2b? Nt2b?*

"... Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels [in Japan], five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cellphone novelists, touching off debates in the news media and blogosphere." - via the New York Times.

There are moments - happily still few and far-between - when I can feel myself ossifying. Reading Thumbs Race as Japan’s Best Sellers Go Cellular, an excellent article in this past Sunday's NY Times that I commend to your attention, was one of the moments. I still feel fairly hip, but there's an entire generation behind me whose thinking and ways of communicating are as different from mine - and probably yours - as a Spider from Mars. It took me a long time to learn that part of my difficulty in understanding my father was that I was dealing with a man whose basic adult attitudes and prejudices were mostly formed in the `20s and `30s, as mine were by the `60s and `70s. It's the rare person who can overcome the world picture you grew up with.

*the title, btw, was meant as a joke, as I remembered reading several parodies of classic novels redone as text messages. But, of course, speaking of ossifying...