This week, the book blogs have been talking about the future of reading and literature, which leads me to believe that they don’t think it’s dead.
I don’t believe them. The sad truth is that they’re taking Reading Rainbow away from the children forever, which means it’s only a matter of time before the kids stop reading entirely and turn into violent video game-playing, Twinkie-eating, morbidly obese fighting machines that will eat older generations alive as soon as they’re old enough to buy firearms.
And now, some more hopeful news and opinions.
Maud Newton finds people going through her library’s recycling to find books to read.
In San Luis Obispo, Jacket Copy reports that people are reading in public!
The forces are gathering against the Google settlement.
“It’s Never Been a Better Time to be a Writer.”
Anne Fine calls for change, saying that current children’s lit “is dauntingly bleak, with depressing endings that do little to inspire.” The Guardian objects to her argument. I do too.
A fascinating article at Wired about “the new literacy.” “I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.” (via Bookninja)
One response
One thing about that piece on the forces gathering against the Google Books settlement–the Open Book Alliance includes, amusingly enough, Amazon, Yahoo and Microsoft, none of whom have been particularly interested in the open-source movement in the past. Lots of the groups in the alliance are non-profits who do good work and I agree that there are some concerns that need to be dealt with before the deal is finalized, but there’s big corporate money involved in this opposition as well, and at least one company seems to be in it for no other reason than to protect their business model.
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment.