Like Reading Movies
I’ve been reading the same 15 or so books for the past three years. Part of it is that I’m a slow reader (though a very fast listener). But more so it’s just that I keep finding new and interesting things to read. And rather than finish off one book before beginning another, I don’t want to wait.
In some ways, this works for me because I get to read what my mood on any given day dictates. Maybe it’s Game of Thrones, maybe it’s ancient Rome, maybe it’s timely economics tales, maybe it’s the history of ESPN, maybe it’s quantum physics. The flipside is that as a completist, I yearn to be able to finish what I start.
I was thinking about this today while reading about the author James Patterson’s new endeavor, BookShots, a line of short, cheap novels meant to be devoured quickly. His rationale behind this is simple: in our modern world, it’s increasingly hard to find the time to read a full book. At the same time, people still clearly want to read. So what do you do?
Well, you either hold steady and try to wait out current trends, hoping they shift back the other way (which often happens). Or you take the initiative to change your method to fit the current trends.
And, in fact, the move towards shorter, more serialized books is nothing new. As the New York Times piece notes, no less than Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s would likely fall within the bounds of the new format Patterson is proposing. Jim Harrison, who passed away yesterday, was considered a master of the novella. The types of short works you can buy at the checkout counter (yes, including the Fabio-fronted kind), is exactly what Patterson is trying to hark back to.
I’ve been thinking about the cutting up of content for a couple years now. That is, how you can find ways to make content fit into our increasingly busy lives, versus hoping and praying that people make the time for your content. It’s also, of course, one of the core reasons why I try to keep everything here to around 500 words.
This doesn’t just mean written works, either. I think it’s at play in television, movies, music, and even the content put out there by social networks. Again, we’re all short on time, so how do you slot into peoples’ lives?
I like the way Patterson frames his way of thinking about his new novellas:
“You can race through these — they’re like reading movies.”
I suspect other types of content are increasingly going to be framed and reframed in new ways to make them more attractive and perhaps just as importantly, more digestible in our modern world. Because while trends often ebb and flow, it’s hard to see anyone gaining more time.
