Let pundits blame technology for distracting us from great books. Ordinary readers are rediscovering the classics
Stephen King (Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar)
A couple of years ago, the critic Maud Newton was sitting in a New York City subway train peering at her iPhone. A fellow passenger standing nearby began ranting to his companion about how, instead of reading books, all anyone ever does anymore is waste time with their smartphones. “I was reading Bertrand Russell’s ‘The History of Western Philosophy’ on my phone at the time,” Newton told me. “It was soooo annoying but also so funny.”
Although you’d never know it from the media attention devoted to tablet computers like the iPad and dedicated e-reader devices like the Kindle, a third of all cellphone owners choose to read e-books on their phones — which is a lot of people, given that over 90 percent of American adults have cellphones. Those who enjoy wringing their hands in Spenglerian despair whenever they see heads bent over glossy black rectangles in public might want to check their pessimism. For all you know, those smartphone devotees are reveling in the fruits of Western Civilization — rather than playing Flappy Bird while it crumbles around them.
Smartphones, even more than tablets and e-readers, have fostered a new type of reading, sometimes called “interstitial” reading. It’s the chapters, pages and paragraphs snatched up during those scraps of time that might once have been squandered on People magazine or just staring off into space. Interstitial reading happens while people are sitting in waiting rooms and the backs of taxis or standing at bus stops and in line for movie tickets or at the DMV.
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Although you’d never know it from the media attention devoted to tablet computers like the iPad and dedicated e-reader devices like the Kindle, a third of all cellphone owners choose to read e-books on their phones — which is a lot of people, given that over 90 percent of American adults have cellphones. Those who enjoy wringing their hands in Spenglerian despair whenever they see heads bent over glossy black rectangles in public might want to check their pessimism. For all you know, those smartphone devotees are reveling in the fruits of Western Civilization — rather than playing Flappy Bird while it crumbles around them.
Smartphones, even more than tablets and e-readers, have fostered a new type of reading, sometimes called “interstitial” reading. It’s the chapters, pages and paragraphs snatched up during those scraps of time that might once have been squandered on People magazine or just staring off into space. Interstitial reading happens while people are sitting in waiting rooms and the backs of taxis or standing at bus stops and in line for movie tickets or at the DMV.
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