Scholars and practitioners: How do you read? (Not “how do you recognize shapes and turn them into meaning,” although that’s plenty interesting in its own right.)
I pretty much gave up reading for pleasure some time in high school (probably right around the time I was forced to read The Grapes of Wrath); I’ve probably read a dozen novels in the last thirteen or fourteen years. Now I read internet crap (news, essentially) and technical material, things found online and most easily consumed via LCD screen.
Except, for some reason, research papers. I can’t read research online. It doesn’t sink into my brain in any meaningful way unless I kill a tree and curl up with a stapled, 2-up duplexed printed copy and a highlighter or two. (I haven’t yet figured out why this is; perhaps my technique is broken—see below.)
And yet there are plenty of lovely PDF readers for the Mac: Skim (which I do use for LaTeX preview), Papers (winner of an Apple Design Award), and so forth. Clearly some people are able to consume journal articles and conference proceedings electronically, else there would be no demand for such tools.
So I ask: How do you consume your research or other non-reference technical material? Online or offline? More to the point: is there some refinement to my reading technique that will allow me to use a different medium (ideally, an electronic copy plus PDF annotation)? Or am I doomed to my pulpy ways?
These two problems are related in that they both stem from the message being pushed on Americans that anything is possible. That’s the American dream, isn’t it? That anyone can do anything in America. With respect to physical appearance, girls seem to have internalized the message, from shows like America’s Next Top Model and Extreme Makeover, that it’s not only possible but desirable and easy for any woman to be ridiculously gorgeous. Clearly too many Americans literally bought into the idea that they could own homes, without regard to the realistic limits of their income.
