People from the South read a bit more than those from other regions, mostly religious books and romance novels.

How I wish that sentence would have ended halfway through.

Yeah - it's kind of redundant, isn't it?

But how many people like to talk about the book they're gonna write even though they can barely utter an interesting sentence?
Can we put them first against the wall?

ethylene, the only time I feel inspired to write a book is when I'm reading one that's really badly written. I think- I'll show you how it's done! But then I don't. And probably couldn't.

Mostly I'm in awe of anyone capable of creating something that even holds together. It seems like an overwhelmingly hard task. Especially books that create a whole universe and social structure, down to realistic people, even if they're based on history.
(That's why I love Tolkien, even when some of his prose is clunky. His universe is very thorough.)

But that's the true value of the mediocre. Some people follow through when the bar doesn't seem so high.

What bugs me are the people who like to talk about their "life story," how someone should write a book. It shows most obviously how little they read and how boring they are.
A beautiful book could be written about a lunch over a good chicken salad sandwich, it doesn't mean anyone is going to write it. But it could be done.

Yes, lots of stuff sucks but at least it got done.
Better a crappy book gets read than a good book is lost on someone.
Sometimes.

I didn't enjoy reading until I was well into my 30's. Reading in school was a chore, especially having to analyze the damn thing afterwards. I was more interested in shooting baskets and riding my bike than sitting motionless with a book. Layovers & flights changed that for me, and like the woman in the article said, "I go into a different world when I read."

How to write a book: the short, honest truth

Find the link that tells me how to get the time back i lost reading worthless crap, hoping there was a point.

I remember about ten years ago being in rehearsal for a show and always bringing a book. A guy in the cast, in an earnest and totally non-hitting-on fashion approached me after a few weeks and said - "You read." It's something I've always done, so, yeah. He read too and pointed out how rare it was becoming. We talked books. I get it though - I have loved ones and friends who don't read - it's ok. I fear loosing my sight not because I'd bump into things but because I couldn't read.

I kant reed.

I think that the love of reading has to be instilled quite early... I literally cannot get to sleep without reading a chapter of something. Even if my wife is asleep, I use the LED on my mobile to get a few pages in.

*shrug*

I can't live without reading... even for one day. I'll lie awake wishing for a book. Does that make some sort of rarity? Not in Britain.

IT WAS the best of lunches, it was the worst of lunches, it was a fetish for serious foodies, it was casual dining, it was the breaking of bread, it was fast food on the run, it was the worship of flavor, it was white bread grilled in lard, it was the taste of companionship, it was the taste of regret, we had the whole meal before us, we had indigestion behind us, we were all going direct to bed, we were all headed for the loo- in short, the repast was so far like the present repast, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only, in Iron Chef Stadium.

There was a salad with shredded chicken breast, mayonnaise, relish, and dill on the sandwich before me; there was a salad with shredded chicken breast, mayonnaise, relish, and dill on the sandwiches before the judges of the Food Network. On all the plates before us it was clearer than advertising to viewers in the coveted 18 to 49 age bracket, that lunch had been over salted...

One book a year? I can barely restrain myself from devouring one book a week at a bare minimum.

If it wasn't for the internet and extracurricular activities like getting sauced, making/DJing music and at least a passing interest in girls, that figure would probably skyrocket to several books a day.

loquacious, could you get through McCarthy's The Road?

It put me off, somehow. Maybe it was all the babyeating.

Gosh, that's why I luvs my library - I cannot afford to keep myself in books. Like loquacious, I can go through a book in no time at all. Course, I also like the pre-owned store where you can take them back and get something and buy "new ones"...

I remember first learning to love to read when a blessed librarian pointed me to the shelves that had horse books (my passion at the time). And the library (kid part) was arranged by subject! What joy - I read all those, then went on to mysteries, then onto any novel...My mother would take us to the library one day a week and limit us to only 7 books so we wouldn't spend all our time indoors reading. Course we could re-read them over the week...

Those were the days. Then of course university studies took over and There. Was. No. Reading. For. Fun. You could never read enough in those days to keep up. It took years after graduating to get back into reading. But, now it's back to fun reading. Me loves books, but cannot write worth a dang.

I think that the love of reading has to be instilled quite early...

I think this is definitely true. All of the people I've met who are like me and have had a life-long love of reading, to the point of prefering reading to doing just about anything else, learned to read before they hit kindergarten. After that it seems like other interests take over for most people.

One of the few happy memories of my childhood is going to the library when I was 9 and picking out a stack of books that, as I carried them to the counter, extended well past my head. I think I actually plowed through thirty adult novels that summer. God I wish I still had that kind of free time.

Me too, cmonkey! I loved going to the library and getting big stacks of books. Sometimes I'd get overambitious and I'd check out more than I could carry- I'd have to wait for Dad to come and help, tehehe.

I was reading from day 1 of school and loved going to the children's library to choose my books. One of my school reports from when I was about 7 says "Jan is the class bookworm. Her reading will stand her in good stead in the future."

