Posted on 11/29/2007 6:31:14 AM PST by shrinkermd
It was hard not to notice that Kindle was born unto us about the same moment the National Endowment for the Arts released a report on reading's sad lot in our time. Amid much other horrifying data, it revealed that the average 15- to 24-year-old spends seven minutes daily on "voluntary" reading. Cheerfully, this number rises to 10 minutes on weekends.
An earlier, equally grim NEA report, "Reading at Risk," announced the collapse of interest in reading literature -- basically books. This newer study widened the definition of "reading" to include magazines, newspapers and online leisure. No matter. Even if the definition of literate life includes persons who spend their seven voluntary minutes with "InStyle" magazine or online reviews of HDTVs, the report still suggests that unmandated reading is heading for the basement.
As someone whose professional hero up to now was Johannes Gutenberg, I'm obviously cheering for Mr. Bezos's Kindle, whose pages appear in a book-like technology called E-Ink. It must be counted as good news that Amazon's Web site says the first run of the Kindle machines is sold out. (A spokesman said they won't disclose how many. Hmmm.) Still, one must ask:
Are Kindle's early adopters the leading edge of a new literate future, or a small, fanatic band of bookish monks, like those in Walter M. Miller Jr.'s 1959 sci-fi classic, "A Canticle for Leibowitz" (not yet available on Kindle) who preserved books in a post-nuclear apocalypse? Are we in a post-digital apocalypse for serious reading
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
FWIW I think it has already happened.
Does reading websites count as “reading”? Or does reading only count if it’s on the flayed skin of dead trees?
Reading is reading.
When you consider what kinds of graduates university English departments are putting out nowadays, it’s understandable why so many people are turned off by literature.
Or possibly on flayed skin.
'Facebook' bound in priest's skin for sale
Anyone who asks that question already knows the answer.
Reminds me of a line I really learned as a very young boy: A person who doesn't read has no advantage of those who can't (Mark Twain?).
Short of serious physical handicaps, I can't imagine a more distressful, helpless feeling that the inability to read.
KINDLE?
This is the paragraph that explains KIndle: "...Time-pressed Christmas shoppers who visit Amazon.com nowadays see a homepage pushing Kindle. Kindle is Amazon's "revolutionary wireless reading device." This ambitious ($400) and ultimately admirable gadget springs from the hopes of Amazon's visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, whose e-company began with books but in time found that profitability required the selling of things that people prefer to do with their ever-dwindling free time.
Better schools would make a difference, though.
So, you're the single person in America that Jeff Bezos (from Amazon) is still hunting down to beat you with his new electronic book reader.
I prefer a real-deal book, personally.
Dog-ear. (Ping for the passing of fragrant, feathery pages of finger-able, fondle-able tomes.)
As a HS senior English teacher (now retired), I could tell within 1-2 weeks at the beginning of each new class which of my students were readers....their wealth of general knowledge, their breadth of vocabulary, their syntax in speech and writing were head and shoulders above the obvious non-readers in the class.
Oops. I just thought the author had given his kid an incredible stupid name.
I guess I’m way behind the times.
There were a few things in school that we got into like Tom Sawyer and Shakespeare (8th grade) but basically, all they cared about was that we could read and actually write (SCRIPT) AND SPELL!!
By the end of second grade (1951)...we were ALL literate and that was with 50 kids in a classroom and scratchy pens dunked in the inkwell.
We talked in class and the teacher said NO!! We weren't sent for "evaluation".
But that's when teachers were teachers and kids were kids.
Now, teachers are physciatrists and children are patients....Too smart, too dumb, too fidgety, too outspoken...Kids just aren't right!!
Slam money into the system....cut the class sizes, pay the teachers ridiculous wages and Voila....Nothing changes!! The kids still aren't right and the mission to "indoctrinate" is well on its way. Our kids are becoming victims.
I'm sure it will be chic in certain circles.
Not reading has repercussions in other areas, too. For example, if you don’t read very much, chances are you can’t write very well, either. I’m a copywriter who spends a good deal of time editing text supplied by business people, and no word of a lie, most of the stuff they send my way is junior high school level at best. This keeps a guy like me in business, of course, but man, it’s sad.
As reviews come in from people who have actually taken the Kindle to the beach, the bathroom, on the train, etc., there is an emerging consensus that Kindle is actually BETTER than a book. Unlike a book, it lies flat with no effort - much easier to read in everyday situations than a paperback. It can hold multiple books, not just one. You can take a whole vacation worth of reading with you on a trip. And...unlike a book, it's searchable. This will really revolutionize the textbook industry.
Costs a lot for a thingie. If I spent that much at the used-book store, I’d have to surrender *another* room to books :-). At least until I’d read them and donated them to the library sale.
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