Online reading is opening up a whole new world of connections

My wife quite frequently belches right near the back of my head when she passes behind me. When I say to her, "Stop burping behind me all the time," she says, "It's not on purpose. It just comes out." I don't think I'm bringing it upon myself in any way. Is there something I can do to stop my wife's belching? (ukuleleKazu, male, 61, self-employed)

I hope you'll pardon me for saying so, but I think belching is far better than farting. Perhaps you should think of it that way. (Haruki Murakami, male, 65, writer)

The modern reader tends to think of reading as a solitary activity, but digital developments enable readers to connect instantly with each other. New technologies present the possibility of the book as a shared interface rather than as a discrete text, giving rise to the notion of social rather than solitary reading: the act of reading while connected to others.

That’s evident from the online exchange at the start of this piece, in which the Japanese star author Haruki Murakami answers a reader’s email, having invited fans to send him their personal problems.

Some might argue that reading as a social activity is not a new phenomenon. Before the printing press made books widely available, reading was a public, group activity, intimately connected to the oral tradition.

If the rise of literacy and the availability of cheap books transformed the way books were read and circulated, it also changed the way that they were understood. Readers used margins to annotate texts and to open up dialogue with other readers – think of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose – creating new versions of texts based on shared mores.

The popular commonplace books of the 17th century, meanwhile, were multiauthored scrapbooks filled with quotes, poems and recipes, added to and edited by individual readers. As the academic Liz Danzico has wryly noted, they functioned like a “slow-motion Twitter or Facebook”, where readers could respond to postings and contribute their own musings.

Online book clubs

Twitter and Facebook, along with other social-networking sites, are playing an increasingly important role for the modern reader, from determining our choice of book to sharing our opinions to allowing us to make our own mark on the virtual page. Online book clubs, including this newspaper’s, offer readers opportunities to discuss books with other readers and, often, with the writers themselves.

Some offer discounts on titles in printed and digital form. Copia is one of the biggest online book clubs, harnessing the full social potential of ereading with a free app that allows members to buy ebooks directly. The app also enables readers to make notes in the margins of their personal copies and share within their community.

Addr is an independent app that facilitates a similar social function. Currently available for Apple’s iOS software only, it allows you to read and take notes on any ePub ebook, stacking your comments for shared use in the margins of the text.

The Leaflit app adds a multimedia dimension to the mix. The reader can create content for PDF files and ePub ebooks by adding comments, images, photographs and hyperlinks. It also facilitates direct access to Amazon’s Kindle shop and your personal library.

Other online book clubs, such as Goodreads, provide a facility to archive and review your reading in a public forum that friends, family and peers can access.

Although copyright laws forbid lending ebooks between ereaders, the shared library at a site like Librarything offers an opportunity to seek out and recommend more than single titles while connecting people who are reading the same books.

ReadFeeder offers you the opportunity to hang out with the popular crew, creating recommendations based on mentions in well-known blogs.

Harlequin.com invites authors to join the conversation, and many writers have embraced this openness. Margaret Atwood posts new work and solicits feedback on the open creative forum Wattpad, for example.

The fans who joined the online community of the reclusive Murakami were encouraged to share their favourite moments from his work. When Murakami invited readers to email him with personal problems last month he received more than 2,000 on the first day.

It is worth noting, however, that his latest book, an illustrated novella called The Strange Library, doesn't work at all in its ebook format.

Real fans will find themselves retreating to hardcover, which offers an aesthetic emphasis to the slight, suspenseful tale about the uncanny power that books have to connect us with other people.