"Many Americans, especially the working-class and poor, do not have the time to read. They work punishing jobs, they raise families, they come home and want to unwind, to relax with easy entertainment and go to bed. Reading would help, but the parent of four can’t be expected, every day, to curl up with a hardcover that cost almost $30. A precarious life makes demands. A household budget that includes cereal, diapers, and insulin may not include books. That is fine."
Ross, have you heard of these cool new things called "libraries?" They're these government-subsidized buildings where you can walk in, swipe a card, and "borrow" books for free! You should check them out, they're pretty cool. I think there's one or two of them in NYC...
I hope I don't sound too snarky here, because I like your writing generally and this is a piece that I want to emphatically agree with. But there is something astonishingly contemptible, IMHO, about a piece that (correctly) notes the intelligence and discipline and empathy that habitual reading develops, and then explicitly cordons those benefits off as just a leisure class thing, no proles need apply. Let them eat Netflix.
That supercomputer in your pocket is just as good for pulling up plato-dot-stanford-dot-edu as it is for playing Angry Birds. The "junk food" analogy for a media diet doesn't work when HBO costs $15 a month and literally the entire Western philosophical canon is available for free on Project Gutenberg. If you want people to stop dismissing "Americans need to read more (and better)" as elitist claptrap, then maybe don't trip over yourself insisting that serious literature is a class marker.
One delightful thing I've figured out, is that most books are about 350 pages, and most people read about a page a minute. So the math works out pretty much that if you read 10 minutes a day you can read 10 books a year. Or make it 60 minutes a day, to read 60 books in a year.
My son became an avid reader and inspired me to read more books. I shared your apt column with him. I often dig into New Yorkers and not books, but I'm trying a bit of both these days.
You are a young person who writes like you are superior to the rest of us. You don't have a clue why an educated person might not have the time to keep up with the reading he used to do. It is not because of a smart phone or social media or netflix. Many of us older people have loved ones who are ill and need to be cared for. I love reading, and meeting and talking with people. When I was your age, I was raising 3 children and working and attending college. I was not, however, looking down on others around me, as you appear to be doing. You are young, and may some day realize that you do not have all the answers. I do hope it is not too painful. Yes, reading is wonderful and I have done it since I was a child. But I sense an attitude in this article you've written that shows a lack of maturity. A little humility could take you a great distance. Good luck to you.
I used to ride the Red Line to and from work each day in Chicago, 35 minutes each way. I made it a rule to reserve that time exclusively for good books and can heartily recommend the practice. Then, when I got home at night, I could relax into trivial entertainment with a clear conscience.
So according to your thoughts here, middle-class, blue collar workers don't have time to read because of their hard-working life-styles. I like that, in that, I find that quite humorous. Middle-class, hard-working Blue-collar jobs give you more than enough time to read, because, well for oner thing, most of those jobs are so fully automated the worker simply has to push a button to activate the machine which then cycles through whatever it is supposed to do. But that's neither here nor there.
In reading this, it seems you paint everyone with the same brush. I'm used to that, because you're American, and I'm not. Your statement that anyone reading this page is probably College educated, politically active, yada, yada, yada, in other words, someone who would enjoy reading. Wow. Presumptuous? Maybe. Condescending? I've had worse said to me.
In my humble opinion, as a blue-collar, uneducated worker, I have to say the reading is probably something that is instilled at an early age. If your parents read to you as a child, the chances that you'll read when you get older are probably quite high. My parents didn't read to me. The reason for that is quite simple. My father worked nightshifts for most of my childhood. They were both immigrants, and while my mother was trying to learn a new language, she certainly wasn't able to read me bedtime stories, was she?
But I digress.
American culture and Canadian culture are so vastly different. I know this for a fact. The education system up here does not centre on Canadian history as being the be-all and end-all of our living history. In high school, we studied European history. From the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, until the First World War. When Donald Trump announced that he had been secretly knighted by the Queen, it made me wonder how many Americans recognized his statement as bull shit, and how many believed him. (Americans can't be knighted. You have to be a member of the Commonwealth--you know, Canadian, Australian, that sort of thing? Maybe if he'd read a book he'd have known that and thus saved himself a lot of public ridicule...oh wait, it's too late for that.
