I will admit right off the bat that I am an avid print book reader.  I like holding a book in my hand and the way it looks and feels becomes part of that narrative experience.  After doing some research into the future of reading, I found numerous interesting thoughts:

The future of bookstores- In the Huffington Post, an article I read contemplates the future of the bookstore.  They predict that bookstores will survive, but will not be a place to go browse for your next read.  They think that only books deemed important enough to print will be in bookstores, only "high quality materials."  And that the light entertainment and popular genre of the time will be reserved for ebooks and not make it to print.

This prediction makes sense to me but also has me wondering who decides what the high quality books will be.  I automatically turn to the literary canon that is in place.  Our society has deemed certain books classics, and these are most often taught in schools and put on must read lists.  Ironically, these classics are usually the cheapest ebooks, if not free.  Some of these classics include- Jane Austen, To Kill a Mockingbird, Steinbeck, The Great Gatsby, 1984, and many others.

I believe all these books are valuable, but what if in this ebook revolution, we miss new classics that are unknown after a certain number of years.  Browsing on the internet for books is much different from walking down the aisles of a bookstore or library.  Many books are overlooked and have to be searched on the interest instead of sitting in front of you in print.  This future bookstore will increase the literary canon that usually does not include enough diversity.  I believe in the Classics but want to encourage people to keep an open mind as to what constitutes a worthy book and how they go about choosing their next read.