In the olden days not everyone would be able to read. In fact many people didn’t know how to read and their only way to tell stories or spread information would be by word of mouth. Take a few steps forward in history and you may notice St Ambrose was the first recorded man in history who could read in his head without talking aloud. Something we all seem to find easy now but which may have actually been a skill that was developed. Books used to be hand written and hard to come by until the invention of the printing press which made literature accessible to even more people. In this new information age everything is now becoming digitised, and with devices such as the Kindle we no longer need to print physical copies of text meaning that practically anyone in the world can get their hands on a copy of any text.

The ways books are read and published are completely changing. If I was to write a novel and it didn’t get accepted by a major publicist there are now a thousand new routes I could go down. I could upload it online as an e-book and, if the novel was good, possibly get offered a deal that way as well as making a bit of money in the short term. The internet is now breaking down the barriers that people face when making and distributing their own work. I could upload a novel chapter by chapter in a blog post which I could then post on loads of forums to get people to read it. If a story is good then people will keep coming on the site to read. Some may argue that they don’t like reading of a screen but we are coming to a time when this is bothering people less and less.

With Google attempting to digitalise the world's libraries we could all be reading from screens rather than books shorter than we think. The internet is like a giant interactive newspaper with much more to offer. Some people get most of their literature from reading posts and blogs online, such as these, rather than turning to the latest novel being released or buying the local newspaper. Today is World Book Day and probably not the last, but with literature now about to break the last hurdle by becoming accessible to everyone in the world we are going to see a rapid increase in the amount of eBooks. First reading was exclusive, and then the internet was exclusive. We now live in a time where people have access to both, allowing literature to be available to more people than ever before.

With some specific newspapers now committing the darkest sin by simply uploading a headline with a short article and a page of people’s comments, this is now a time more than ever where good literature and journalism needs to keep being posted as well as preserving the old.

So before all books are stored on computers and we no longer are able to buy printed texts what are your top reads before you die?

Tags: book, books, day, world

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Comment by Tim Edwards on March 4, 2010 at 1:07pm: I thought one person would notice. Not a clue how I made it. This was the fifth time I wrote the title. It was bound to happen lol

Comment by JS on March 4, 2010 at 9:41am: Umm, why was the name of your blog post "Happy World Boob Day" at first?

I mean, it did get me reading, but really? How do you make that typo?

But my top read would be War and Peace. Or something similar. I don't know, I haven't read it yet.

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