Week 16 Prompt: Culture of Reading

For myself, reading is a little less magical and more clinical as a process. After nine years of college (four as an undergrad, three as a history graduate student, and two as a library science graduate student), reading is an intense process of determining layers of meaning underneath the surface. I now look for an index before I look for the foreword. As a child, I would allow myself to be fascinated by the author’s words. Le Guin (2008) noted that a book will tell you the same story throughout your life, “though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book” (p. 5).  When I was a child, I did not see the underlying mechanics of writing and storytelling. Now, that is all I see. I feel that is the ruination of years of studying postmodernist historiography. The inherent fun of reading is next to impossible for me to find anymore. Maybe after I graduate and my free time grows 50 times over, I can go back and find the joy of reading.

As I start to move back to recreational reading, there will be no shortage of great books to read from a multitude of genres, subgenres, and cross-over genres. While genre and literary fiction will remain, a multitude of new genres will form over the next twenty years. Fan fiction and new adult are the new genres that have formed over the past ten years. Along with new genres other established genres will take a whole new form. Young adult literature has redefined itself into a genre that is not only more readable for today’s teens, but is attractive to adults as well.

Despite the near-invasive levels of connectivity, we will be reading just as much twenty years from now as we are today. While book sales are down from what they were decades ago, eBook and eReader sales are up and there are more published writers today than ever before. While eReaders will allow for more interactive reading, I believe that there will still be a distinction between reading and interactive media.

As a librarian, the one thing I fear with regards to the future of books is the development of subscription services that provide hundreds of thousands of books. Oyster (www.oysterbooks.com) has already taken that leap. Scribd expanded to an eBook subscription service a few years ago. Amazon is approaching that with its Prime and Kindle First service. We are perhaps only years away from a Netflix-esque redefining of book consumption. Will Oyster and Amazon do to public libraries what Netflix has done to cable? I think that programming and the maker movement has future-proofed public libraries better than could have ever been imagined.

These services will only grow if the power publishing houses continue to consolidate. The Penguin and Random House merger in 2013 reduced the power publishers from 6 to 5. While Kickstarter and self-publishing through Amazon are credible options for big name authors (i.e. Stephen King) and first time authors, those who aren’t Joe Schmoe or James Patterson need the big publishers to provide marketing and advances.

REFERENCES

Le Guin, U. K. (2008, February). Staying awake: notes on the alleged decline of reading. Harper's Magazine, 316(1893). [Resources - Oncourse]