I can't imagine trying to manage this on an e-reader. If the notes popped up in a window over the text it would be an ideal way to experience the book, but every epub reader I've ever used makes jumping around a pain and I have a really hard time even hitting the index links on a touchscreen.

I think some sort of hypertext format would be perfect for being able to go back and forth or separate windows open for poem and prose, similar to what others are suggesting with two copies of the book.

When I tell people the UI of paper books is in most ways superior to ebook readers, this is the kind of thing I mean.

They do take up a shitload less space, which is a pretty big advantage, though.

I would disagree strongly with this. :)

The e-reader UI is generally so much better than paper, if a book is not available for kindle, I'll usually find something else to read. Pale Fire is a special case book where you want two have bookmarks where you are currently working. I read Chuck Palahniuk's Diary on paper, and an e-reader would definitely have ruined it.

Technical books with a lot of charts, diagrams, monospaced code examples, etc can highlight the weaknesses of e-readers. PDFs are almost always better on a tablet.

But for like, words-in-a-row novels that don't mind being re-wrapped, there is no comparison, for me. e-Reader every time.

Yes, they are fine for books with no features but body text and no important formatting or layout, and that the reader progresses through entirely linearly. Those are the sorts of books they’re best-suited to.

> Those are the sorts of books they’re best-suited to.

Which is 98% of novels. e-Readers are even great for books with lots of end notes or foot notes. It's great for flipping between those. I had no problem reading Infinite Jest, for example.

I guess if my copy of Pale Fire had hyperlinked all the poem line mentions, I would have been fine. :)

Now I'm wondering if I could write a quick script to annotate mine thusly...

Ie. 99% of fiction books

I prefer paper as an experience, but there are absolutely ways that (e.g.) a Kindle can be superior.

* Control of text size * Weight

I forget what it was, but at some point I was excitedly reading a new hardback -- and found it so heavy to read in bed that I bought the Kindle edition in addition to the paper one. This also applies for travel, doubly so.

They do replace the need for printing separate large-print editions, which is nice.

100% agreed.

I'm the kind of reader that goes back and forth when reading a novel. I like to go back and re-read when a character was introduced, or simply go back a few pages.

The UI of the Kindle sucks for this. It excels at finding a specific sentence, of course, but not for the kind of flipping pages I enjoy doing.

This is also true of _Infinite Jest_, for the same reason.

I read both on paper, using two bookmarks.

I read Infinite Jest on my Kindle without any problems. So long as the end notes are linked, it works pretty well. If I had a copy of Pale Fire where the poem line references were linked, it would probably be fine too.

Some readers say that paper sucks too. The right scheme is to get two copies that advance together. So they could be either Kindle or paper or a mixture.

Who says that paper sucks? I've never met such a reader, and there are many readers among my friends and family.

What people who adopted e-readers often say is that e-readers can be more convenient and take less space.

But nobody says "paper sucks".

Keyword search is a big win for eReaders. (This is a bit ironic in a discussion of _Pale Fire_ where the trad index is a big part of the game.)

When you mix in the weight and the other issues with paper, it's not just inconvenient.

I'm happy to say that compared to eReaders, paper sucks. I just don't buy paper copies any more -- and I can access any new ebook in my library from any vacation hammock.

Or noDRM, and either duplicate it or split the epub in Calibre.

i read it on a kindle and a laptop so i didn't need to flip back and forth