谁让我们的阅读分心?

Can you concentrate on 1)Flaubert when Facebook is only a 2)swipe away, or give your true devotion to 3)Mr. Darcy while Twitter 4)beckons?

People who read e-books on tablets like the iPad are realizing that, while a book 5)in print or on a black-and-white 6)Kindle is straightforward and 7)immersive, a tablet offers a menu of 8)distractions that can 9)fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks.

E-mail 10)lurks 11)tantalizingly within reach. Looking up a 12)tricky word or unknown fact in the book is easily accomplished through a quick Google search. And if a book starts to drag, giving up on it to 13)stream a movie over Netflix or 14)scroll through your Twitter 15)feed is only a few taps away.

That adds up to a reading experience that is more like a 21st-century 16)cacophony than a traditional 17)solitary activity. And some of the millions of consumers who have bought tablets and sampled e-books on apps from Amazon, Apple and 18)Barnes& Noble have come away with a conclusion: It’s harder than ever to sit down and focus on reading.

For book publishers, who have already seen many consumers convert from print books to e-readers, the rise of tablets 19)poses a potential danger: if book buyers switch to tablets and then discover that they just aren’t very 20)amenable to reading, will they then gradually drift away from books, letting movies or the Internet occupy their leisure time instead?

Maja Thomas, the senior vice president for 21)Hachette Digital, part of the Hachette Book Group, hopes just the opposite occurs. “Someone who doesn’t have a habit of reading, and buys a tablet, is going to be offered all these opportunities for reading,”Ms. Thomas said, noting that tablets tend to come with at least one e-book app. “We’re hoping they will grow the number of people who will read.”

Sales of e-readers 22)surged during the Christmas holiday season, according to a 23)Pew Research Center report, which showed that the number of adults in the United States who owned tablets and e-readers nearly doubled from mid-December to early January.

But there are signs that publishers are 24)cooling on tablets for e-reading. A recent survey by 25)Forrester Research showed that 31 percent of publishers believed iPads and similar tablets were the ideal e-reading platform; one year ago, 46 percent thought so.

“The tablet is like a 26)temptress,” said James McQuivey, the Forrester Research analyst who led the survey. “It’s constantly saying, ‘You could be on YouTube now.’ Or it’s sending constant alerts that pop up, saying you just got an e-mail. Reading itself is trying to compete.” Indeed, the basic menu for the Kindle Fire offers links to video, apps, the Web, music, 27)newsstand and books, 28)effectively making books (once Amazon’s 29)stock in trade) just another menu option.

The issue of changing reader habits has been widely discussed by executives at Amazon, maker of the Kindle and Kindle Fire. Russ Grandinetti, the vice president for Kindle content, said one reason that the original Kindle, introduced in 2007 for$399, was not a multipurpose device was precisely so that people could immerse themselves without interruption.

The new Kindle Fire, by contrast, costs $199 and offers a variety of media options: video, Internet and all the potential interruptions that come with it. But Mr. Grandinetti said the device was not meant as a replacement for the first Kindle but, rather, a complement to it; different devices for people who want different experiences.

Many publishers believe that the market for both print books and black-and-white e-readers is not going away, despite the 30)pull of tablets. 31)Voracious book buyers were the first people to 32)latch onto e-readers, 33)prizing them for their convenience, portability and features like text zooming that made it easier for older people to read. Now those e-readers are lighter, 34)sleeker and cost less than $100―even a cheap tablet is more than double the cost―so 35)techshy consumers who want a device just for reading books and not much else have little 36)incentive to upgrade.

If e-readers remain significantly less expensive than tablets, there may be a market for them for a long time. But Mr. McQuivey of Forrester said that it is more likely that tablets will eventually 37)edge out black-and-white e-readers. “The historical 38)precedent suggests that’s the case,” he said, citing the 39)Palm Pilot, digital point-and-shoot cameras and portable GPS systems for the car as items that have been gradually displaced by multifunction devices. “There’s less and less reason to have these as 40)stand-alone devices.”

For Erin Faulk, a 29-year-old legal assistant and voracious reader in Los Angeles, the era of e-readers has had one major effect: she has accumulated many more books that she categorizes as “DNFs” ― Did Not Finish. But she is also buying more books, she said, and she thinks that all the interruptions have, in a way, made her a more 41)discerning reader. “With so many distractions, my taste in books has really leveled up,” Ms. Faulk said. “Recently, I 42)gravitate to books that make me forget I have a world of entertainment at my fingertips. If the book’s not good enough to do that, I guess my time is better spent.”