Anyway, I can't say how many books I read in the course of a year. I have to decide whether I want to READ, or WRITE. As a result, I don't spend my time in front of the TV, unless it's something I want to binge-watch with my wife. I don't have a phone, because it IS a supercomputer, and I know that I'd be on it all day looking shit up, because I'd have all the accumulated knowledge of mankind, and , well, as a blue-collar worker driving a large machine, I'd never get my work done. Phones are a distraction as far as I'm concerned. But because everyone has a phone, they don't have magazines in doctors' waiting rooms anymore. So I bring a book with me. I always have a book of short stories in my car, laying on the back seat. Usually I have three or four different books laying around. That's because you have to read if you want to write. And I write. I get up early and go to bed late. And I write. I have no education, so I read. You should read what I write. I'm here on the 'Stack. SCRIBBLER, that's me. I write what interests me. Remember the Mau Mau? The Japanese invasion of Manchuria? The Independence of Congo?
I guess I went on a bit. That's because I don't read what you write, but feel I have to explain to you what I write. I don't care for politics, although the mechanics of the American system fascinates me. Have you read Gore Vidal's 1876? That's an amazing look at the American political system at work. I sometimes wonder how far I could have gone in life had I been educated, but then, I would have missed out on so much living my life, wouldn't I?
Newly produced books? NO. "Non-fiction" books are crap and "fiction" books are demonic. I stopped hoping for an exception to those absolute rules in 1995, after too many gotchas and fakes.
Yes to all of this! If anyone's interested in a fantastic modern author of Greek mythology, please check out Madeline Miller. I just had to plug her because of the call for living authors. Now you've got me even more excited for the commute home with my nearly-finished science fiction novel.
"Many Americans, especially the working-class and poor, do not have the time to read. They work punishing jobs, they raise families, they come home and want to unwind, to relax with easy entertainment and go to bed. Reading would help, but the parent of four can’t be expected, every day, to curl up with a hardcover that cost almost $30. A precarious life makes demands. A household budget that includes cereal, diapers, and insulin may not include books. That is fine."
Ross, have you heard of these cool new things called "libraries?" They're these government-subsidized buildings where you can walk in, swipe a card, and "borrow" books for free! You should check them out, they're pretty cool. I think there's one or two of them in NYC...
I hope I don't sound too snarky here, because I like your writing generally and this is a piece that I want to emphatically agree with. But there is something astonishingly contemptible, IMHO, about a piece that (correctly) notes the intelligence and discipline and empathy that habitual reading develops, and then explicitly cordons those benefits off as just a leisure class thing, no proles need apply. Let them eat Netflix.
That supercomputer in your pocket is just as good for pulling up plato-dot-stanford-dot-edu as it is for playing Angry Birds. The "junk food" analogy for a media diet doesn't work when HBO costs $15 a month and literally the entire Western philosophical canon is available for free on Project Gutenberg. If you want people to stop dismissing "Americans need to read more (and better)" as elitist claptrap, then maybe don't trip over yourself insisting that serious literature is a class marker.
I joined and quit twitter twice. Each time I quit was because I lost the ability to focus on books.
One delightful thing I've figured out, is that most books are about 350 pages, and most people read about a page a minute. So the math works out pretty much that if you read 10 minutes a day you can read 10 books a year. Or make it 60 minutes a day, to read 60 books in a year.
My son became an avid reader and inspired me to read more books. I shared your apt column with him. I often dig into New Yorkers and not books, but I'm trying a bit of both these days.
Indeed. People definitely should read more books. People should also abandon social media.
Books are too long. So is this post, which could have just said “I read 40-50 books a year.”
I know a book you could read!
You are a young person who writes like you are superior to the rest of us. You don't have a clue why an educated person might not have the time to keep up with the reading he used to do. It is not because of a smart phone or social media or netflix. Many of us older people have loved ones who are ill and need to be cared for. I love reading, and meeting and talking with people. When I was your age, I was raising 3 children and working and attending college. I was not, however, looking down on others around me, as you appear to be doing. You are young, and may some day realize that you do not have all the answers. I do hope it is not too painful. Yes, reading is wonderful and I have done it since I was a child. But I sense an attitude in this article you've written that shows a lack of maturity. A little humility could take you a great distance. Good luck to you.
