So there’s an article on CNN here I just read that I HAD to write about.  Basically it says that 1 out of 4 adults in this country did not read ONE book last year!  And of the people who DID read books, the average was 7.  For the whole year.

WTF?!

Read the rest of the article and it even gets MORE scary.  Especially the dude who says he didn’t read any books because he’d rather be floating in his backyard pool.  I’m sorry, but the idea of not reading ANY books in a whole year…how is that even possible?  What are those people doing?!  Is THIS why MTV is still making reality shows?!

I would say I read like, 2 books a WEEK.   That doesn’t count all the crap I  read on the internet every day.  The idea that I wouldn’t buy a book for a whole year is as conceivable as not bathing for a month.  No way Jose 🙂

I don’t want to be too self-righteous though.  Some things in this article made me think about my own reading habits.  In the last five years or so I know I’ve read a lot less non-fiction than I used to.  A few times a year, I used to pick an area like art or architecture or code breaking or the Civil War and read a bunch of books about it and really educate myself.  I don’t tend to do that now.  I just target internet surf to the one thing that interests me and then move on to something new.  Because of this I don’t learn about the subject in-depth, and that’s something I’d like to change.  I mean, you want to talk about syphilis and the bubonic plague, I’m all over it, because I went on a middle-ages disease kick at one point.  WHAT HAVE I DONE THAT IS THAT COOL LATELY?!  Nothing, that’s what.

I suppose it can be attributed to age as well.  The older you get the more defined your taste, the less adventurous?   It’s kind of sad that my tastes reflect the idea that my personality is set, I want to be malleable all my life.  Young brain, not smooth brain.

The article also made me want to take a university extension class in some subject that I know I wouldn’t explore normally.  I felt pretty bad when I read this: “politics, poetry and classical literature — were named by fewer than five percent of readers.”   Yes, I’m guilty of having Barak Obama’s book sitting next to my bedside table for like…a year.   Every time I pick it up I look over to the rest of my book pile and see some horrible, yummy fantasy cover art of a Fabio-like man in armor or a impish redhead girl with magic swirling around her head and I “accidentally” read it instead.   I don’t know how to change that other than forcing myself to have a 1 to 1 ratio of “trash” to “substance.”  Not gonna be enforced, but I can put it on my “goals” list. 😉

I think for a class I would most like to take poetry.  It seems like sharing that with other people, hearing it read aloud, interpreting it, that would be pretty fun.  And I can’t resist being in the 5th percentile.