Vooks are Not Vivacious Books

"Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in few."

- Pythagoras

pic copyright: manipulateddreams (deviantart)

So I read this interesting article in the NY Times about this new thing called a "vook." It's basically a virtual book, with text interspersed with digital elements like videos. It's the future of books! Or is it?

I like the fact that people are trying to shake up the literary world and expand the horizons of what a story is, but what worries me is that it's trying to avoid being a book. What's wrong with just reading a book with words? You read a book, because it's a book and if there's a movie adaptation, you might go see that to see how it looks, but both together? I don't know, it's weird to me.

Lots of books these days are now connecting to websites and adding a virtual world for the characters. Readers can go on and influence or discuss the storylines like in The 39 Clues, which is a huge hit in children's fiction. I think it's great that there are enthusiastic readers who want to continue the story outside the pages the author wrote. Especially since most kids won't talk about a book outside of class, but they'll be more than willing to go on discussion boards and talk about who Blair and Serena should end up with or who should have gone home on American Idol.

It's an interesting idea, but I don't want it to be an excuse for people to not actually read words anymore. All that flashes is not a good story. Words paint pictures and emotions that can't be physically reproduced in my opinion. I work hard to be able to capture an image and bring a character to life and to have a video replaces parts of that text would make it all seem pointless...But we'll see whether this catches on or not.

To read the article, check it out here:http://tinyurl.com/ydmfkk5