Mobilisms

I rebel against the e-reader.  

YES they are convenient

YES they can save money

YES I write a blog called Mobilisms that praises mobile technology!

BUT….I can’t bend the corners of an important page I want to come back too and I can’t highlight my favorite passages and I can’t get a secret snobby self-gratifying sense of importance when people see that I AM INDEED A READER and therefore INTELLECTUAL!!!!

Ok, that last one might not be the e-readers fault…I’ll get to my point.  The e-reader (device) doesn’t quite “do it” for me because it lacks the ability to really connect the story with e-readers (people.)

Yes, yes, yes I know that you can get a trendy cover and there are options to type little notes where-ever I want but I feel like there is a disconnect between myself and what I am reading. It’s like my Kindle is the Tin Man missing his heart.

Sure, there is a definite plus to not having to lug around 1168 pages of Ayn Rand telling us about how the Atlas Shrugged - BUT how can we take digital books and make them lasting stories? How can we give the Tin Man a heart?

The Southeastern Literacy Tourism Initiative  gets close to answering this question. This program encourages local readers to publish books digitally and include links throughout their novels with references to real places in the community. “The end product would be an interactive travel guide within a book, sometimes referred to as tourism fiction.”

This is more like giving the Tin Man some oil rather than a heart but hey - if I remember right, I think he was pretty happy with oil.