Inspired by my Lit and Tech class, which requires weekly blogs on apropos topics by all the students, I've been rethinking my own blog (which admittedly has been on the back burner for a long time as I've been trying to wrap up my book). Blogs are a quick and easy way to corral the latest stuff in the news. Today the New York Times had an article on digital books, for example, which, handy-dandily, happened to be on the discussion board for today. I adore my Sony Reader, recently acquired as a little Christmas present to myself. The thing looks like a book and reads like a book: it even has a faux-leather book cover. It's about the size and weight of a book, too, so you can pop it in your purse and carry it around with you all day long for whenever you've got a moment. Mine currently has about sixty different books loaded onto it, mostly classics downloaded from the Gutenberg free book collection.
And I have to admit that part of the original fun of the thing was spending a week choosing all the various books that I wanted to have with me at all times--'cause you never know what you're going to be in the mood for. I've got the complete works of Dickens on mine, as well as some Jack London (saw his ranch over the break and got inspired), Mark Twain, and Bosworth's Life of Johnson. For lighter reading I downloaded all the swashbucklers of Rafael Sabatini (Captain Blood, Scaramouche), some gothics by the late Victorian writer Wilkie Collins, and some of the Bertie and Jeeves books by P. G. Wodehouse. I haven't actually paid for a book yet--there are so many freebies out there that there's just no need. But if I wanted them, there are tons of medieval textbooks out there and lots of other Very Serious Items.
So anyway, this is the first in my upcoming series of technolit posts...if you've got any news links I should know about, feel free to comment.
4 comments:
The Sony Reader seems like a great gadget for those who love to read, but is it a possibility that this new technology will encourage more people to read?
'twould be a great thing, wouldn't it? I hope so!
I just tried for the first time an audio book. I was on holiday and thought I'd give one a go. It was just ok. I fell asleep a few times and wondered if I would have, had I been reading. Was it the book, or the delivery method?
I decided I don't like audio books at the moment. That could change.
Speaking of literature and technology, I just saw a presentation at ELI of a class project where students created various rooms in the House of Seven Gables in Second Life. You don't want to know how much time and technology support they had to do it. The question in my mind is not whether they were engaged, but how and with what were they engaged? And how does that reflect the course/program learning outcomes? Hmmmm...
I am not sure that the current audience for the Sony Reader is non-readers, but rather geeks who are also readers, as well as those voracious readers who are tech-savvy enough to see that a device like the Reader will eliminate the eternal dilemma of "which books do/can I bring with me to [destination]?" In the end, they may be able to use it to extend the general reader audience by making sure that its own uses go beyond reading: travel information, textbooks, cookbooks, manuals, photo and music sharing, web browsing, manga, newspapers, other periodicals... The Amazon kindle is trying to do some of this, and the Sony Reader is capable of some, but for now, I think both companies are preaching to the techno-choir.
As far as audiobooks go, I will admit to listening to some, but, as with books, never to an abridged version. Also, unlike books, delivery means a lot to me. There are readers out there who are terrific voice actors and can make the experience quite pleasurable. For example (and for *free*) try the Sherlock Holmes (ok, he is a guilty pleasure of mine) stories offered as audiobooks from Project Gutenberg. They are extremely well-read by an accomplished British actor. The whole canon is there - days of listening pleasure. A good reader can make a book... many authors shouldn't read their own books, but one who can is Neil Gaiman.
Anyway, shutting up now. :)
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