Everything You Need To Know About . . . Literature

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday January 13, 2009

JOHN SHARPE

JUST to cheer people up, this year will have lots of books on the economic crisis with titles using "crisis", "depression" and "crash". Look out for The Depression Crash Crisis.

Self-help books will be replaced by help-yourself books with titles including Garbage Gleaning For Fun And Profit, Eat Healthy And Free From Supermarket Bins, How To Make It Big In Busking and Street Statue Success Secrets. Plus the classic original: How To Sting Friends And Compromise People.

Electronic book readers will get better but will still have irritating names such as iLiad, Cybook and Kindle. Shops will install more print-on-demand machines where you can choose a book from a huge list and have it delivered on the spot.

I predict these technologies will drive two huge trends: the interactive plot and the mash-up, which I have patented as PlotSwitch and MashBook after years of developing the sophisticated software.

Plot interaction gives you a selection of different endings to choose from before you hit the print or download button. ("And then Mr Darcy, being too proud to remove his elegant boots, drowned in the lake. Devastated by the tragic news, Elizabeth jumped in too, leaving only her stylish bonnet floating on the surface.")

MashBook allows you to merge two or more novels. For example Frankenstein and Dracula make a wicked cocktail. Blending The Da Vinci Code and The Name Of The Rose gives you a lot more monks and a little more credibility.

Coming soon is StyleShifter, which allows you to print, say, a Jeffrey Archer thriller written in James Joyce prose.

Who knows - this year, the Man Booker Prize could absorb the Bad Sex Writing award and call it the Mad Bonker Prize. "Her skin as soft as a nice creme caramel, their separate bodies gradually merged into one big one."

Exercise books for the brain will be big, as baby boomers worry about losing their marbles. Titles will include Where Have I Left My Marbles? and Have You Seen My Glasses Anywhere? Older people want to stave off encroaching senility. Personally, I've never had a problem with it. Who did you say you were again?

© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald

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