Week 16 Prompt. What have we lost, and What have we gained? And what are we going to lose sight of forever?

Week 16 Prompt. What have we lost, and What have we gained? And what are we going to lose sight of forever?

Assignment : "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!"

This is an important topic. I am probably much older than most people taking this course weighing in at 57 years old. So I can remember very ancient libraries, not being able to find books I was interested in, no book clubs, a librarian whom you would not even think about approaching in a library or you might get in trouble, but mainly NO INTERNET.  

Books were VERY expensive to own, and if you did own them-then it was a special request say for a few Nancy Drew books on Christmas and your birthday: You dreamed that by the time you were an adult, you might own the whole collection! Even the local library did not have all of the selections in the series. If there was a local library event-where say a famous author or even the Children's librarian might read to a group- that was really a HUGE event.

However, it was a simple uncomplicated time that I look back on with fondness. In my childhood, adults read to children at bedtime as a matter of fact. Even if it was the same book over and over, children were read to at night as part of the daily routine. I do not think many families practice that any longer or if they do- it's a real effort to keep up. I remember when my daughter was little in the early 90's, with everything I had to do, and everything she had available to her at school and the local library, this was really an extreme effort on my part to incorporate this into our daily routine. The pace of life was much slower when I was young, resources not as abundant, and mother's usually were home with their children. There wasn't much else to do, but read and re-read a book over and over! I sort of miss that intimacy that developed between my own parents/grandparents and myself- and how those characters- like for me The Boxcar Children- almost became a part of our own family landscape. Jokes or comments would be daily about the characters we had come to know together. "Yeah, do that again and you might be living in a boxcar, too" as a joke my mom might say, and we'd just laugh. So, in that regard, it is this lower pace to life, more time to read, more intimacy with books and people that I think have been lost.


As I mentioned earlier,  there was no internet. It really is the internet that has changed everything in the area of books, reading and the future of such. Add in Social Media, and you have a reader's paradise!! Books are more abundant now in digital and/or hard copy form.

I own a few antique mall booths, and one of the items I sell is books. Where do I get them? At the Goodwill, yard sales, library book sales, and auctions. How much do I pay? Nearly nothing. Sometimes I'm appalled at how cheaply I can get these books, and think back to when I was a youth and had to save all year for a Nancy Drew book. Supplies are in full demand right now. If you want to read an e-book, you can find it for free on a library site, or subscribe for a  minimal fee to a service like Amazon. If you want to know what to read, you can ask Good Reads-which if you've been following my posts, you'll know I think is the greatest invention ever, next to Amazon for book lovers! It is a paradise for readers out there!

However, my great fear for where all of this is taking us is this: For those of us who continue to have internet access and money for digital products, the new world that is evolving is going to provide ease of use, quick selection and no time wasted finding and reading what you want.  I do worry about the loss of hard copies of books though. I think eventually publishers are going to quit producing them..as is evidenced by all of the books I can buy for nothing (No one is reading them!)

And in the worse case scenario-what if something happens to the power supplies of the world? What if electricity is no longer available as resources dwindle? What if all of the hard copies are gone and everything is stored in some great database in cyber-space,  then for some un-forseen apocalypse is then lost to humanity? What if only a few people have the money to pay for access to these things? Then books will be lost forever to people. It is absolutely imperative that we do not go exclusively to a digitized world where no hard copy books remain. I believe to do so would usher in another long dark ages for humanity-- it is that important.