The Breaking of the Common Bookshelf
How Liberalization, Globalization and the Internet Dissolved a Shared Literary World An Odyssey in 4 parts - PART III of IV "The old world did not end because people stopped reading. It ended because they stopped reading the same things." History Rarely Destroys Institutions Overnight Looking backwards, the disappearance of the common bookshelf appears almost inevitable. Living through it, however, almost nobody noticed. There was no single event. No publisher announced that the age of Wodehouse was over. No library declared that Christie would no longer be recommended. No school circular announced the end of a literary canon. Instead, dozens of independent developments—all individually beneficial—quietly converged. Economic liberalization. Satellite television. The collapse of the Soviet Union. The rise of the United States. Software exports. The Internet. Amazon. Google. Smartphones. Kindles. Social media. Streaming. Artificial intelligence. None of th...