*Book Blogger Hop* 12 October 2018

We are on to a new week for the Book Blogger Hop hosted by the lovely folks over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. This weeks questions is:

You are suddenly transported into a future time in which (horrors!) books are unknown. How would you explain books, and how wonderful they are, to the people of that time? (submitted by Maria @ A Night's Dream of Books)

So this question doesn't have enough information about the future time for me to adequately answer without qualifying myself a lot. Like why aren't books known? Is it because trees no longer exist, or they're so scarce that it's illegal to cut them down and doing so is punishable by death? Is it because society has been brainwashed into being perfect little automatons with absolutely no creativity whatsoever? Is it because at some point in time between now and the future time, books were outlawed and enough time had passed that everyone alive just didn't know what they were? Beyond that, what things do exist in this future time? Do they still have movies and television? Do they have electronically accessible news articles? Do they know how to read, or has society devolved completely to communicating via emojis?

So considering all the questions I currently have about this future time, I'll try to just generalize my answer as much as I can. I'd probably start by trying to compare books to something that hopefully still exists in this time (since I don't know how long I will have been in the future before trying to explain books in the first place). I'd also try to help them relate by asking them what they like to do for fun (this will obviously not be very successful if society is full of automatons) and then explain that in my time, people liked to read books for fun because they could transport us to other times and places. I imagine this might lead to them asking me if that's how I ended up in their time. So unless the answer to that question is yes, I'd have to tell them that I meant figuratively.

Mostly, without some sort of frame of reference for the future dwellers, I don't think I could adequately explain the majesty of books.

This brings me to a somewhat unrelated, but kind of related tangent that I've wanted to talk about somewhere and this is as good a place as any because this question reminds me of a question my son recently got wrong on a reading test. He's nine and in fourth grade and part of their reading tests is reading a short selection and then answering questions on it. Well the question he got wrong, he was supposed to provide evidence from the story to show how we could tell it wasn't set in olden times. The answer, the story mentions a phone book. I don't think my nine-year-old has ever seen a phone book, so I can understand why he wouldn't pick up on that as evidence for what he was trying to prove. And I'm not upset about him getting points deducted for his wrong answer that he'd have no way of knowing, because he did get it wrong, but it does make me think that maybe some of these tests need updating to be relatable.

But back to the topic at hand. How would you explain books to a future society where they no longer existed? - Katie

*If you're stopping by from the linkup, please drop a link to your post below so I can visit your blog to see your answer.*

"Water? You mean like from the toilet?" - Idiocracy

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