Hybrid Reading Experience

I have been using a hybrid form of reading without realizing it! Hooked on the West Wing series, I watch chunks (chapters) at a sitting, the audio turned low and the English subtitles turned on. I could hear it just fine, but found the technique very relaxing, allowing me to read (and re-read) the dense, well-written dialogue and explore the complicated political, international and personal dynamics. My husband laughed at me, saying he had never seen someone watch TV like that. The fact is, I would probably not have read a book entitled The West Wing. But the story is so well told, so filled with layers of meaning and blends of music, video, and scene transitions, it is excellent storytelling. Library Journal published an article last fall in which Tom Peters said. "Reading is one human activity that is at once both intensely cerebral and lusciously sensory." The article discusses the future of reading in the light of genuine reading hybrids like "Vooks."

Vooks (video books) blend print and video content. Vook.com partnered with Simon & Schuster last fall in this experiment: titles combining text and a dozen or more embedded videos in the text layout . Cost: around $7. The guy who introduced this is Bradley J. Inman, a Silicon Valley entepreneur. The NY Times and Publishers Weekly have informative articles on the print-media hybrid. And were vooks go, Twitter and online communities will surely follow.

Critics say human reading involves “immersion” or “flow”, which is by nature solitary. Also, when a story is augmented with video the imagination is diverted from making its own images. I agree to some extent. Should anyone else decide which "lusciously sensory" imagery is evoked when you or I read? Fiction reading is transportive, and half the fun is letting your mind freewheel and make associations on its own. Maybe hybrid fiction isn’t for everyone. Nonfiction could be pretty interesting though –a biography supplemented with embedded video or speeches? A nonfiction Vook would do the running around for you, mashing together various sources and enriching the content so you don’t have to. There is a certain appeal.

Meanwhile, I still like curling up to read a nice West Wing episode. And if some political or legislative story line confounds me, I hit pause, run to my computer (still no mobile device) and google for background insight into the topic. Am I being weird, or just finally starting to catch up?