How do we read books? And why do we read them the way we do? Aeon has just published new essay of mine about trust and software and stewardship and the phenomenology around the way we read books. It’s called, “Future reading”.
It’s an essay about returning to print. It was edited by Ross Andersen (of Aeon until September of this year, and now of The Atlantic) and if there’s any hint of cohesion or sensibility or intelligence or logic contained within my jumbled prose, it’s attributable in large part to Ross’ keen eye.
Here’s some backstory for those curious among you.
It was the summer of 2014 and I was preparing for my keynote lecture at the Yale Publishing Course. A lecture that was supposed to inspire those in attendance (mainly industry professionals, publishing CEOs, editors, and even a few authors), to frame the current state of books — digital and physical — in uplifting but truthful terms. It was during this preparation that I realized something strange: I hadn’t read a digital book in almost a year.
Could that have been right? Had I really not read any digital books in 2014? I may have purchased one or two off the cuff, but I couldn’t remember reading any, certainly not all the way through. And yet I had a stack of physical books sitting next to me on my desk that I had read. Voraciously…
