I chose as my second book to scan for Bookshare a collection of fantasy writing
by Lord Dunsany, namely a short work of short stories (some of them very short)
entitled "Tales of Three Hemispheres". The book is 160 pages long, including a
longish forward by H.P. Lovecraft.
HOWEVER
The edition of the book I have available is an "arty" one. It contains 14
full-page illustrations, as well as large standardized illustrations at the
beginning and end of each story, none of which really add anything to the text,
and none of them of particular artistic value. (The illustrations in the
original 1919 edition were done by the great fantasy artist Sidney Sime, these
are not the originals.) Moreover, each illustration is either preceded or
followed by a blank page, and there are random blank pages spread throughout
the book. Finally, this edition features a large font and very wide margins
all around. At a guess, this 160-page book might have as many as 50 pages of
text, were it printed without illustrations, blank pages, and with a smaller
font and narrower margins.
What concerns me is that the reading experience of this book as a Bookshare
book would be constantly interrupted by new pages (i.e. page number
announcements), blank pages, or pages with nothing on them but an image not
really worth describing. The whole art of Lord Dunsany is in his beautifully
crafted text.
Is all this a problem? Is it worth, do you think, continuing with this book?
Bill Korn
