I like to think of books as one of the most untainted forms of entertainment in the modern world. While other things (such as video games and movies and magazines) are buzzing with advertisements and product placement and making the next model even more snazzy and high-tech and distracting than the last version, books have been delightfully simple.
Then I started noticing side stories worked into the books. Lists and personal anecdotes and going into more great detail about a sentence touched upon earlier. It wouldn’t be too bad if it was, say, a picture referenced to at one point in the text. But there’s no good stopping point for me to take a break from what I’m reading and read the little blurb. I end up having to stop at the end of a paragraph, read the distracting blurb, and then start back in the main text. Or else I ignore the blurb, but there’s this little part of my brain that’s saying “But what did that say?”
But when I read a book, I don’t want to go jumping around all over the place. I want things to be in the proper order, and I want to be able to easily read them in the proper order. Does this bother anyone else?
I believe they are called “footnotes.” They can be safely ignored, unless you are reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, in which case they are more important than the main text.
Okay, I found an example. Click on Look Inside. There’s a mini-story stuck in on page 7. I want to read the story, but it interrupts the reading I’m already doing.
I’ll give it a 7 of 10, it is an amusing conceit and almost sounds like a legitimate complaint/problem. I woud have graded it higher if a better example was provided.
Is there a name for the side text in boxes that happen so often in textbooks and magazines? Some of them include pictures. Usually the text font is different. They’re not footnotes.
This is certainly humbling. I was struggling to find words to describe what I was referring to, and then this person says it in four words: side text in boxes.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sidebar in a novel. Textbooks, reference books (scholarly or popular), sometimes non-fiction works such as political analysis, but almost never in novels. In other words, I very rarely see sidebars in books that have a defined narrative that would be derailed by a sidebar.
ETA: And looking at the example given by the OP, it’s a reference book (more or less). It’s certainly not a book I would read for enjoyment, but rather to learn something. I don’t see how that book has any kind of narrative that you could be derailed from.
Yes, they are called sidebars. They are seldom used in novels, except for the most experimental of texts, but are common in various types of non-fiction. They emerged out of newspapers, where they are extremely common. (First newspaper use of the word is dated 1948.) Many websites have equivalent devices today.
Sidebars are used precisely because they allow authors to go more deeply and thoroughly into a subject that either is not strictly part of the main narrative or would be too technical for most readers or are so important that it’s worth culling them out so the information can’t be missed and is in one handy location. It is done to *minimize *the distraction from the main text. It also can allow the art director to package them in better formats than straight text, making them more readable. I’ve used them myself, even planned one whole book around their use.
Apparently there are some readers for whom these have the opposite effect. I apologize on behalf of all authors. Unfortunately, the majority of readers prefer this method. You can’t please everybody all the time.
I think the problem identified by the OP is this: Over the past decade or so, in certain types of nonfiction books, there seems to be a tendency towards excessive use of sidebars – to the point where it’s hard to tell what is the main narrative and what is the sidebar. It’s like the authors are going out of their way to use sidebars even when it would be easier not to… just because sidebars are soooo cutting edge… like, “Hey, this is the new post-Internet multitasking way of processing information, dude. Linearity is so last century.” Maybe I’m an old fogy, but that does annoy me.
