You have the time to read these? Is the of reading in the dystopian world of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 in which are banned, or is it in the foreseeable event where our reading habit gets ‘condensed’ into short reads only?The first English novel “Pamela” by Samuel Richardson was published in 1740. It took another hundred years before yellowbacks or paperbacks made their appearance. Paperbacks introduced people to a new genre of reading-affordable leisure reading. future books By the end of the 19th century, there was a flood of paperbacks in the market. All of a sudden, there was too much content to read in early 20th century, just as it is so in the 21st century. So Much to Read and So Little Time To cope with the problem of , condensed formats made their appearance in the form of book reviews with Ralph Griffith’s The Monthly Review in 1749, followed by The Quarterly Review in 1809. This need for condensed information then led to the advent of the modern encyclopedia in early 20th century. In 1922, an icon was born to help people read ‘curated and condensed articles’- With its core proposition of helping people read more in lesser time using condensed articles, Reader’s Digest became the world’s highest selling paid subscription magazine and has stayed in that position for almost a century now. “so much to read and so little time” DeWitt Wallace introduced Reader’s Digest to the world. Wallace then followed up with Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, a quarterly publication that condensed few of the popular books of the day. In a sense, tl;dr (the youngsters’ lingo of “too long; didn’t read”) began as early as the 1920s! Close to 100 years later, today, in 2016, we are still in the tl;dr world. Do not have the time to read the newspaper? There’s inshorts app for you in India and theSkimm daily newsletter in America. Do not have the patience to watch a 2.5 hours movie — there are short movies like Ouch and Ahalya on . Do not have the time to read books in their entirety, you have apps that convert non-fiction books into snackable bites or short summaries. YouTube tl;dr is Not a Fad So when folks wring their hand and despair that the youngsters today are not reading as much as their previous generations, you can sit back and relax. And what about these apps that summarize books so that you do not need to read them? Well, Reader’s Digest saw it as an opportunity in 1922, and the world surely is a better place with Reader’s Digest. Too many books to read and too little time as a problem statement goes back to early 20th century-it’s at least a 100 years old problem. The Future of Reading People will continue to read. And that, clearly, is good news. What will keep changing is the content (long format/short format/tl;dr format) and the container (paper/screen/audio). If they like what they see in their few minutes of skimming, they will possibly dive deep into the content. Whether authors and publishing industry like it or not, sampling will be the gateway to reading books or long format content in the future-just like it was 100 years ago. What is equally likely to happen is people (including people who do not enjoy reading) will use tl;dr content and screens to ‘sample’ content. I am pivoting my reading hobby with bookbhook.com - a product designed for the tl;dr world.This post was first published on anureviews.com
