The eight-hour miniseries of Ken Follett‘s The Pillars of the Earth starts tonight on Starz at 10 p.m. EST, and you can also now download Penguin’s nifty “Amplified Edition” of the novel for your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. Buy it for $12.99 through the App Store.
Here’s a video explaining what to expect from the amplified edition, which includes video footage blended into the eBook, an interactive character tree, Follett’s “multimedia diary” and more:
Will you be watching The Pillars of the Earth on TV tonight, or downloading the amplified edition? Is contextual video an exciting advantage of eBooks, or does it distract from the text?
Digression: I am admittedly old school when it comes to reading, and here I can’t help but think of Newbery winner Laura Amy Schlitz’s comment to me in March about why her students enjoy reading: they say, “I like it when I make the pictures up in my head. I like to see the pictures in my head.” Is some of that participation lost when you’re being fed video of what the characters look like?
In other Follett news, are you excited about the author’s newest book, the 1,000-page Fall of Giants, out Sept. 28? (When we posted about the book back in April, some of you were turned off by the $36 price tag.)
“Is some of that participation lost when you’re being fed video of what the characters look like?”
Definitely. That’s why I enjoy reading so much. I don’t *mind* a movie based on a book but it’s a completely different experience.
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