Having a sieve-like memory, one thing I like about e-readers is that if you’re reading a novel, and forget, say, a character’s name, you can search on that name for its first appearance, where the character is (usually) properly introduced.
However …
What if, in your search, you inadvertently land on a chapter heading (in initial table of contents) that gives away a crucial future development?
Or, what if, in your search, you inadvertently get a “hit” that is ahead of where you’re at in the text, which also gives away a crucial future development?
These most undesirable outcomes furnish the rationale for my proposal, which I will call “spoiler-free search”. Here’s the idea: The reader would be able to set up parameters, so as to restrict the search “window” as follows:
BEGINNING OF SEARCH WINDOW: Start the search at beginning of the actual narrative. (That would usually be the beginning of Chapter I … after the table of contents, introduction, etc)
END OF SEARCH WINDOW: End the search at the point you have reached in your reading progress.
With the two above restrictions in place, the reader will only get those search “hits” that occur in the part of the book that they have already read. No unwelcome “giveaways”!
Like my idea? Comments welcome. Of course, if you are aware of such a spoiler-free search capability built into any e-reader or e-reading program out there, please let me know.
lessthanamegabyte 