Both of our readings this week talk about the culture of reading and the future of the book. So I have two questions for you as readers, pulling on your own experiences and all of the readings we have done over the semester: First, how have reading and books changed since you were a child, for you specifically? Second, talk a little about what you see in the future for reading, books, or publishing - say 20 years from now. Will we read more or less, will our reading become more interactive? What will happen to traditional publishing? This is a very free-form question, feel free to wildly extrapolate or calmly state facts, as suits your mood!
When I was a kid I loved to read. My mom has always been a big reader and so she read to me until I could read for myself. From that time on until probably middle school/high school I read everything I could find, from the “Junie B. Jones” to “Series of Unfortunate Events”. When I hit that teenager age I fell in line with my friends and thought I was too cool to read. Plus reading for school kind of kills the joy for teens a bit. I picked my passion for reading back up again right out of high school. I had started college somewhere in a medical program and when I fell back in love with reading decided that is not what I wanted to do. So I switched schools and became a literature degree. I got to read some many different and sometime amazing things through my different classes. I was also reading in my spare time too. At that time romance was my genre, but thanks to my young adult lit class, YA is now my genre. I can’t help but think that if there had been amazing authors, like John Green and Cassandra Clare, that I might have read when I was a teenager too.
As for the future of reading and publishing, I believe that it will continue to grow and change for the next 20 years just like it did the last 20 years. The technology may get more advanced, and books may become interactive or they made read themselves to you. I know one thing that will stay the same though, and that is physical copies will always be relevant, which means publishers will always be relevant. I know that self-publishing is the way to get noticed right now, but once you get noticed most people sign with a publishing company. Amazon cannot do for you what Penguin Books can. When it comes to books themselves, I see more and more cross genres and sub genres. I believe that writers will continue to break down genre norms and write what works for them. I personally like some of the newer things that come out of it. I hope that young adult literature continues to grow and helps to draw more and more kids into reading. This is where I would love to see those interactive books. More needs to be done to draw kids and teens into reading and I hope that the book world changes this. Whatever happens I have a feeling that not as much will change as we imagine it will. Libraries, books, and publishers will still be relevant to all things books.
Now I want to put my literature degree to use and spin a little tale of where books should be in twenty years. The technology will have improved immensely, but not like robots taking over the world. Libraries will still be a space to store books, but in a slightly different way. Of course, physical copies are available for those who still favor them. E-books will be a thing of the past. Instead, now libraries will download the books that you want straight into your brain. Where you can store them and read them, but you still have to return them on time. These books will be magical. They will read to you and play images in your mind along with it. They will help to bring you into a whole other world, which is what books do for most of us anyway. It will be amazing to watch on a kids face as a book plays through their mind and the joy that lights up their face. Now I know that that is not going to happen in my life time, but it is nice to think that one day books can do amazing things for people, like they do for some now.
When I was a kid I loved to read. My mom has always been a big reader and so she read to me until I could read for myself. From that time on until probably middle school/high school I read everything I could find, from the “Junie B. Jones” to “Series of Unfortunate Events”. When I hit that teenager age I fell in line with my friends and thought I was too cool to read. Plus reading for school kind of kills the joy for teens a bit. I picked my passion for reading back up again right out of high school. I had started college somewhere in a medical program and when I fell back in love with reading decided that is not what I wanted to do. So I switched schools and became a literature degree. I got to read some many different and sometime amazing things through my different classes. I was also reading in my spare time too. At that time romance was my genre, but thanks to my young adult lit class, YA is now my genre. I can’t help but think that if there had been amazing authors, like John Green and Cassandra Clare, that I might have read when I was a teenager too.
As for the future of reading and publishing, I believe that it will continue to grow and change for the next 20 years just like it did the last 20 years. The technology may get more advanced, and books may become interactive or they made read themselves to you. I know one thing that will stay the same though, and that is physical copies will always be relevant, which means publishers will always be relevant. I know that self-publishing is the way to get noticed right now, but once you get noticed most people sign with a publishing company. Amazon cannot do for you what Penguin Books can. When it comes to books themselves, I see more and more cross genres and sub genres. I believe that writers will continue to break down genre norms and write what works for them. I personally like some of the newer things that come out of it. I hope that young adult literature continues to grow and helps to draw more and more kids into reading. This is where I would love to see those interactive books. More needs to be done to draw kids and teens into reading and I hope that the book world changes this. Whatever happens I have a feeling that not as much will change as we imagine it will. Libraries, books, and publishers will still be relevant to all things books.
Now I want to put my literature degree to use and spin a little tale of where books should be in twenty years. The technology will have improved immensely, but not like robots taking over the world. Libraries will still be a space to store books, but in a slightly different way. Of course, physical copies are available for those who still favor them. E-books will be a thing of the past. Instead, now libraries will download the books that you want straight into your brain. Where you can store them and read them, but you still have to return them on time. These books will be magical. They will read to you and play images in your mind along with it. They will help to bring you into a whole other world, which is what books do for most of us anyway. It will be amazing to watch on a kids face as a book plays through their mind and the joy that lights up their face. Now I know that that is not going to happen in my life time, but it is nice to think that one day books can do amazing things for people, like they do for some now.