The digital revolution has changed many things, not only the way we do things but the way we measure things as well. Remember when digital clocks began to outnumber analog clocks? You could always tell what kind of watches people had on their wrists. If they looked at their watch and said, “It’s almost 1:30,” they had analog. If they said, “It’s 1:24,” they had a digital. Another of these insidious changes is how we measure the amount of a book we’re reading. No longer do we say, “I’m on page 101,” or “I’m almost half way;” nowadays, most of us will say, “I’m at 44 percent,” because that’s the way our eReaders show our progress.
No big deal, right? It’s just a matter of getting used to something new and letting go of the old way that is no longer applicable.
Except for one thing. Continue reading “EBooks: 95% Done — But Are You Really?”
Recently I was beta-reading a book for a friend. He had told me before I began reading that it was a “new-age thriller.” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but it sounded intriguing, so I was all in. As I read, though, and the story unfolded, I kept looking for those thriller sequences but they were nowhere to be found. I found myself getting frustrated, wanting to get into the meat of the genre, but the narrative was taking its sweet time. Finally it became clear to me that this book was not a thriller. It had a very few thriller elements, but they actually only occurred in the last 10% of the book and they were not anywhere near the fast-paced, clock-ticking, heart-pounding sequences I was used to (and expected). While the book was good as far as it went, and well-written, it was decidedly miscategorized, and I told him so.