The book is dead – long live the book - Module 5

C2 Proficiency · Multiple Matching · Expert Proficiency Resource Book, Pearson Education

You are going to read an article about electronic books and reading. For questions 1–10, choose from the sections (A-D). The sections may be chosen more than once.

A lot of ink has been spilled over the supposed demise of the printed word. Ebooks are outpacing paper books. Newspapers are dying. To quote one expert: 'The days of the codex as the primary carrier of information are almost over.' This has inspired a lot of hand-wringing from publishers, librarians, archivists – and me. I am a writer and lifelong bibliophile who grew up surrounded by paper books. I've been blogging since high school. I'm addicted to my smartphone and, in theory, I should be on board with the digital revolution – but when people mourn the loss of paper books, I sympathise. Are printed books really going the way of the dodo? And what would we lose if they did? Some commentators think the rumours of the printed word's imminent demise have been rather overstated. Printed books will live on as objects, and as collector's items, rather in the way of vinyl records. People may start buying all their beach novels and periodicals in ebook formats and curating their physical bookshelves more carefully. It is not about the medium, they say, it is about people. As long as there are those who care about books and don't know why, there will be books. It's that simple.

Meanwhile, artists are blending print with technology. Between Page and Screen by Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse is a paper book that can be read only on a computer: instead of words, every page has a geometric pattern. If you hold a printed page up to a webcam while visiting the book's related website, your screen displays the text of the story, streaming, spinning and leaping off the page. Printed books may need to become more multi-faceted, incorporating video, music and interactivity. A group at the MIT Media Lab already builds electronic pop-up books with glowing LEDs that brighten and dim as you pull paper tabs, and authors have been pushing the boundaries with 'augmented reality' books for years. The lines between print and digital books are blurring, and interesting things are happening at the interface.

Beyond the page, ebooks may someday transform how we read. We are used to being alone with our thoughts inside a book but what if we could invite friends or favourite authors to join in? A web tool called SocialBook offers a way to make the experience of reading more collaborative. Readers highlight and comment on text, and can see and respond to comments that others have left in the same book. 'When you put text into a dynamic network, a book becomes a place where readers and sometimes author can congregate in the margin,' said Bob Stein, founder of the Institute for the Future of the Book, a think tank in New York. Stein showed how a high-school class is using SocialBook to read and discuss Don Quixote: how an author could use it to connect with readers, and how he and his collaborators have started using it instead of email. Readers can open their books to anyone they want, from close friends to intellectual heroes. 'For us, social is not a pizza topping; it's not an add-on,' Stein says. 'It's the foundational cornerstone of reading and writing going forth into the future.'

The tools might be new, but the goal of SocialBook is hardly radical. Books have found ways to be nodes of human connection ever since their inception. That's why reading a dog-eared volume, painstakingly annotated with thoughts and impressions, is unfailingly delightful – akin to making a new like-minded acquaintance. The MIT Rare Books collection has a rare copy of John Stuart Mill's 1848 book Principles of Political Economy, not for its content but for the lines and lines of tiny comments a passionate but unknown user scrawled in the margins. Maybe ebooks are taking us where print was trying to go all along.

an example of superseded technology that still has a certain appeal

an analogy used to emphasise how seriously an idea is taken

an anxiety she shares with other like-minded people

a development that questions our assumptions about what reading actually entails

the willingness of writers to experiment with new ideas

the idea that books have always been part of an ongoing interactive process

a seeming contradiction in her own attitudes

a belief that the fundamental nature of reading will change

finding pleasure in another reader's reactions to a book

a view that a prediction is somewhat exaggerated

Available as a free printable PDF worksheet with an optional answer key.

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