Sunday, February 5, 2012

Re: Book's "Content Delivery Design"

Anthony's Question:

Can you think of a book content delivery design and/or scheme which makes a book easy to read and stay connected and vested with the characters while offering great stopping and starting points so you can read over time?

This is tricky, because I think it is entirely dependent upon the content of the book. Sometimes, no matter how beautiful and organized the design, it is not easy to start and stop because the content is dense (someone used the earlier example of Game of Thrones, with their ridiculous amount of characters). Or perhaps a book explaining quantum physics.

I think design cues are certainly helpful, but I can't quite think of a book that relied on design alone to facilitate smooth stopping and starting points. I do find that non-fiction books are easier to put down and come back to (again, depending on the topic). I try not to stop reading in the middle of a chapter, but if that is inevitable, when I do make my way back to the book, I always read the last page or so to refresh myself.

One book I just finished, that I found myself able to pick up again with relative ease was Edward O. Wilson's The Future of Life. Chapters included:


1- To the Ends of Earth
2- The Bottleneck

3- Nature's Last Stand
4- The Planetary Killer
5- How Much is the Biosphere Worth?
6- For the Love of Life
7- The Solution
followed by Notes, Glossary, Acknowledgements, and Index.

Front cover (with a little peephole that reveals a second cover)
Second inside cover --(Pretty sure that's not the technical term for it)