The books

[caption id=”attachment_828” align=”aligncenter” width=”762” caption=”The rather lovely looking Apple tablet (image from Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/5370252/apple-tablet-aiming-to-redefine-newspapers-textbooks-and-magazines)”][/caption]

The Tablet and (maybe) the future: download millions of different publications, navigate your way through them, save space and look good on the train.

[caption id=”attachment_831” align=”aligncenter” width=”600” caption=”Old, thumbed, musty. An, erm, book.”][/caption]

The book: tactile, musty, shelved. Looks good in rooms and on the train. The past?

The question for me isn’t whether the paper book is somehow obsolete — I can’t envisage the tablet working for long texts such as the novel, although I may be wrong — or even the different reading experiences (it’s a good thing for reading that there’s more than one way to read). It’s how different text types will fall into either format. Newspapers and magazines strike me as particularly suitable for the tablet, for example.

Perhaps we’ll simply be able to choose how we read.