'Wearable' books: The rise of sensory fiction

Every Wednesday, Alex Johnson delves into a unique collection of titles

The cover of ‘The Girl Who Was Plugged In’ contains 150 LEDs that change appearance depending on what’s happening on the page (MIT Media Lab)

We use all our senses when we read and now sensory fiction is starting to take off in a big, sometimes slightly smelly, way.

Talking books have a much longer history than most people imagine.

While children of the 1960s and 1970s will have fond memories of Johnny Morris reading the Thomas the Tank Engine stories on vinyl, Matt Rubery – audiobook historian, reader in 19th century literature at Queen Mary University of London, and author of The Untold Story of the Talking Book – has uncovered the first five books recorded by the Royal National Institute of Blind People in 1935.