I cannot imagine a life without books.

i've gotten people who never read unless forced to read in their twenties. True, it has been through adolescent fiction and fantasy and sci fi but now they are avid readers.
Also, i have gotten people in their thirties to start reading for pleasure by having them read a short piece or referring to books and authors often or loaning them books.
It's for the same reason i read those things or read at all: because there isn't anything else as satisfying to do.
With genres also, it's because if you get into escaping into a book, there's lots to read, waiting for you.
Stuff i couldn't stomach now i can still recommend to a less experienced reader for the same reason i read it so long ago.

It's the same reason people start reading in jail: what else is there to do?
And there is something nice about being able to sit with someone just read. i've rarely found people who want to read together, although that's nice too.

Also, i hold off reading books until i know i can really indulge in them. i don't want to waste the experience.
Also i don't like the disconnect of coming and going from another world. A book that stays with me when i'm not reading is something special to me. In the same way i resent wasting my time on a book, where i use to finish anything i started no matter what. Now life is too short and i am less tolerant.
But sometimes, any port in a storm,and i have read many horrible books for that reason.

I cannot imagine a life without books.

That's a great fear for those who love to read isn't it? I worry about it too. My Mom has major retinal problems, and I worry about getting that as I age. One of her friends has macular degeneration and gets books on tape - something I just haven't warmed up to - I like reading with my own inflection and at my speed. It's OK for a road trip if you're driving somewhere, I guess...

Also i don't like the disconnect of coming and going from another world

Yes, I get that too, and it is difficult. Especially on a plane trip or something where you can focus for a long time and then be jolted out of it...

i use to put off ending books but now it's too hard, except if it's something that inspires me, then i can put it down for a while until the creative urge wanes past the point of the books necessity.

i am all for recommendations of good books. i can never remember or find the ones that pass here. i wish we had a wiki list.

Possibly the worst book i ever read: A Time to Kill by Grisham. My leg was broken at the time and i had finished PIHKAL, formulas and all. That really says something about desperation.

Damn. This post is better than anything I've seen on the blue in a while!

(Now I don't feel so bad about not reading so much. Hell, I could do worse.)

I don't care too much if people don't want to read but I find people's obsession with print a little weird. Like that article talks about peopel using "the internet" as if they're not reading there too. I mean maybe they're not but for me the internet is, in a lot of ways MORE READING. On the other hand, I may have a reading problem.

One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year

FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING CUNTS. IF YOU DON'T READ MY CATS DON'T EAT.

Uh, that is, gosh don't you know what you're missing? Books are great!

I think that the love of reading has to be instilled quite early...

I agree and think, if you examine the homes of children who don't read, they are always empty of books. We have to pry books out of our kids' hands at ridiculous hours of the night so they can get some sleep - they will read in almost complete darkness to avoid detection. I take them to the library every one or two weeks and they just devour books - even my son who is 4 and can't read loves books with or without pictures.

One thing I like about my long daily commute is that it gives me time to read completely without interuption. Sunglasses, iPod, book and I'm in a happy place.

Reading is also really bad for your eyes.
You'll go blind!

No, really. It's hard on the eyes.

I think it has to be instilled early too. When I was little my mom had me enrolled in a book of the month club for kids. I remember being utterly fucking thrilled to bits when one of the frog and toad books showed up.

Most of the time I am reading a book. I do usually go through a phase once a year when I go a month or so without reading book(s). I cannot even imagine not reading.

I just went to the library tonight! (Just got Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban to reread but I'm super busy with work and didn't want anything that would make my noggin bleed.)

i stop myself from reading things on the computer i have here in print, like Vanity Fair and the New Yorker.
i read more on the internet, as i will keep reading one thing after the other, so easily available link after link, but i find reading off paper satisfying in a different way: i can be in funny positions without any energy but light and it ends. IT ENDS. Then i think about what i read and it's effect on me and don't just go on to the next thing.
Also, i can put it down or put it away and am less distracted. But then internet reading is different for me at different times in different moods.
And sometimes i don't read books as much as articles, short stories and essays.
It's all so subjective and situational.

Reading was never instilled in me when I was a kid. My parents didn't really emphasize how wonderful reading was -- because neither of them read for fun. So I never read for fun growing up.

It wasn't until I was a senior in high school that I became fed up with the canon that secondary education in the US makes you read so I decided to look up books that were stereotypically banned in US schools. This got me started on reading A Clockwork Orange, and that just blew my mind for some reason. Perhaps it just clicked in my brain that there were books out there that were good and interesting and fun.

From then on my English teacher that year encouraged me to continue reading the "banned books" and gave me plenty of suggestions. From then on I've been an avid reader.

I read a large number of books every month, about seven or eight, plus lit'ry magazines to see if there's anything else worth reading. I don't spend much time reading new bestsellers, because they tend to be poorly written. I'm a strange combination of picky and easy-going in my choices but if I'm in the middle of a book that's just on the edge of tolerable, all it takes is a misspelled word or bad grammar to make me put it down.

