A book reading stand (or ??) that is easy to flip pages?

September 7, 2020 4:29 AM

I want to be able to read in a more ergonomic way without bending my head down, or having to hold the book up with my hands. But all the stands I've found (or tried) are a pain in the ass to flip pages, which seems super strange to me! Looking for...an alternative!

What it says on the lid. Ideally I want some sort of stand that I can use to keep a physical book at eye level. Said stand would keep the pages open for clear reading and, critically, be relatively easy to turn pages. All the stands I've found are strangely difficult to turn pages which I guess is ok if your pages are very long/difficult (textbooks for studying?), but for fun reading are a bit of a dealbreaker!

Searching on amazon I see some "page weights" which look interesting, but I imagine that it wouldn't work with a stand that keeps the book upright (the weight would just slide down).

I feel like some book loving inventor has to have come up with something better but I haven't been able to find it!

I have a kindle, which in a sense is perfect for solving this, but not all books are available digitally (especially for Chinese, which is mostly what I'm reading these days). So I'd still like a physical solution if there is one. Plus, I'm sure you can all appreciate, there's just something about paper books~

posted by wooh to Shopping (8 answers total)

Have you looked at music stands?
posted by gnutron at 5:28 AM on September 7, 2020

Response by poster: The issue with music stands is that they don't keep the book open (at least as far as I know). If you have sheet music or a thin book meant to be kept open wide, it's fine. But for a thick book which will close without pressure or something, I don't think it'll work.
posted by wooh at 5:39 AM on September 7, 2020

The best I managed in law school was a stand with elastic loops that kept the pages down. Rather than set the elastics on the current page, I would set them at the beginning and end of that day's assigned reading. Usually if you anchor the covers down, and most of the pages, a small group of interior pages will do basically what you want them to, though depending on the book and where you are in the book and in a given binding signature, sometimes you would still need to rest a hand lightly on it to keep the current pages reasonably flat.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:31 AM on September 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

I looked into this some years ago and at the time couldn't find any good solution, other than automatic page turning devices (which exist but are expensive unless you have the ability to make one yourself).

For books where I didn't care much about the binding but did expect to be reading them for long enough to make this worthwhile, I got their binding removed (sawed off) and had holes drilled (you want a special hollow drill bit for this) and bound with rings such that they could rest flat against a stand with no annoying clip to hold the pages in place. Spiral binding might have been a better idea to avoid accidental page ripping.
posted by trig at 7:32 AM on September 7, 2020

These seem to be advertised as treadmill reading clips, but could probably be combined with a traditional book stand pretty easily.
posted by theweasel at 7:43 AM on September 7, 2020

There are music stands with arms, like this amazon link. I have no experience with this random item, but could work, depending on book.
posted by sageleaf at 9:50 AM on September 7, 2020

i can't remember what the brand was, but when mu mom got sick, it helped a lot - it's a pyramid shaped pillow that you can use pretty much anywhere - you just might need some page weights, if you don't have all full hand capacity

ETA: it might have been from levenger!
posted by megan_magnolia at 10:29 AM on September 7, 2020

The needs change depending on whether you are sitting or standing or lying. For desk reading, I'd try a desk easel like this one. You might need to increase the lip size. I used to use one when I had to mark a bunch of student papers.
You can also try the less portable kind of music 'band' stand for standing reading. I use one as a laptop stand for zoom exercise sessions.

As for page securing, besides the other's suggestions, you could try using large bull dog clips. They hold the pages together and weight them down.

I think the ideal would be a version of the table easle on a flexible arm. Something like this, but with a flexible arm that can be clamped to a table edge or arm of a chair.
posted by BrStekker at 2:46 AM on September 8, 2020