假如脸谱网触手可及，你还能全神贯注拜读福楼拜的作品吗？或者当推特在向你招手时，你还能专注于达西先生么？

那些在如iPad之类的平板电脑上看电子书的人们日渐发现，一本印刷书籍，或者黑白显示的Kindle阅读器能给人一种直接的沉浸式阅读体验；与之相比，平板电脑提供了丰富的菜单选项，带来了大量干扰，打断了阅读过程，甚至使阅读无法进行下去。

电子邮件就潜伏在触手可及的范围内，让人急于查看。通过谷歌搜索，查看书中出现的任何生僻词或未知信息显得轻而易举。一旦书中情节让人感觉有点拖沓，只要简单地触碰几下屏幕，便能立马在线观看网飞公司提供的电影，或翻看推特上的推送内容。

这一切使得阅读更像是一种21世纪的嘈杂和声，而非传统的个人活动。数百万消费者买了平板电脑，并通过亚马逊、苹果和巴诺书店的应用程序购买了电子样书，但其中的部分消费者得出了一个共同结论：如今坐下来集中精神地看书比以往难多了。

图书出版商们已看到很多消费者从纸质书籍转向了电子图书，对他们而言，平板电脑的崛起带来了潜在危机：如果图书购买者都转向平板电脑，随后又发现其不太适合阅读，那么他们会否就此逐渐远离图书，而让电影和互联网成为他们的主要消遣？

马亚・托马斯是阿歇特出版集团下属阿歇特图书数字传媒的高级副总裁，她对此事有不一样的期望。“那些本没有阅读习惯的人，买了平板电脑之后，反而有更多机会去阅读，”托马斯女士如是说。她指出，平板电脑上一般会预装至少一个电子书阅读程序。“我们希望这会促使更多人阅读。”

美国佩尤研究中心的一份报告显示，从十二月中旬至一月初，美国拥有平板电脑和电子阅读器的成人数量几乎翻了一番，这说明电子阅读器的销售在圣诞节期间激增。

但同时也有迹象表明，出版商开始放缓在平板电脑上推进电子阅读的步伐。弗雷斯特研究公司近期的一项调查显示，31%的出版商认为iPad及同类平板电脑是理想的电子阅读平台；然而一年前这个比例高达46%。

“平板电脑就像诱人的女妖，”负责弗雷斯特研究公司此次调查的分析师詹姆斯・麦奎威说，“它总是在告诉人们，‘现在你可以上YouTube了。’又或者不断弹出收到新邮件的提醒。阅读本身也得竞争一番。”确实如此，亚马逊推出的平板电脑“烈火”的基本菜单上就提供了多种链接，包括视频、应用程序、网页、音乐、报摊和图书，实际上就将图书（曾经是亚马逊的核心业务）变成了菜单中的选项之一。

作为Kindle和“烈火”的制造者的亚马逊，其高层管理者皆已对读者阅读习惯的转变这一问题进行过广泛研讨。负责Kindle业务的副总裁拉斯・格兰迪内蒂说，2007年以399美元价格上市的首款Kindle，正因为它不是一款多用途的设备，所以才能给用户提供不受干扰的沉浸式阅读体验。

新款的“烈火”则恰恰相反，售价仅为199美元，却提供了多种媒体功能选择：视频、互联网和其他随之而来的潜在干扰。不过，格兰迪内蒂先生说，这款新设备不是为了取代之前推出的Kindle，而是作为一种补充，为有不同体验需要的人们提供不同的设备。

许多出版商认为，即使平板电脑有着如此大的吸引力，印刷书籍和黑白屏的电子阅读器也不会从此销声匿迹。如饥似渴的购书者是第一批投奔电子阅读器的人，因为他们看中了电子阅读器的方便、轻巧和缩放字体等适合老年人阅读的功能。如今，电子阅读器越来越轻，线条越加优美，而且花费不超过100美元――即使一台廉价的平板电脑也要至少两倍的价钱――所以那些有“科技恐惧症”的消费者，如果只不过想要一款阅读设备而没有其他需求的话，就不会有升级的想法。

如果能保持比平板电脑廉价这一优势的话，电子阅读器也许会长期存在市场需求。不过，弗雷斯特研究公司的麦奎威先生认为，平板电脑很可能最终会将黑白屏电子阅读器排挤出市场。“历史先例暗示着这一趋势，”他说，同时引用了掌上电脑Palm Pilot、傻瓜型数码相机和手持汽车卫星定位系统等例子，这些设备最终都被多功能设备所取代了。“单一功能设备存在的理由会越来越少。”

29岁的艾玲・福尔克是洛杉矶一名法律助理和书虫。对她而言，电子阅读器时代对她产生的一个重大影响是：她积累了更多被她归类为“DNFs”的书――即“未完成”。不过， 她还是不断地购入新书。而且她认为，所有遇到的干扰，在某种程度上，使她成为一名更有分辨力的读者。“面对如此多的干扰，我对书的品味也提升了，”福尔克女士说，“最近，我倾向于那些能使我忘却这个娱乐就在指尖的时代的书籍。如果一本书不能精彩如此，我想我就该把时间花到其他更有意思的事情上。”