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Books published with videos in them bad idea
My Turn
A headline on Page 1 of the Oct. 1 edition of The New York Times said, “Curling up with hybrid books, videos included,” adding “After 500 years, print may soon be obsolete, according to some.”
Combine text, video and Web features to keep readers interested. Book reading an archaic form of entertainment. Simon & Shuster to release several “Vooks,” which intersperse video throughout electronic text that can be read and viewed online or on an iPod.
An educator asks, “Can you any longer have the patience to read Henry James or George Eliot?”
Brian Tart, publisher of Dutton, said he wanted the book’s text to stand on its own, but the culture demanded rethinking the format.
“Like everybody, you see people watching these three-minute YouTube videos and using social networks,” he said. “And this is an opportunity to bring in more people, people who might have thought they were into the new media world.”
Many readers have had a mixed response to what the publisher is marketing as a digi-novel.
“It really makes a story more real if you know what the characters look like,” said one. “It adds to the story in a big way.”
Another reviewer wrote: “Do you really think cheesy video vignettes will improve the book?”
Some authors think the new technology can enrich books. For his history of street songs in 18th-century France, Robert Darnton will include links to recordings of the actual tunes.
But Darnton, author of The Case for Books, Past, Present and Future, warned that reading itself was changing, and not necessarily for the better.
“I think we can see enough already to worry about the loss of certain kind of sustained reading,” he said.
Another author said the new editions should not replace the traditional book. He pointed out that longer novels do not lend themselves to the video-enhanced format, adding that the new editions are like dipping a novel into a cinematic pool and pulling it out and getting the best parts of each.
Some authors scoff at the idea of mixing the two media. Another author added, “I would never, ever allow video to substitute for prose.
“Reading is one of the few experiences we have outside of the relationships in which our cognitive abilities grow. And our cognitive abilities actually go backwards when we’re watching television or doing stuff on computers.”
Here’s my personal response on this subject. I own nearly 500 books. Most of them are classics. I have spent a lifetime studying such works as Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the works of William Shakespeare, Herodotus, Thucydides, all the works of Winston Churchill and Jane Austin, and many, many others.
Indeed, I was determined from childhood to read every classic in all literature. Of course, it is an impossible task, but I’ve enjoyed every hour of every day studying when I have the time.
So I am amused at the remark in one of those quoted above as asking, “Do you really want to read Henry James or George Eliot?” Yes, I do.
Here is an old adage: “You don’t have to burn books to
destroy a culture. Just get
people to stop reading them.”
Charlie Langdon is the Herald’s senior critic. He can be reached at langdons@gobrainstorm.net.
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