It seems we can’t get enough of literature in bite sized portions – and are choosing to consume said portions in a number of different ways

If Tankbooks aren’t your thing (although lots of people are loving em), then maybe you’d prefer to get your lit on digitally?

Kindle, Amazon’s new electronic paper wireless reading device claims to be the future of book reading.

Or perhaps you’d prefer not to invest in a pricey e-reader, and would rather use your mobile phone? If you sign up to the Swedish service Storytel, you can download audiobooks split into chunks of about 50 and 150 minutes long – you can even download comic books to browse on-screen.

Now Daily Lit will send you a snippet of your chosen book by email or RSS at the date/time of your choosing – with each instalment small enough to be read in 5 minutes or less.

The makers of Daily Lit admit that they got the idea from newspaper serialisations of classic novels: books they had always meant to read but never got round to – but finally read because each chapter became part of their daily routine of reading the newspaper. They observed that the only thing they did more . The only thing they did more consistently than read the paper was to read their email – and lo, Daily Lit was born,

Ironically it seems we’ve come full circle – whilst we might be accustomed to reading entire volumes of Dickens novels, most of his work was originally published in episodic format, in monthly or weekly instalments in journals – resulting in that famous anecdote of American fans waiting at the docks in New York for the arrival of the latest installment of The Old Curiousity Shop, shouting clamours of ‘Is little Nell dead?’. Whilst the accessibility of literature has meant such anticipation is a rare occasion (with the exception of Harry Potter and the like), it’s fascinating to see that whilst the medium may have changed, how we consume literature seems to have come right back round again…