London Review of Books

Why would the LRB deliver an otherwise solid mobile app, that doesn’t support annotations! Hopefully that is only temporary, because I enjoy reading much more when I can markup my copy with highlights and margin notes. Luckily, I can do so by generating a PDF of an article off the LRB’s web site, usually via the Safari web browser’s Markup command. Many PDF readers allow me to handwrite margin notes on a tablet, and highlight passages, names and expressions that spark my interest. I derive so much more pleasure and benefit from an article when I engage it actively like this. While it’s great that the LRB’s web version offers the capability, please support me in a future version of the app. Generating a good PDF of the article inside the app would be perfect, as I can then archive my annotations in my favorite note-taking app.

This app functions really well and is very easy to use, and it is a wonderful addition particularly during the pandemic when paper copies arrive late or sometimes not at all. But the choice of font size needs some work. There are only three or four settings and the difference — on an iPad mini — between the smallest size and the next largest is comically large. The smallest size means about 39 lines of an average 10 words each on the screen. He next size up is 25 lines of an average of about 6-7 words per line. There really should be something in between.

Or on a computer, really. I do plenty of it but w/o the patience i’ve learned w/ print. W/ patience comes focus, which goes on its merry way not tithering. A great app for reading when you’ve left your hard copy behind, which arrives promptly, probably before you knew it. The week or two behind i’m usually at w/ print (often longer or alrogether lost depending on fluctuations in my schedule) does not exist here. I’m as current as a reader in the UK. I haven’t tried printing from here, but maybe that’s something i would do w longer stories ive since recycled or that are from the archive. There is a “download” option for each issue. On my iphone, I’m sure I could. You are not going to get anything more here than what you came for. A rare thing indeed in this hypertechno, online world we’re in. A blessed thing indeed. Thanks,