Abridge Over Troubled Waters

Americans may be getting larger, but books are getting thinner, at least according to this USA Today article:

With its snazzy new "Great Ideas" series released this month, Penguin Books hopes to provide an economical remedy for time-pressed readers in search of intellectual sustenance.

Each of the paperbacks costs $8.95 and offers readers a sampling of the world's great non-fiction. For example, the Gibbon book is a slim 92-page selection called The Christians and the Fall of Rome. It presents Gibbon as sort of an intellectual tapas to be savored in one sitting.

Maybe I've been reading too many Adobe press releases, but this sounds like it could be marketed as Gibbon Elements. My favorite bit:

Because "we want readers to be able to get close to the text," the books do not have introductions or prefaces, Penguin publisher Kathryn Court says. "It's daunting. There are so many books and so little time."

Um...yeah, but the point of reading a book is not to read bits of it. The point of reading a book is to read a book, n'est-ce pas? Besides, Cliff's and Monarch Notes (do they still exist?) are a better cop out anyway, at least back when I was in high school.*

Granted, Gibbon is not everyone's cup of tea, but I think this idea is just a taste of things to come. People (usually silly people) wonder if e-books will kill off printed books (or p-books), but I don't think so. I think books will still be savored in print form by (a decreasing number of) people who really like books (at least for a few generations). What will ultimately kill off printed books is an increased trend away from reading books at all. I think the trend in reading in the long haul will be toward shorter and shorter documents--the contents of a Web page (or a blog post), or whatever electronic medium will replace the current computer screen.

*It just occurred to me that it's entirely conceivable that the next trend in "books" could very well be the PowerPoint presentation. I can see it now: "the Great Books of the World in PowerPoint format." Bulleted slides take you through the world's greatest literature. Hmm...this gives me an idea... What's scary, though, is that there probably already is such a thing, akin to the hysterically funny Gettysburg Address PowerPoint.