Do you read E in the nude?
Prim in a pragmatic way, the TeleBlog draws its share of readers from the K-12 and library communities and won’t run illustrations to accompany this post, except for the little image to the left. Also, you needn’t answer the question in the headline, inspired by Rex Reed’s old interview collection, Do you sleep in the nude?
That said, I can’t resist linking to a witty post by Prof. Peter Powers on Naked book reading: An idea whose time has come. “A book about naturalism in East Germany is being promoted with a naked book reading,” Anova reported in an article to which Prof. Powers points. In fact, the book author, Thomas Kupfermann, “induced devotees to send him their photographs and secured a contribution from East German television reporter Hans-Joachim Woller,” according to the Earth Times.
The p-book angle…
Over at Messiah College—and, yes, I’m glad they’re not prude there—Prof. Powers opines in a p-book context: “Now here’s a stretch, but I have to say that a naturist book club meeting is testimony yet again to the enduring popularity of plain old books. I mean, can you imagine a naturist meeting at your local Internet cafe. What would be the point? Half the people would be surreptitiously surfing pornography anyway.”
…and the inevitable e-book angle…
So, ignoring the comment on Net cafe folks, who surely are all there to read Project Gutenberg editions of David Copperfield, here’s the inevitable e-book angle. Might Jeff Bezos borrow some Sports Illustrated models and photograph them reading off Kindles at a beach for naturalists? One way to introduce the Kindle to Continental Europe? A big negative is that the Kindle and other E Ink readers lack color screens, which would spoil the fun. But E Ink screens would be great viewing on sunny beaches, and, of course, plastic bags could protect the gizmos from the elements. Furthermore, for those insistent on color, LCDs are another option, perhaps for use in the shade under beach umbrellas.
…And actually a literacy angle, too
Looking beyond the jokes, is it possible that schools could use reasonably sexy novels to induce adolescents to care more about reading, whether in E or P? I’m not talking about pure porn, but books with real plots and real characters. Rochelle Hartman, one of the TeleBlog’s librarian contributors, has in the past brought up the possibilities of romance books to draw readers into for libraries.
In the end, I suspect, the real issue is community standards. What’s works in Manhattan, or Germany, may not be right for Mississippi. One way or another, however, libraries and society in general will come out ahead if we can get people reading a wide variety of books matching their interests.
Leave a Reply