The other major theme of this novel is the translation of reality television to the literary world. With book readership numbers dropping drastically, the governing body of the BookWorld comes up with the idea of setting a novel's central characters a series of tasks, and allowing readers to choose how the novel should proceed, vote out unpopular characters and decide which plot lines should be followed. This idea is first attempted on Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice". Fforde, not a fan of reality TV, uses the popularity of such shows, shorter attention spans, and falling levels of reading to illustrate the "diminishing Now" of instant gratification: