The loss of serendipity

This is a post by Ann Althouse and more of a political comment than not but the issue is relevant to children's choices in reading. In fact it is especially pertinent. It is critical to make sure children have plenty of access to a range of choices (reading level, topics, etc.) as they are developing the skill and capacity to read (see Growing a Reading Culture). But it has to be a range of choices that are relevant to the child and are of a manageable volume.

Althouse is actually linking to another article by Colin Robinson, The Trouble with Amazon. The issue is not confined to Amazon. Our on-line experiences of any sort tend to be self-directed and the opportunity for serendipitous discovery more constrained. Or, as Robinson puts it:

The loss of serendipity that comes with not knowing exactly what one is looking for is lamented by ex-Amazon editor James Marcus: "Personalization strikes me as a mixed blessing. While it gives people what they want - or what they think they want - it also engineers spontaneity out of the picture. The happy accident, the freakish discovery, ceases to exist. And that's a problem."

There are many problems in the book industry. The cost of a title versus the cost of actually producing it (books are cheap to print and expensive to market and distribute). The volume of titles produced per year versus the number of readers. There are a million new titles produced in a year to a national marketplace of 300 million, only 30 million of whom are enthusiastic readers (and are responsible for 80% of all books purchased or checked out from a library), and only an additional 120 million that occasionally read. Given the variance of reading preferences as well as the variance of writing quality, it is amazing that readers find the books they hope to engage with at all. To make it happen easily and well for a child just starting out as a reader is harder still.

Serendipity is one of the magical components of the reading experience - discovering an author, a character, a topic, that you never knew before, falling into fascination with something discovered by accident. That will always be part of what keeps enthusiastic readers reading