Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Reading Books via email and rss


Would you read a book from your email or an rss feed? I am going to try it out. My initial thought is yes of course I would, but time will tell. I am a little skeptical of myself.

Dailylit began in May of 2007 from an idea generated from the NY Times special supplements of serialized classics. Dailylit takes the same approach only through email or rss.

I've been reading "The Message" online this way for the past two years. Yes, many days I do not read it as the amount of text that is emailed is longer than I have time to read. But it is designed to be read in its entirety in one year. I didn't make it.

So this will be interesting - will the book I chose, "The Secret Adversary" by Agatha Christie, be sectioned into emails that are of a length that I have time to deal with in email? They state 5 minutes to read each email, but . . .

I love the concept, but realize the success of reading a book on email is based on the length of the section sent, the number of days each week that I receive it and how busy I am. As you can see I haven't posted since the beginning of December, but my hard drive failed and is still in the shop and I am on vacation borrowing my other family members' laptops when they are not on them. At least with Dailylit, I can read the book from my Blackberry.

As part of the profile options, I chose daily rather than during the week only or Mon., Wed., Fri. to get in the habit, but I may find this is too often to deal with and switch to Mon., Wed., Fri. I also chose to receive the book via my personal email rather than work email or rss. Based on stress, projects, time, etc. I may or may not get to my personal email every day. Rare, but it does happen.

I do like the option of getting another email right away if I have time that day, but I can also see these emails piling up faster than I can read them. Perhaps I better go switch my profile right now to Mon., Wed., Fri.

There is a blog for comments. About 100,000 users have subscribed as of the Publishers Weekly article of 12/12/07. Sounds like there are a lot of folks out there with better habits than mine. I like that you can post to forums about the book that you are reading. I'll be interested to see if I hear back from anyone reading my choice. Might be a good way to do a book club!

Check it out - it may just be your cup of tea!

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