Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Are Vooks going to be Victorious?

With the advent of ebooks, it was only a matter of time before people started fiddling with them. Now the new excitement is about Vooks- video books. You download the ebook into your reader and every few pages a video comes along. Sort of like television breaks to show you what's happening in the book. For me it sort of defeats the purpose of books- to allow me to create the images in my mind.

Publishers are getting excited but literary agent Richard Curtis seems to agree with me.

Any reader who has been lost in a book would not dream of breaking the spell by clicking, searching, supplementing, accessing, googling, listening or viewing. Hell, any reader who has been lost in a book does not even want to break the spell by breathing

What do you think?

5 comments:

bonita said...

ohh I so agree. A true reader will delay going to the bathroom until the end of the chapter, will sit outside in the gathering dusk until it is all but impossible to discern the words on the page. I've even been known to forget that I had started dinner. Eventually the acrid smell of burning enamel coating loosed the book from my hand. The pot wears its enamel blotch as a badge of courage. Audio books, read well [well recorded], can be just as engrossing, but video pop-ups in an ebook?NNNOOOOOOOOO

Elizabeth Bradley said...

I don't get it. I guess this is indicative of a generation that needs to be constantly stimulated.

Lyn said...

I hate to knock technology and progress but I have to say that my love of books - the smell, texture and feel of holding them - guarantees that I will not be one who goes for a vook or any video that would go along with it!

Anonymous said...

This alarms me. I can't help but think all of this technology that spoon feeds us, dumbs us down in the end. Are people really too lazy to conjure up images in their own heads? Maybe it's a government plot to keep us under control and turn us into corporate drones. Vooks and I will never meet. I can guarantee it.

Lauri said...

Well it's unanimous- we all hate VOOKS!