off the
shelf
Bits, Bytes and Books by Erica Kawamura
E
ven though I am a librarian and believe that nothing beats having a book in your hands, I do own a Kindle e-book reader. In fact, I haven’t bought a paper copy of a book in more than a year. I love “real” books, but I have little storage space. And since I’m on the train a lot, I can carry around numerous books, magazines and newspapers without having to actually carry them around. I do, however, miss book covers, which make it easier for me when checking which titles to reread. I continue to buy regular books for my daughter, though. I want her to experience them and understand that not all literature is read via a touch screen. Evolving technology for reading books is one thing, but is technology changing the way authors write? Lauren Myracle’s
12 November 2011 iNTOUCH
series of books (l8r, g8r; ttfn; ttyl) for young teens, for example, is written in instant messaging format. I find reading instant messages almost as difficult as deciphering another language, but it’s maybe natural for most youngsters. A new book, Starting from Happy, has been written in a format that the author, Patricia Marx, calls “chaplettes,” which are longer than tweets but shorter than many blog posts. Does this reflect a change in readers’ attention spans? Do people want shorter stories and bite-sized chapters? In Japan, technology has led to a generation of writers of cell phone novels. These shorter works have even been picked up by some publishers. Hitori Nakano’s Train Man, for instance, was originally chronicled on the Japanese Internet
forum 2channel. It subsequently became a bestseller and spawned movie, manga and TV series versions. An English translation was published in 2004. Technology has also brought authors, who before might never have been discovered, to the world. I have a number of favorite writers who self-published e-books before being noticed by publishing houses. The Internet age has meant that English books are readily available here in Japan. Plus, tracking authors, new releases and bestsellers is now just a click or touch away. It all means that we can stay up to date for users of the Library, and it makes life here in Japan feel not so removed from our lives back home. o Kawamura is a librarian at the Hal Roberts Library.