Holly’s Inbox: Is this the new Bridget Jones's Diary?

Katie Lee writes...
For the first time in about 2 years I finally sat down and ploughed my way through all my emails. For a brief, beautiful minute, I had NO unread emails. To me, it's like some sort of miracle has happened, to everyone else in the office, my unbridled glee was a) distracting and b) moronic. But as I leapt and cackled about the place, telling everyone I could find, I finally felt free. I *hate* having unread emails in my mailbox, but since I started Shiny Media, I've found it increasingly difficult to stay on top of my mail. But thanks to a decent spam filter (gmail), the wonders of Outlook 2007 and an entire weekend of my life spent dealing with the backlog (not to mention the ruthless decision to mark everything from before this year as "Read" and be damned), I'm finally back on track.

"New Concept in Publishing"

So when I got sent this "new concept in publishing", an involuntary shudder ran through my spine.

You see, Holly's Inbox is Literature 2.0. It's an online piece of fiction that follows the life of a receptionist in a City investment bank [the City is olde London, and the city's financial district for non-UK readers]. And the way it follows the life of a receptionist is by allowing us all access to her email inbox.

The idea is you can read up on Holly's life, find out what she's been gossiping about, check out what her bosses are telling her off for and generally poke your nose into her business, almost as though she's a real person and you've just snuck over to her computer and opened her Outlook.

Strangely Compelling

What's weird about this is that when I first heard about it my response was to roll my eyes and think "dear god, what nonsense gimmicks will they think of next". But the slightly disturbing truth is that Holly's Inbox is strangely compelling. Maybe it's because we are all so used to the email format, and because we all forward emails that we should probably keep to ourselves, and maybe even because it does feel a little bit like naughty voyeurism, but there's something eminently readable about this piece of editorial folly.

Sure, it's full of typos (presumably, to make it more "authentic" - or at least I hope so), and Holly herself appears to be a little on the irritating side, but I did find myself strangely sucked in.

So is it the future of Chick Lit? It certainly would surprise me if more "books" like this appeared on the web. There are already plenty of fictional blogs, after all, and I think it's all been very well executed and designed. If you're bored at work, this is the kind of thing that would keep you diverted for a couple of lunchbreaks, but for me it just started to feel like I had a whole new Inbox full of Unread Mail to wade my way through.

If you're after something truly excellent to occupy your bored brain at work, I can't recommend the excellent Porn Clerk Diaries enough. Unfortunately, for most people it's not actually *suitable* for work (unless you have an understanding boss), so maybe it's safer to stick with Holly.

Holly's Inbox

Katie Lee (me) is co-founder and editorial director of Shiny Media, and one-time editor of Shiny Shiny. You can read more Shiny Shiny columns by all our writers, here.