African short stories and the Internet

As I browsed the Melbourne City Library recently, I saw a book facing out, probably placed by a librarian who recommended it. The book was The Granta Book of the African Short Story. That sure looked interesting, but I didn't want to carry a book on public transport because I had my hands full already.

Next day, I wandered into my local library, and there, facing out on the 'recent returns and new books' display, was the same book. Obviously I was meant to borrow it.

So I'm reading it.

In the introduction, Helon Habila says:

With the coming of the Internet to many parts of urban Africa in the late 1990s, a new avenue for publishing was discovered and the African short story finally began to get its long-overdue moment of recognition. [This follows a discussion of the emphasis on novels at the expense of short stories.] The traditional publishing landscape, with its excessive restrictions, was suddenly superseded. The Internet is today doing what the newspapers and magazines did to the development of the short story in Europe and America at the start of the industrial age. It is worth pointing out that the Internet, due to its own peculiar restrictions, seems actually to favour short stories over novels, thereby reversing the restrictions that traditional publishing had placed on African fiction.

Food for thought. Is the Internet giving the short story new life everywhere in the world? I hope so.

In my opinion, eReaders also favour short stories. It seems ages since I bought a BeBook Neo. I didn't use it for a long time, until I had the bright idea of transferring to it the stories I download from my subscription to Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Now I can sit comfortably at the table with my eReader propped up on my Book Seat, or lie in bed and take in a short fantasy or sci-fi story.

the Bebook is a good ebook reader

After two long years of trying to get my hands on an e-book reader, I've bought a Bebook. Quite impulsively, I must say. I've haunted Dymocks, Borders, Readers' Feast and other shops over the last couple of years and haven't been able to find a person on duty who could actually show me one working. (Oh, I just remembered that in the last couple of weeks Borders has introduced an e-reader and has some available for people to try out - but I didn't think it had enough features and I suspect you have to buy your books from them.)

I walked into the LaTrobe Uni bookshop recently, and there was the Bebook, available to try AND behind the counter was a young woman who not only knew how to work it, but who was enthusiastic and clear in her explanations. If I've understood her properly, it's not tied to any e-book company, so you can wirelessly buy books from a range of places, or download from your computer.

I haven't bought any yet, because it's so easy to download books from local libraries that I can't see why I would pay to own books. I've been downloading from Yarra Pleny/Brisbane Libraries.

City Library tell me they have e-books available also but I haven't tried them yet.

Here's a picture of my Bebook, propped up for easy reading during breakfast, on my Bookseat, which of course is wonderful for paper books also.



The screen is matt and I find it easy on the eyes. A couple of days ago I read it sitting in the train near a window, with the sun shining in (winter sun, not the glare of an Australian summer) and it was fine. I believe I would have been squinting if I'd been reading on paper, but I'm not sure about that.

Here are some examples of landscape orientation, in the five font sizes available:











It's a different experience to read a book on this e-reader rather than in a traditional book. I'm sure someone, somewhere, is doing a study of the way the brain processes print in the two different formats. As you can see from the photos, you get a different amount of text at each font size, which makes for a different scanning technique by the eye.

When I read my first books, non-fiction - How Dogs Think and Gut Instincts - I was aware that I was reading in an electronic format. But now that I've read an engrossing murder-mystery, once I was grabbed by the plot I lost consciousness of the medium, and at one stage even tried to turn the page instead of pressing the button.

So far, I'm very happy with it. Text does do weird things, though. Paragraph breaks re-arrange themselves at the differing font sizes, and occasionally direct speech runs together into one paragraph so that you think it's the same speaker, or one speaker's words are separated into different paragraphs so that you think it's a new person speaking. Also, diagrams in the health book (Gut Instincts) looked quite weird at the large size - but I simply went back to the small size to see how the diagram was supposed to be.

It's wonderful for reading in bed! Big print, light to hold and no pages to turn.

It cost $569 at the LaTrobe Uni bookshop, but as the shop is a co-op (membership $20), I got $70 discount.

It weighs about 300 grams (about 10.5 ounces).

There are lots of things you can do with it - take notes as you read, highlight sections, go to a particular page and other things, but my main aim is to simply read books, so I haven't used many features yet.

Here are more pictures of the five font sizes, this time in the portrait orientation: