My son’s just finished reading Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and enjoying it so much I decided to re-read it after twenty years.

He gave me his print copy and as I started, I realised I haven’t read a novel in pbook format in a long time.

And as I read the first pages, I realised I was  finding it heavy going in some way. Not the writing, which was just as enjoyable as I remembered it, but the actual act of reading.
I got to page 30 or so and gave in and, much to my own surprise, found myself buying the ebook edition.

And happily settled in.

The only reason I can think of is that the reader offers me one page at a time, not two. Something about that second page being there, just out of sightline, has come to weigh me down a little, now I’ve got used to there being just one.

I also missed being able to highlight passages that I particularly enjoyed, snippets of language, aphorisms and insights.  I love marking these as I go and then reading back over them when I’m finished. Underlining a print book just  isn’t the same.

It seems it’s official, I now prefer ebooks.

Yikes!