Kindle Singles - a sign of the times

I read a lot in the course of my work - blog posts, reports, books, magazines - but in reality I'm just skimming at great speed, looking for highlights. I can't remember the last time I sat down and properly studied any piece of non-fiction. Why is this? Well, it could be that, like so many people, I'm just too busy, but it's just as possible that my brain has re-wired to adjust to a change in behaviour brought about by the abundance of material that I just have to read. As Nicholas Carr suggested in The Shallows:

'As particular circuits in our brain strengthen through the repetition of a physical or mental activity, they begin to transform that activity into a habit ... Once we've wired new circuitry in our brain we long to keep it activated.'

However, I do enjoy 'proper reading' when it comes to fiction. I don't allocate much time to it - typically just sitting in bed - so, as an extremely goal-oriented person, I get very frustrated at my slow progress. There really are so many great books to read and so little time.

So what's the answer for an occasional but enthusiastic reader who likes to get to the end of tasks so they can 'tick them off'? Kindle Singles. These are primarily short stories that you can read in one or two sittings but look just like full-size books in your Kindle library. It's an exercise in self-deception but one to which I have succumbed, downloading five or six of them to get me started.

If Nicholas Carr is right and we find it ever harder to allocate sustained time to concentrated study, perhaps books will go the way of music. Just as so many people now just download tracks one at a time, rather than purchase whole albums, perhaps fiction will be consumed in the same way. Purists will be horrified, but if that's what people want ...

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