I’ve just started The Adventures of Amir Hamza, published by Modern Library. Here’s the blurb from the Modern Library site:
The Adventures of Amir Hamza or the Dastan-e Amir Hamza is a grand epic from the Islamic cultures of the Middle East and beyond. Rooted in the legends of valour of prophet Muhammad’s uncle, Amir Hamza, the narrative attracted legends of greater and lesser heroes and became a compendium of exploits of the fictional character Amir Hamza and his companions. For the first time Western readers have a complete text from the Urdu language which cultivated this essentially oral narrative to introduce enchanted kingdoms and extra-terrestrial realms. This is the first major translation of an Urdu classic in 300 years.
I haven’t read enough of it yet to comment on the text, but it is not a comfortable read. The book is 2 inches (5.08cm) thick and weighs 2.5 pounds (1.13kg). Not easy to hold or to turn the pages.
The other problem book I currently have is The Arabian Nights Tales of 1001 Nights in the new translation published by Penguin Classics. This is a boxed, 3 volume set that I got from Amazon UK. It’s not available in the States yet.
Each volume is also about 2.5 (6.35cm) inches thick and weighs about 3 pounds (1.36kg). It is going to be a real pain to read. Neither volume contains any illustrations, so it would be so wonderful if they were available in e-book format. What about older people, or those with arthritis. Reading these books might be impossible for them. An e-book version would be a blessing.
(By the way, why do people put the footnotes at the end of the book? It’s so much easier to read when they are at the bottom of the page. On an e-book note, I haven’t seen an e-book yet that handles footnotes well.)
I think that eReader actually handles footnotes pretty well. Click the footnote link and it pops up in a box in the screen (or temporarily replaces what’s on the screen right now), then click the “back to document” link to return to where you were.
Of course, it can be kind of hard to click the footnote link if it’s a little tiny superscript number. (For this reason, I always refer to footnotes in eReader books I prepare by putting (Footnote 1) in full size instead of a superscript number.)
>>>On an e-book note, I haven’t seen an e-book yet that handles footnotes well.
After “The People of the Abyss,” I was going to do an ePub version of London’s “The Iron Heel,” which I hadn’t read. Then I saw it was filled with footnotes! (At the bottom of each page, btw.) Frightened me off.
A footnote to that, do you know HTML only specifies a *few* fractions in code? What eejit approved that? “Abyss” has more than the coded few — and having to format them with code makes them look like crap compared to the coded ones!
My personal favorite for footnotes is simply placing the note after the paragraph. I know it’s a footnote but, at least for me, I’m going to read it anyway. (I prefer this method only for the fact that I don’t have to wait for a page turn, which could be slow, or support from the reader, which is rare.)
And Mike, until someone decides that MathML should be a part of ePub, how about this formula (although you may have already tried it):
<sup><font size=-2>3</font></sup>/<sub><font size=-2>4</font></sub>
3/4
They look better in an actual document (and in the preview before I hit Submit). I also failed to mention that they can mess up the line spacing in many browsers/readers. :-/
“The Adventures of Amir Hamza” is currently available for the Kindle; only $8.00 on 1/11/09. There are a lot of footnotes easily clicked. I think the Kindle handles footnotes well enough, probably even better than a dead tree book with endnotes, if the ebook is properly formatted.
The new translation of “The Arabian Nights Tales of 1001 Nights” is not available in the United States. A quick search on Amazon didn’t show a forthcoming date.
Thanks! Just bought it. The p-book goes back into the bookshelf.
I, too, am getting ready to start “Amir Hamza” in the print version. It is the next hardcover in my pile. I hadn’t thought about the ebook version, but since it has been mentioned as available for the Kindle, I thought I’d check the Sony store (I have a Sony 505). It’s available there for $17.50. I think I’ll stick with the pbook version since I already own it.