The change of my mind

I have always been fascinated about literature. My whole life I have been an avid reader and always completely submerge myself into whatever it is that I am reading – a novel, a magazine, a cookbook. What constitutes a bad book? How does one book earn a Pulitzer prize and another is giant flop? Some literary works that I have read I thought were brilliant, and others I absolutely hated – yet they had won multitudes of prize, causing me to buy them in the first place. Then I signed up for a class on digital literature. This was something I really hadn’t considered before. Digital literature? Was it called that purely because it was online? No, Laura. You are completely wrong. This idea of digital literature encompassed an entire world I had not thought of before. Going through this course and each week learning about a new aspect caused me to think this idea that literature was so much more than a physical book bound and put on a shelf.

I have always loved the idea of a cup of coffee, a big fluffy pillow and a good book. Replacing it with a kindle or tablet? Not so much. I have always staunchly refused to buy a kindle purely out of principle yet I find myself reading the latest news online. Very conflicting. I had never considered that video games were literature until we learned, then I went home and watched my flatmates play their video games and came to the realisation that yes, video games are so very much art and literature. The time that goes into these games is parallel to the time an author spends writing a book – months upon months. I realised that I had been cornering myself by refusing to acknowledge that the digital interface was a fantastic way to supply literature.

Then I began thinking – could documents like emails be considered literature? Each week, I receive a “sales update” from the Head Office team at my place of employment. Each week, several members of staff around the country have contributed and written about an achievement or a loss, or something that benefits the business. It is sent out via email – but does that mean it is not literature? There are so many different forms of works that could be considered digital literature and here I was thinking it was when a novel or story was uploaded onto the internet for more people to read instead of just buying the book.

Instead, digital literature has completed opened my world. Allowed me to understand the importance of branching out and not just sticking to my paperback novel. Will I stick to my paperback novel? Probably. The feeling of the pages turning is something that you cannot get holding a kindle or a tablet – but at least now I know that digital literature is in so many more forms than I had expected, and it continues to grow.