I was a top student in high school and college and by college had three jobs to stay in a state school. Throughout that seven years of HS/college, I almost never read a book outside of school. When I graduated college, I spent years reading for pleasure again.

What I’m saying is that during all the time I was in school I would have had to answer ‘no, I don’t read anything outside of school assignments,’ but I was actually CONSTANTLY reading and making enormous advances in my own literacy. So I think that cutting out assigned reading at work or school is to distort the reality of ‘who is reading’ for an alarmist statement that only actually reflects who has time to read voluntarily.

Many people who would love to be spending time reading are working themselves to death most of the time, especially if they are poor. Plenty of middle-class people don’t have the time either.

I appreciate all your points about reading not being superior to other entertainment/media.

Sure he does. They let him learn about “the black experience” so he can be all cultured and enlightened, and they let him feel superior (though he doesn’t, of course) to the “dumb” people who are “losing out” by not reading. And if he had a choice, he’d get rid of libraries and make it even harder for the “dumb” to get access to books, so he could continue to not feel superior to them.

‘Get money for nothing, and your chicks for free’?

Now my office is nearing critical mass and may implode at any moment. I hate to throw them away.

Some I will treasure for ever.

I have the original Tolkien Fellowship of the Rings that I got off a friend of mine in high school after his fundie minister father blew a gasket about it when he found it in his room. I don’t remember how I got it but I devoured it and loved every morsel.

I’ve got several first editions and a signed HHGTTG!

Books are so cool. I feel like Capt. Pickard on the Enterprise. Although I do have techno lust over that new Sony ‘e-book’ (even though I know that Sony treats their customers worse than dirt with bugs, root kits and obnoxious software).

harumph.

You mean apart from the fact that very very few people have a scriptorium sitting on their desktop?

I was having a conversation recently about how if libraries were a new thing, people would think they were a great idea. But as it is, I think a lot of people forget about them.

If libraries were invented today, copyright owners would be furious.

What’s the difference between a file-sharing network and a public library?
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However - and this is a big however - if one lives in my town (St. Louis county/ city) and lives in an area that is generally regarded in layman’s terms as “dangerous,” “sketchy,” or any other synonyms that are euphemisms for “black people exist there” (St. Louis is incredibly segregated), libraries are a rare find. Public transport in this city is in a disparaging state and the public schools are essentially designed to weed out undesireables - to avert them from scholarly aspirations or anything that might elevate their levels of cognization, conciousness, and an overall sense of awareness. Then there is the problem of factors that encourage behaviors that result in having children at too young an age and the process of the underclass begins all over again; I believe strongly that I am not the only one who has noticed this (obviously; I probably don’t even need to go on this diatribe) or that it is specific to this region.

This has less to do with a lack of reading and is more a supportive argument of the conspiracy theory previously mentioned that the public is not supposed to think, much less read.

As a disclaimer: I read quite a bit but mostly non-fiction. Currently reading Clinton Heylin’s new book (and it rocks!).

Mythago, my point is that Amanda’s argument that reading is for those with time is flawed, IMHO. I used the example with the working-class around the turn of the century because with work weeks of 72+ hours they worked twice as many hours per week as most Europeans today. Yet they still had time to read and do lots of other stuff. And they read books too, not just newspapers.

Besides, at the turn of the century almost every union and political party in Europe had its own newspaper where, among other things, poems and short stories were frequently printed - for the benefit of the author (lots of exposure) and reader (cheap!).