I never really pictured someone as busy as Marilyn Monroe having a great deal of spare time, but if this list of the books she either read, and/or owned, is anything to go by, then she was quite the bookworm.

What you need to remember is that many books written prior to the digital age were not merely page-turners, they were also experiences:

Bring both your head and your heart: these are books that want you thinking and feeling. While you’re at it, stock up on tissues. You may, like Oscar Wilde, consider yourself too sophisticated to cry at the sentimental bits, but you never know. It might be the tenderness of Silas Marner that gets you, or maybe silly Dora in David Copperfield will surprise you into sniffles – or maybe your downfall will be Mr Harding and his old friend the Bishop in Barchester Towers. If you think you’re immune, start with A Christmas Carol: Dickens has a name for people like you.

I dare say many books written today are the same, but how many people are still reading them?

I once managed to conceal a page-turner I was reading at work among the piles of paper on my desk and would skim read half a page at a time as I otherwise tried to look productive. While I wouldn’t recommend anyone follow my example, at least there was no risk of colliding with someone, or something, if I’d tried reading while walking.

If you must read though while on foot, en route to somewhere, it’s Lev Grossman’s advice on the matter that you should be taking:

My first move is to clamp the book under one arm, inside-out, at my current page, like a running-back with a football, so I can whip it out at a moment’s notice. Then I pick my spots. Short bursts is the approach. You look for a stretch of open sidewalk, maybe a half a block, you hastily memorize the major obstacles, and then you glance down at the book. You’re speed-reading here – you don’t so much run your eye over the page as grab the next few sentences all at once. Then the book goes back under the arm. You look up again and digest the words as you walk. You check your location and bearing, like a submarine, and you prepare to dive again. Strangers look at you a bit funny, but come on – they’re strangers. Not like the characters you’re reading about. Sure, they may be fictional, but they’re not strangers. They matter.

Don’t go trying this with the likes of Twitter and text messaging though…

Sad to say but I haven’t sat down to read a book in years… I’d probably have to give up sleeping or watching movies to do that … neither of which are likely to happen any time soon, all things remaining equal that is.

Otherwise US data that suggests book reading is at its highest in some sixty years may point to a positive trend. While a whole bunch of caveats apply here, it could be that, for all the time we spend on it, the internet has not deterred people from reading books.

Yet if we’re online all the time, thanks to social media and networks, but also managing to do more reading, then what’s giving? Are we watching less TV? Or seeing fewer movies? Or going without sleep?

Paper books win out when compared with ebooks, argues Dieter Bohn, writing for The Verge:

I am not against ebooks – I believe that their mass use is not only inevitable but will change the ways that we think and learn. I am, however, deeply concerned about ebooks when compared to paper as a technology. Make no mistake, paper is a technology just as much as an LCD screen is, and as a technology it has several important advantages over e-readers that I am loathe to see disappear.

Some not-so-light holiday reading… collector of “new and classic non-fiction articles … that are too long and too interesting to be read on a web browser” Longform, have compiled their list of the top longer articles from the last year.

Is re-reading a book twice, or many more times, an indulgence? I couldn’t really tell you since reading a book – period – feels like a luxury at the moment, but as with seeing a movie several times, there’s bound to be something new gleaned from each re-visit.

As long as we keep rereading, however, we never have the ultimate version of a book. Whether we go back again and again to a classic (and the ability to hold up to rereading is how a book becomes a classic) or pick up an old favorite to see how it has fared or dig deep into the treasures of our youth, rereading is an experiment that is bound to change us, and to change our impressions of the books we read. Rereading can certainly surprise, it can instruct, and it can make us feel safe.

Readers of fiction can experience a vicarious sense of empathy as they engage with the characters in books, and the situations they find themselves in.

[Those] who read the Harry Potter chapters self-identified as wizards, whereas participants who read the Twilight chapter self-identified as vampires,” they wrote. “And “belonging” to these fictional communities actually provided the same mood and life satisfaction people get from affiliations with real-life groups. Books provide the opportunity for social connection and the blissful calm that comes from becoming a part of something larger than oneself for a precious, fleeting moment.

The Booktopia Blog has put together a list of 50 must read Australian novels.

On a whim I asked the twittersphere and facebookland what they thought were the “must read” Australian novels. In a matter of hours hundreds of titles were suggested. I then made a long list of these offerings and asked the world to vote for their favourites. A fellow on twitter suggested I allow one title per author, to ensure the list wasn’t swamped by Wintons, Careys, McCulloughs and Courtenays. The title which received the most votes would be that author’s single listing. I thought this a good idea.

Via Two Flat Whites.

What will become of libraries once everyone is reading e-books? Will libraries still exist, and if so, will we be able to borrow e-books, and under what terms?

But if all e-books were available to everyone at any time, why would anyone need to buy a book ever again? And why would anyone need to visit a library if it could be downloaded off-site? “It’s important to remember that libraries are not simply bookstores where the price-tag always reads zero,” says Nora Daly, digital curator of the British Library. “They exist to collect, sometimes create, but always preserve that knowledge, regardless of what format it is in and to help make it grow through advocating and assuring free and fruitful access to it.