When considering my final assignment for this class, and in turn thinking about what to include for this week's blog post, I decided to follow one of my family's favourite mantras: KISS. KISS means "Keep it simple, stupid". Yup. That's my family. But it helped me muddle through and narrow down some semblance of a topic for discussion out of the many interesting ideas that have been presented through the duration of this course. One of the reasons I decided to take this course because I was interested in the format, structure, and impact of e-books on a couple of different facets in society in culture (those with literacy and reading challenges, children's literature, availability of works to a larger audience, etc.).
Scrolling through the books section on Pinterest only served to further cement the topic I wanted to research further and explore. The strong opinions of those coming down against e-books simply because they aren't print books is puzzling, but very intriguing to me.
I think I have narrowed it down, but I still need to conduct some more research (and most likely run the idea by Professor Galey) but I think I would like to explore how we read e-books and print books, and what kind of implications that could mean for the future of books and reading in general. This is loosely based on the blog post several weeks ago about how we read and why. But in this particular case, I want to understand and recognize any differences between how we read print books and e-books. The tension between the two mediums - and the strong opinions people have regarding their associated position - is a bit baffling, and I am genuinely curious to see if there are any concrete reasons for general stances toward either, beyond that of personal preference.
The memes you uploaded here are super interesting because they totally highlight that vehement opposition to ebooks that everyone knows about but no one really seems to be studying. Looking at the impressive collection meme, it just brings forth a bunch of questions like why is there some kind of inherent smugness in preferring the reading medium you know rather than the one you don't? Do we care about books or do we care about looking smart because we care about books? Sounds like a good topic, good luck!
ReplyDeleteHey Ashley!
ReplyDeleteI did some research in this area last semester, specifically as it relates to how people read narrative books in print and on-screen, but at the start of the semester I was looking at it more generally. If you think it would be helpful I could pass along the bibliography I created that lists all the works I looked at over the course of the semester.
That would be great! Thank you very much, Abigail! :)
DeleteSorry I just saw this (I forgot to check the notify me box)! I will send it to Ashley.dunk@mail.utoronto.ca, if that's not your email, let me know!
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