Dear John Makinson and Penguin, please don't "reinvent" books

I partially agree. Some novels should be experienced by reading the author's words only. And I am sure publishers will offer different 'enhanced versions' of their products (and hopefully at different prices.)

That being said, reading a biography of a great film director and being able to click on a bit of the film that's being referenced or viewing an interview recorded at the time, would be fantastic. Or what about a great sports figure, or political leader? Watching the winning performance or listening to an historic speech?

I think if the choice of viewing 'enhanced' material is done in a way that it doesn't take away from the reading experience, (reader turns it on or off before reading) then the publishing world will have a great product.

Just remember - video KILLED the radio star. I think we can all agree that change is bad and having more options can only lead to ... um. Hitler? What a silly article.

So here we have a blogger complaining that technology is destroying traditional media. This made my morning.

What a completely shortsighted troglodytic perspective on the wonderful ideas that Penguin has about multimedia in the future. Who says a book must simply be a page with words? And who says multimedia is only video?

There are a myriad of ways this could be implemented without limiting the imagination in reading. For example, wouldn't it be great to see an interactive map included with a story about someone's travels? Or what about an interactive family tree for a story with lots of characters? Or how about a timeline for a biography or historical work?

The list goes on and on, far beyond the simplistic prejudice of the author of this opinion piece.

I don't know about plain old books, but for textbooks and such, that would be awesome. Right now, e textbooks come in two forms. Flash on the web, for better interaction, but less storability and universality, and PDF, which are universal and easier to store. Combining the best of both worlds for textbooks would be great.

I'm trying to understand how this is not just the next incarnation of "Grandma and Me" etc. That made the old macs so famous in education... This is a great idea!

Much emotion over nothing.

For many publications the electronic form will be a godsend. But this does not imply that all books would need such features. The key is choice.

Oh by the way I agree with the idea that this won't end paperboks. That really s un likely. What it will do is enable new ways of communicating, cut storage demands and lower the cost of entry to publication. On the other hand future versions of iPad like devices ought to drive down the impact of paper publications on envirnment.

I don't see the envirnmental considerations addressed here often but the electronic transmission of publications could dramatically reduce polution caused by the use of paper. Just imagine if the wall street journal reduces its paper usage by 50% after iPad comes out. That would be huge for just one company and would have an mpact on a daily basis. The same thing applies for your favorite book pblisher, if they reduce paper shipments by half the impact will be huge.


Dave

So it was an AUTHOR who said that "Reading literature makes you a more well-rounded individual"...? You don't say... I know a filmmaker who said the same thing about watching movies!

Dear Mr. Gutenberg,
Please don't reinvent the manuscript. I delight in taking in the sumptuous illustrations that illuminate these volumes, hand-crafted by candlelight.
Sincerely, Medieval Monk

Jokes aside, traditional reading isn't going away, but new forms of presenting literature are going to happen, and that's not necessarily bad. Reading culture has changed numerous times as the technology has changed, but the essence has remained: writing is a way of conveying information.

There are some formats for writing that are more and less comfortable, more and less suited to different subject matter, but to say that converging audio and video with text is somehow unholy is just childish.

> Books are words arranged on a page (whether paper or digital) that are meant to be assimilated through the eye and processed in the brain with the reader adding much to the story itself – like what a character looks or sounds like.

So books with photos or diagrams in them are not books. As far as the reader adding to the story, this is a very recent idea in literature, formed largely out of the 60s and 70s and captured well in the postmodernist critics as well as Eco's reader response theory. Say that before mid-20th century and you'd be laughed out of the room. Cultures of reading are not timeless.

> We've got enough mindless entertainment in the world today. When I read War and Peace, I don't want to hear an actor reciting Bezukhov's lines.

Again, cultures of reading are not timeless. The Greeks thought they heard the actual voices of authors when they read texts; they wanted to hear voice.

We fear change because we fear what we might lose, but the practice of settling in with a book is alive and well, and it's very possible it will thrive even more when it has to compete less with other forms of media because it can exist side-by-side in either the same work, or at least on the same device.

Colin Firth was never in a movie adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, and never co-starred with Keira Knightly in P&P - he was in the BBC's excellent 5-part tv series, and she was in the awful movie version. I don't know what you're so worried about - you obviously have no clue about literature in the first place if you've muddled those two...