My favourite place to read is an armchair, in the northeast corner of our living room, which has one window facing out on our suburban street, another with a peekaboo view of Stuart Channel and the Salish Sea.
Most often I have a hardcover or paperback opened in front of me, either held up in my hands or propped on my lap. It’s a comfortable portrait, most would recognize instantly, and most readers would sanction.
It fits our notion of what a book and, by extension, literature should be.
The flaw in that picture, however, is the word ‘most’. If most of the people show up most of the time for an activity that happens most every day, it won’t be long before most people aren’t showing up at all.
Literature is too important to allow incremental slippage. Books Unbound is not about denigrating what remains the most popular literary medium, a position printed books will occupy for a long time to come.
It’s about imagining new ways of writing and sharing, ways that broadcast storyteller’s voices and, by extension, the reach of literature.
Our stories have to unfold in places where readers go. To me that means books that are dynamic, interactive and versatile, presented to ‘audiences’ on social media, websites, in video readings and book trailers, episodically in eMagazines, and…
In ways that promote literature in its vital role as the art form that challenges readers to experience their worlds from new, diverse perspectives.