I used to ride the Red Line to and from work each day in Chicago, 35 minutes each way. I made it a rule to reserve that time exclusively for good books and can heartily recommend the practice. Then, when I got home at night, I could relax into trivial entertainment with a clear conscience.
I am glad you wrote this! I know a lot of smart people who admit they’ve lost the ability to read anything longer than a post, and that’s not good!
I've read or heard a version of this essay many times in the past decade--reading as the new cod liver oil. Doesn't anyone else just *like* to read?
So according to your thoughts here, middle-class, blue collar workers don't have time to read because of their hard-working life-styles. I like that, in that, I find that quite humorous. Middle-class, hard-working Blue-collar jobs give you more than enough time to read, because, well for oner thing, most of those jobs are so fully automated the worker simply has to push a button to activate the machine which then cycles through whatever it is supposed to do. But that's neither here nor there.
In reading this, it seems you paint everyone with the same brush. I'm used to that, because you're American, and I'm not. Your statement that anyone reading this page is probably College educated, politically active, yada, yada, yada, in other words, someone who would enjoy reading. Wow. Presumptuous? Maybe. Condescending? I've had worse said to me.
In my humble opinion, as a blue-collar, uneducated worker, I have to say the reading is probably something that is instilled at an early age. If your parents read to you as a child, the chances that you'll read when you get older are probably quite high. My parents didn't read to me. The reason for that is quite simple. My father worked nightshifts for most of my childhood. They were both immigrants, and while my mother was trying to learn a new language, she certainly wasn't able to read me bedtime stories, was she?
But I digress.
American culture and Canadian culture are so vastly different. I know this for a fact. The education system up here does not centre on Canadian history as being the be-all and end-all of our living history. In high school, we studied European history. From the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, until the First World War. When Donald Trump announced that he had been secretly knighted by the Queen, it made me wonder how many Americans recognized his statement as bull shit, and how many believed him. (Americans can't be knighted. You have to be a member of the Commonwealth--you know, Canadian, Australian, that sort of thing? Maybe if he'd read a book he'd have known that and thus saved himself a lot of public ridicule...oh wait, it's too late for that.
Anyway, I can't say how many books I read in the course of a year. I have to decide whether I want to READ, or WRITE. As a result, I don't spend my time in front of the TV, unless it's something I want to binge-watch with my wife. I don't have a phone, because it IS a supercomputer, and I know that I'd be on it all day looking shit up, because I'd have all the accumulated knowledge of mankind, and , well, as a blue-collar worker driving a large machine, I'd never get my work done. Phones are a distraction as far as I'm concerned. But because everyone has a phone, they don't have magazines in doctors' waiting rooms anymore. So I bring a book with me. I always have a book of short stories in my car, laying on the back seat. Usually I have three or four different books laying around. That's because you have to read if you want to write. And I write. I get up early and go to bed late. And I write. I have no education, so I read. You should read what I write. I'm here on the 'Stack. SCRIBBLER, that's me. I write what interests me. Remember the Mau Mau? The Japanese invasion of Manchuria? The Independence of Congo?
I guess I went on a bit. That's because I don't read what you write, but feel I have to explain to you what I write. I don't care for politics, although the mechanics of the American system fascinates me. Have you read Gore Vidal's 1876? That's an amazing look at the American political system at work. I sometimes wonder how far I could have gone in life had I been educated, but then, I would have missed out on so much living my life, wouldn't I?
I am a very fast reader, at least for a cat, so I rarely buy books, and I almost never buy books new.
I do read books, though,
properly encultured?
Newly produced books? NO. "Non-fiction" books are crap and "fiction" books are demonic. I stopped hoping for an exception to those absolute rules in 1995, after too many gotchas and fakes.
Yes to all of this! If anyone's interested in a fantastic modern author of Greek mythology, please check out Madeline Miller. I just had to plug her because of the call for living authors. Now you've got me even more excited for the commute home with my nearly-finished science fiction novel.