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Comment by thrownaway2424 | Hacker News Reader

Try reading Infinite Jest on a Kindle. Half of the book is in the end notes.

I actually read IJ on a Kindle and found it significantly easier for the most part than reading it in print because of links to endnotes, which removed the requirement to keep two sets of bookmarks (if you haven't read it, some endnotes in IJ are a sentence are two, some are 40 pages). There were some occasional issues with going back to the main text (IIRC the back button's stack wasn't saved across sleep), but overall it was much better for me.

But no, I'd never read a textbook on a Kindle. Can't flip around.

I thought the loss of the back button during sleep was infuriating.

I don't understand why every application/website hasn't started to use end/footnotes of the same responsiveness as sites like http://marco.org

I don't know if that style would even work for Infinite Jest. David Foster Wallace, the author, is known for his extensive use of frequent, long, multi-page, and often multi-level (footnotes having footnotes) notes.

I look at how Grantland has adjusted to using footnotes, since several of their writers (Bill Simmons, Chuck Klosterman) were influenced, in some part, by Wallace and utilize lots of footnotes, and think it's a decent experience on desktop, but not that great on mobile devices.

The Kindle can't do things like that. Also in the case of the book I mentioned some of the endnotes are dozens of pages long. Those won't fit in a little animated bubble. Some of the endnotes also have their own footnotes.

I made the mistake of buying Pale Fire on Kindle. It is basically unreadable due it's structure.

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