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Too heavy! Wish for e-book versions

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

By Paul Biba

I’ve just started The Adventures of Amir Hamza, published by Modern Library. Here’s the blurb from the Modern Library site:

image-hamza.jpgThe 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.

9780140911664L.jpgThe 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.)

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