Mark Mason

Kindles will kill off the bookish loner (thank God)

Ebooks are turning reading into a communal event. And that’s a good thing

[Getty Images/iStockphoto] 
issue 14 June 2014

The Kindle has changed reading in so many ways. A library in your pocket rather than the hulk of a hardback. Uniform pixels where once dust motes rose from an ancient page. But the biggest change, the most fundamental one, is emotional rather than physical. Reading, which used to be the most private of activities, is now an increasingly public one.

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