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By David Rothman

readingabookinafieldr0b1CreativeCommonsI love both interactivity and the chance to avoid it. Services such as BookGlutton are one way to draw the IM generation into books, about which you can even chat in real time—not just leave comments behind. I can also can see a major role for interactivity in such publishing categories as how-to works.

Not to mention book-related blogs like this one. Most contributors to the main area of TeleRead in fact started out as readers of it; and the latter also serve as editors—telling writers, for example, when they’re full or it or what angles they missed.

But should we force interactivity on everybody, constantly? Absolutely not. Even if John Updike‘s publishers could make him participate in online forums, inside or outside his books, that would be wrong. Similarly we need to acknowledge that readers have different preferences. I’d rather read a novel by myself and compare impressions afterwards, and I hate the idea of Twittering away all the solitude in the world, especially in this era of WiFi and mobile phones.

A mouthful but on the mark

shynessbookcover So I was pleased to see, in the new blog Read, Write, Now, a post headlined In praise of shyness, solitude, and oppositional defiant disorder (and all other personality disorders associated with reading): Or what’s wrong with being disconnnected?

The title’s a mouthful, but the author, Peter Kerry Powers, chair of the department of English at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, is right on the mark. Same perhaps for Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Becomes a Sickness, and Helene Guldberg, who reviewed Shyness (no final verdict without my having read the book).

Shyness, it would seem, might still be in style among many Prairie Home Companion fans, but not so much in some psychiatric and tech circles. I myself love the idea of “Just me” icons or even old-fashioned mechanic buttons to provide relief from IM and other electronic interruptions–see my OLPC XO review.

Freedom from WiFi

The key is balance. As a department chair, Peter Powers presumably isn’t a hermit; what’s more, he intends to try out BookGlutton, if not with full enthusiasm. But I can also envision him on vacation, miles from the nearest WiFi hotspot, reading in happy solitude from an old-fashioned book or an e-book device with a sunlight-friendly screen like the Sony Reader or the XO. Talk about the glories of low-power consumption. The new reflective screens could be just the ticket for the hermit in those of us who enjoy the outdoors.

Related: BookGlutton’s Public Beta and comments on its current incompatibility with Internet Explorer. Also see the the About section of the Powers blog, where the Professor complains: “I’ve snuck a look at my daughter’s Facebook page and those of a number of my students. If this is reading, it’s not hard to imagine why reading comprehension shrinks apace, as does the tolerance for a text even so long as the one I’m now writing. I wonder about the possibilities of democracy in a culture where educated persons have difficulty giving sustained attention to a document as long as the Declaration of Independence (a text I used to require as a short assignment).” Yes, Professor! See Norman Mailer and E.

Addendum: Photo by the talented Rob McGlynn.

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