Week 16 Prompt

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?


Reading for me as always been hit or miss. I loved books when I was a kid, but I was raised by a single father who never made it passed the 6th grade. I do not have a memory of him reading to us when we were very little, nor do I remember him really enforcing reading when I was old enough to read on my own. I do however remembering loving to read although we never had library cards or many books just laying around. What I was exposed to was from the school library. I think I loved to read but really had no access to getting things to read. I always devoured the assigned books from teachers and it sparked my love for reading again but there wasn't much to read after that. As I got into middle and Junior High Schools I didn't have friends that had a love for reading and I know that I just slowly moved away from the habit of doing it on any sort of regular basis until I was much older. Once out of high school and off to the military, I know this is when I began to become addicted to reading. I don't think reading or books themselves have changed very much since I was young, possibly the thing that has changed for me personally was the access to books. It seems that my children and my nieces/nephews are surrounded by books. Whether its a physical hard book or on smart phones and tablets. Either way I see much easier ways to get to books than I did as a kid. 

Which brings me to the second question of where do I think the future of books, reading and publishing will be in 20 years. 

This question always makes me think of the movie "Book of Eli", where in an apocalyptic world a man is trying to get a copy of the bible from one coast over to the other coast where there is a secret library set up with all the great books of the world that had be destroyed or lost. This is how I think of the future of reading and books. Yes there has been and will probably continue to be a decline in the publication and reading of books. Things have rapidly been moved to the electronic version of themselves and while I think this does help with allowing faster, easier access to materials, it will not last. As in the movie, when we rely on computers to store all the information of the world, we may find ourselves losing some of that information. I would hope that it doesn't come to the end of the world as we know it, in order for us to realize that making everything electronic is a bad idea. But I have faith that we will figure it out beforehand and the recent popularity of vinyl records may be the indicator of society realizing that just because something is newer, shinier and faster doesn't always mean its better.