it: I have thirty two bookcases. There are times when I’d like to have fewer, like when I’m dusting. On the other hand, a big, fat reference book with tons of illustrations is heaven on earth for a historical author.
What’s an author to do? E-readers and e-reading applications – like Kindle, Nook, and iBooks – aren’t known for their ability to showcase illustrations or complex tables, comparing multiple factors. They simply wrap text around the screen, no matter how large the letters or the screen are. Over and over again, until the book reaches the end of its tale.
This means that I read fiction as ebooks but almost no research books in that format. Other people feel the same way: for example, this week’s top ten bestsellers in print were non-fiction while fiction ruled the digital bestsellers.
But I’d love to do research in a digital book and do so whenever I get the chance. For example, biographies are often delightful.
A friend gave me Adrian Goldsworthy’s Antony and Cleopatra. It’s a scholarly examination of their lives, which focuses more on them as political allies than lovers. The prose is so smooth that it reads faster than many novels and one can skip over the maps.
And then there are the classic research tomes – books like Brian Lavery’s Nelson’s Navy: The Ships, Men, and Organisation, 1793-1815. It saved me more than once when I wrote “Caught by the Tides,” my Regency novella in Beyond the Dark. That story hinges on the naval nuts-and-bolts Napoleon needed to pull off his invasion of England in 1803.
Lavery’s Nelson’s Navy has 350 pages on everything anybody ever wanted to know about anybody’s navy during that era. It’s packed with tons of illustrations, both period and modern recreations, all carefully annotated with their source. Plus, it comes with a full bibliography, footnotes, and index. The only possible complaint is that some of the illustrations could be in color. Oh, and that it might weigh less than four pounds. (Yes, the phrase “door stop” has been used for it.)
But it’s wonderful. I just wish it were an ebook. Then I could zoom it on some of the illustrations – like the photo of the naval cook stove, with the two integrated kettles on top and the oven in the side. (Just how did people use all those handles coming off in all those directions?) Plus, I could carry it with me to read anywhere I went – and never dust it again. (Oh, happy day!)
If I was truly lucky, somebody would turn it into an application for iPads or other tablets. Then it could include videos or animation for some of the drawings, like how a warship’s sails worked. But that’s expensive with a capital E and unlikely to happen for every reference book.
At least Brian Lavery provided a condensed introduction to naval warfare during the Napoleonic era in Life in Nelson’s Navy. At ninety pages long and with no illustrations, it’s available in both paper – and digital.
Thank heaven options are starting to appear.
Reader, do you like your research books in print or ebooks? What would you like your ereader to do better for your research?
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