Walk around a major city these days, and it’s hard to find someone reading or carrying a book. People have their nose in their phones or they have headphones on.
Sure, some of those people may be reading e-books or audiobooks, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that books are losing ground to apps and podcasts.
Do you get worried about the place books will have in culture as more and more people turn to their phones for entertainment and information?
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Art: Vanitas still life with skull, books, prints and paintings by Rembrandt and Jan Lievens, with a reflection of the painter at work by Simon Luttichuys
No, I wasn’t worried books are losing their place in culture UNTIL you asked! Damn you, Nathan! So here’s my revenge. Are YOU worried about the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands erupting and producing a tidal wave that will destroy the entire US east coast, including New York? I DARE you not to Google it!
The Star Wars universe is pretty much illiterate:
https://www.tor.com/2012/10/03/most-citizens-of-the-star-wars-galaxy-are-probably-totally-illiterate/
I think for Americans, at least, the main usage of literacy today is reading signs. And texting. And dealing with bureaucracy. (The Rebels in Star Wars probably didn’t deal much with the bureaucracy.)
As for books:
https://time.com/5282168/jimmy-kimmel-man-on-the-street-books/
Nonetheless, the Jedi Archives are full of books and clearly based on the design of the Long Room of the library of Trinity College in Dublin. Or maybe the other way around, given Star Wars is set ‘A long time ago’…
I wonder if it’s just the culture of books that’s changing. People still seem to be buying and reading books, but perhaps it’s simply less public? Perhaps it’s more private, more focused, more intentional; quickly checking your phone is easier to do when you’re stuck in a line or have a few minutes to wait. I know that for me, phones and social media and online news are handy for those spare minutes during the day. Staying abreast of things. I check world news (and Manchester United news) while going to the bathroom. I read books when I have a piece of substantial time when I can curl up on the couch, often with a child perched on my head. Reading isn’t for wimps in my house…
I might have my head buried in the sandwich of a book, but I’m not really too worried about books going out of style. I feel the ebook is just adding a new medium. I’m more worried about the gap being created as picture books are shooting for lower and lower word counts while novels are spiraling higher in their word counts. What about the in-betweeners? Are graphic novels and comic books really our only alternative?
Ni, not at all. In fact, I think erasers and the lower price on most ebooks make them more accessible than ever. People who enjoy reading will always read, and that’s generally something that starts when we’re young, and as our lives get busier than ever, we need the quiet distraction books allow us. I do, however, worry about the quality of stories these days, particularly in the various romance categories, but to each her own, right?
Too much Friday night sangria I guess. That should be “No” and “ereaders”.
Yeah, Nancy, you are so right. It is also true for my country Sweden where most of the new writers write quite badly. I have recently read a some of the classical books of Conan Doyle and Jules Verne and have been able to compare them to some of the new Swedish year-2000 writers. You’d very quickly return to the classics unless you want to make a mess of your literary taste.
Any article, blog or book about the benefits from reading – and writing – good books would surely be very welcome.
-Bjorn
Interesting, Bjorn. Your comment raises a question in my mind that I’ve often asked myself. Why does anybody ever buy or read new novels, given the tens of thousands available for little or nothing in libraries and second-hand bookstores and as free ebooks? And why WRITE new novels? But people do both in vast numbers. A possible ‘You tell me’ question, perhaps?
I grew up during a time when the only entertainment was radio and movie theatre – and books. Not to mention being the only depository for information. However, even then, there were people who only read the newspaper, or read occasionally, or who read voraciously.. I speculate, perhaps, that an almost similar percentage of those disposed to reading still enjoy reading, and there will always be those who enjoy reading occasionally and those who follow other pursuits. After all, most of the world’s knowledge is still contained in books, and books are still the main way that colleges and schools share the wisdom. And novels are filled with ideas and concepts that play out in story form, and readers will always be fascinated by interesting characters and the consequences of the choices as revealed throughout the story. Many of the best movies have been based on novels.
Books may be losing their place in culture but I’m not really worried about it. I’m more concerned with the shrinking of our attention spans due to newer (relatively speaking) technological platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. But that’s a different matter, sort of.
The reason I’m not worried about books losing their place is because we will always be interested in story-telling. We always have been and always will be. Whether the story is delivered orally while sitting around a fire in a cave, over the radio, or on paper, or some new app that has just been developed…a great story will always capture our attention and imagination, I believe.
But we do need our attention spans to sit down with it and hear it through. Hmmm…
Great question, Nathan.
Losing its place? Books already have lost their place in the mainstream; book people are now a small slice. While that may not be a big change, the “non-book” people no longer look to books as being at least a symbol of something they want to strive for. Pop culture has washed over society, and books just ain’t cool. Now that we pretend to be a literate society we seem to have lost the pretense that it matters, and have lost the process of rational thinking. Besides, books have these things called ideas, and you can’t run a mass popular culture based on ideas. No sir. Give me the right to have any opinion I want and I don’t need either facts or ideas.