I have always been a little lost on modern text. I know where to find my Steinbeck but am still wary of fresh titles. I wouldn’t like my future generations to discover them on an idle Tuesday afternoon and judge my reading habits. Like any 20-something-year-old, ‘library’ is a word related to moth-eaten relics of writing and very old men. I haven’t seen myself heading to a library since my college days. In the aftermath of the underwhelming vastness of the Internet, Google is not a very reliable authority on reading either. They may know a lot, but I am not yet sure if the geeks there are still aware of the finer nuances of good writing.

The rise of user-generated social media has finally lead to the emergence of self-confessed curators whom we know we can trust. Between changing my ‘status’ five times a day across the seven and more applications that I use, there is really very little time now to visit a bookshop. Surely, you would agree that it’s more important to tell my ‘followers’ and friends what I am eating or what I am wearing over several times in a day!

First up the journey begins with The Browser website. This is a website which sifts through more-than-you-can-count-your-fingers publications to present us with ‘writing worth reading.’ When choosing curators their tag lines become extremely important. This is a conclusion purely based from The New York Times to the BBC; they have it all, laid out on a platter for your reading soul. Discover the origins of Baroque or Ted Cox’s undercover experience at a Christian gay-to-straight conversion camp, it’s all there!

While on Facebook such valuable information will eventually get lost amidst horrendous photo updates of friends and family (shudder), I urge you to move to Twitter (this was actually the evil plan behind writing this article). While I reserve my wordy gesticulations for Twitter for a later article, I shall very hesitantly concentrate on just a few of the gems in this cosmic gold mine. The website Electric Writing (@ElectricLit-- Saving literature one reader at a time) is also an animal of the same nature hunting down striking pieces of prose, poetry and non-fiction for your reading pleasure. Enough clicks will assure you that they maintain very high quality standards. They are just the tip of the iceberg of online literary curators; discover the others by chance so that each day can be a pleasant surprise.

A completely new phenomenon is the new generation of novella writers on Twitter. @ArjanBasu from Montreal and @VeryShortStory (Sean Hill) from Austin, Texas light up our lives with 140 character stories every other day. With a punch here and a punch there, these stories promise to change the future of storytelling. In a world of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), such short bursts of miniature prose make for the perfect nourishment for the soul.

As I unearth the gorgeousness of the changing face of literature, I ask you to embrace this New World. There is something for everyone here. (140 characters; yours truly)

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