Thursday, May 6, 2010

An author on e-books and the future of reading.

Author Anna Quindlen writes about the future of reading for Newsweek - print books, e-books, reading itself.

The conclusion of her article:

As Kafka once said, "A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us."



Reading is not simply an intellectual pursuit but an emotional and spiritual one. It lights the candle in the hurricane lamp of self; that's why it survives. There are book clubs and book Web sites and books on tape and books online. There are still millions of people who like the paper version, at least for now. And if that changes—well, what is a book, really? Is it its body, or its soul? Would Dickens have recognized a paperback of A Christmas Carol, or, for that matter, a Braille version? Even on a cell-phone screen, Tiny Tim can God-bless us, every one.



Cheers, and more cheers for the axe and the candle
 
Ruth