Thursday, June 2, 2011

iPad Disappointment

I love my iPad, and I love reading on the kindle. I feel I have to make those statements because now I have to complain about an ebook, and I don't want anyone to think I am not on the ebook bandwagon. I am - I love ebooks.

Recently I re-read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. This book is on my top 10 books list- I LOVE it and I was excited to read it again (I needed to read it before the movie comes out). I downloaded it to my iPad using iBooks and then I began to read.

Here is what I learned: ebooks are not great for books that play with the page, put just a few words on a page, and sometimes have pictures. So much of the beauty of this book is told through white space and black and white photos, and in the iBooks edition, the white space was gone and the photos were cut in half.
Is this a particularly bad ebook edition?  Have you had a similar experience?
Which  books  should be either more carefully transferred or just read as  print books?
Please share your experiences.