Do you ever wish...

[Miss Shelf]

...that when reading, you could use a Find Text (like Outlook Express has where you can find a word in a message-it searches through all the messages you have saved or deleted to find a certain word) to find a line you want to read again, or a character that's disappeared inexplicably, or otherwise important things that don't become important till about 100 pages later?

 

[Jemima Aslana]

Oh yes, lines I want to read again I sometimes mark with a folded corner (yes, yes, I confess - you may execute me now) but appearances and disappearances of characters is at times horribly confusing to keep track of, especially because they, as you say, don't become important till it's too late to mark where it is.

 

[Mari]

Yes, and that's the main reason I refer to online versions of books. I don't read them all the way through on the screen, but I use them as finding aids. I even use bootleg sites for this purpose.

 

[Kookamoor]

Yes, I'm so used to using .pdfs in my work that I automatically assume for half a second that I can do the same sort of search with my novels.

 

[SFG75]

Oh yes, lines I want to read again I sometimes mark with a folded corner (yes, yes, I confess - you may execute me now) but appearances and disappearances of characters is at times horribly confusing to keep track of, especially because they, as you say, don't become important till it's too late to mark where it is.

LOL-A couple of times, I've used yellow "sticky" notes to mark important areas. I also use orange ones to track characters if there are too many or I can't figure out where in the world in the story they fit in. Had to do that with one or two books that I've read.

 

[Ell]

Ya gotta love those yellow-stickies. By the end of an interesting book, I have almost as many stickies as pages. Great thing about them is that you can write notes to yourself on them as well as use them as place-markers. (I'm one of those anal people who don't like to write in their books.)

 

[Miss Shelf]

oh, I dog-ear my own books and stick notes in them and in library books, but I'm talking about the stuff you didn't realize was important, till much later.

 

[KristoCat]

Yeah, it's in situations like this when you gotta wonder whether print is really superior to electronic, and wish that some kind of happy medium could be found between the two... something that you could do a search in, or mark up guilt-free, yet not strain your eyes sitting in front a screen. Don't get me wrong, I love print books and I will never stop reading them, but I completely know what you mean about wanting to search efficiently and mark things while reading.

 

[Billy]

oh, I dog-ear my own books and stick notes in them and in library books, but I'm talking about the stuff you didn't realize was important, till much later.

I would love some kind of 'find a text'. I seem to waste so much time searching back through books and reading whole chunks again because there is something I just know was important there and will shed light on what is going on further in the story. The problem is I often get side tracked in doing so and therefore, waste much more time by re-reading bits I liked, but don't necessarily need to read again.