
Complain all you want about the sad growth of the sound-bite culture. You can't stop it. Twitter has even made sound bites a personal publishing medium. Here's my life, it says, in 139-character chunks.
And now you can get real books delivered to you via text messages. Or at least their pithiest quotes. Moka, launching today, will send you a blurb every day from your choice of self-help, business, philosophy, or religious texts.
I hate this. It takes all the heart out of a book. But wait. I love this. Because a lot of self-help books are really a bunch of short ideas embedded in two hundred pages of packing material. Moka's editors do the job of extracting the good bits.
Moka's baseline service (30 SMS messages) is $5.95 a month. On top of that there may be a price for the books you want, although several are gratis. You can subscribe to get 120 daily Bible messages, for example. No charge. Modern best-sellers, though, will cost you. For example, it's $7.95 to sign up for 436 daily blurbs from Eckart Tolle's, The Power of Now.