French town introduces public short story dispensers for bored locals

If you’re waiting around for the bus or trying to get paperwork done at the town hall in the French city of Grenoble, look no longer to Facebook stalking and Instagramming your shoes to pass the time: you can a read a short story instead.

Dispensers around the town offer three minute stories or five minute stories, depending on how much time you have, and are free to the public, Konbini writes. It’s a collaboration between the town’s mayor and a local publishing house, Short Edition.

“The idea came to us in front of a vending machine containing chocolate bars and drinks,” Christophe Sibieude, head of Short Edition, told Agence-France Presse. “We said to ourselves that we could do the same thing with good quality popular literature to occupy these little unproductive moments.”

CNN IBN reports that there will be eight dispensers in the city to begin with, at the town hall, libraries, tourist office, and social centers.