Fractionals

I find it pretty hard to argue with n+1 when they talk about how the response to the current "Reading Crisis" is manifestly unpleasent and counterproductive (the link is to their front page, where the piece is currently up - I don't know for how long). And not just because I'm biased towards their opinion of criticism. Anyone who points out that wanting to write in order to be rich and famous is not a good or sufficient motivation should come across as obvious, but sadly these days it's a little novel.

I don't read books as much as I did as a child, but I certainly read more, every day - I'm not sure whether those words are on a printed page or a screen matters much. If the lament is that long-form fiction is dying, well, I don't think it's going to go away (although we may see, or already be seeing, a bit of a slight return to the days of serialization). I'm always going to want the ability to sit down with a volume and do nothing but read, although I also want a single physical "book" that can hold all of my library in one volume, with different texts being loaded in at appropriate times and etc (we're closer than you probably think). The actual editions, as nice as they are, don't mean that much to me - which is kind of weird when you consider how adamant I am about having a large CD collection. The two differences, I'd imagine, are that books take up more physical space than CDs, and that text takes up less memory space than music.