Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Check out this mind-boggling piece in today's New York Times about the rise of the "cellphone novel" in Japan! OMG!

And to think I was waxing nostalgic on the air a couple weeks ago about old-fashioned manual typewriters.

The story notes that one cellphone novel written by a high school senior was turned into a hardback book that's sold more than 400,000 copies. The monosyllabically named author, Rin, says traditional novels leave her cold:

“They don't read works by professional writers because their sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally wordy, and the stories are not familiar to them,” she said.

Ow.