Amazon announced a few new Kindle features last week, including “recaps” to help you catch up on what happened previously in a book series and something called “Ask this Book,” which supposedly allows you to “stay immersed in your books” by letting you “highlight any passage in a book you’ve bought or borrowed.” Then, “Ask this Book allows you to ask questions about what you’re reading, right on the page.”
First of all, it’s not accurate to describe a feature that pulls you away from reading as something that helps you “stay immersed.” I wouldn’t say that I was “present and engaged” on a date if I left the table to ask someone sitting across the restaurant how they thought it was going.
Glomming new features onto things that we’ve figured out—like books, already a pretty perfect technology!—is what tech guys like Jeff “The Most Divorced Guy of The Year” Bezos love more than anything else. These new doodads are often flashy, but always seem a little off the mark. Adding a book explainer to a book reminds me of what happened to the cars on that old MTV show Pimp My Ride: they looked cool for one episode, but were in many cases rendered undrivable. Ultimately Amazon doesn’t seem interested in getting out of the way and letting you enjoy a book.
Besides: do we really need this feature? Is it old fashioned of me to think that it’s okay to be a little confused or lost at times? That a little unease won’t be the death of the reading experience? Or that reading the book is the best way to understand what a book is saying? This feature makes me want to shout like Don Draper: Questions about a book you’re reading? That’s what the book is for! [Ed. note: Or, like, ask a friend, rather than sink even further into non-human faux-interaction…]