I've always had a knack for putting books down and not losing sleep over it. Many non-fiction books would have made fine essays, but are bloated into books for financial reasons. I uoften read only the introduction and first chapter of these. The tug of narrative makes fiction a little harder to drop, but I manage.

My folks are the same. My mom has a soft spot for mysteries, and my dad is particularly interested in histories of late antiquity in Europe and the Near East. But they go to the library every couple weeks and come home with twenty-five books, many of them big art books, but a cool dozen of which will be read cover to cover by the time they're due. Their big hurdle is magazines, though. They just get way too many, and too many are weekly or bi-, so the backlog is tremendous. I receive magazine windfalls in the mail now and then.

I find that reading from a page soothes the headache I get from reading on a screen. I usually print long articles found on the web, but since I'm careful about paper use, I only print web articles I know I'll read and come back to.

Much of my reading becomes research for my writing, and I'm constantly thrilled when I come across passages that feel like they'll help me think through a problem or like they'll inspire me to new ideas. I keep notebooks around when I'm reading seriously, and wish I had notebooks when I read pulp that turns out to have gems hidden in the shitpiles.

My dirty little secret is that I like Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" fantasy series. It's pulpy and somewhat tedious, but I like the sprawling epicness and the way it titillates the twelve-year old in me. Hey, I read "Red Nails" at least once a year, gimme a break!

When I was a little kid (ages 5 thru 9, approx) we lived next door to the town library. My mom is an avid reader, and she let me go next door as much as I wanted (in my memory it seems like it was every day) to read and check out books. I remember I had a "real" library card at an age when kids weren't supposed to have one yet, because all the librarians knew me so well.

I went through a period in my early 20s where I didn't read much, and when I started reading again, I found I prefer non-fiction to fiction (it used to be the other way around). Right now I'm reading this very cool book about Phil Spector.

on preview: Hugh, my partner loves those Robert Jordan books.

The only thing I feel guilty about with my reading habits is that I wish I read more (prose) fiction; that used to be 90% of what I consumed, but for the past few years it's been mostly comics and prose nonfiction (and Jesus Christ, I can devour that stuff- it's a good thing the Mpls Public Library has a great comics collection, or I'd be stone broke). My wife does a good job of keeping current with new fiction, and she kicks stuff my way every now and then, but most of it leaves me cold by falling into clever metafictional tricks. I keep thinking, "I should be reading more fiction," but I almost always stumble when I try new stuff.

On the nonfiction front, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets has taken my brain over so thoroughly that, for the past three nights, I've had extensive, detailed dreams about trying to solve mysterious murders.

I have to have a book or three that I'm reading otherwise I get twitchy. I read a couple of books a week (the only thing a commute is good for) and would read more if I didn't subscribe to various magazines as well.

And yeah, I can still remember my first trip to the library. One of the pivotal moments of my life.

That survey makes me so sad. I read between 3 and 5 books a week, sometimes more, every week, and I have for as long as I can remember. I'm the queen of the Goodwill and right now I have over $100 credit at the local trade in used book emporium (which is actually an awesome bookstore, not the usual strip mall romance novel headquarters.) I tend to get into trouble at the library by either forgetting my cardinal rule "Never get movies at the library" or generally forgetting to return things or, alas, getting those bacon flavored books that the dogs so love to eat. I swear, they leave my books mostly alone but library books are apparently bound in milkbones. They shouldn't make them so delicious.

And I, too, have that fear of not being able to read. Sometimes I think I should read more nonfiction, though, or more "serious" fiction (sf & f and old fashioned mysteries are my great loves) but then I'm eclectic and will pretty much read anything if it comes my way.

So I raised my kids in a house FULL of books (over 30 boxes after ruthless pruning when I moved last spring) and no cable TV - no TV at all half the time - and read to them every single night until they became teenagers and do they read? No. Well, my daughter reads a bit, mostly chick lit, maybe 10 - 15 books a year, which judging by that survey is great, but my son will. not. read. and it breaks my heart. But I think or hope he'll start up again when he gets older.

cobra!:

If you like Homicide, then you'd probably love the TV show it was based on. Check it out if you haven't already, it was one of the few great cop shows.

The show's based on the book, not the other way around. And if you like Homicide, the show, you'd probably love The Wire, which seems, to me anyway, much truer to Simon's writing, maybe because it doesn't have as many constraints from the network.

If you like Homicide, then you'd probably love the TV show it was based on. Check it out if you haven't already, it was one of the few great cop shows.

Yeah, I've got it on the queue now; I'm curious to see how much overlap there is with The Wire, since I'm seeing all sorts of nuggets in Homicide that were moved over pretty much wholesale into Wire scripts...

Oh, whoops. Anyway, yeah, good call, box,I do love the Wire; and to bring it sort of back on topic, I'd even say this is a rare, happy case where something on TV led me into a great book. TV and books don't have to be enemies...

In a team meeting a few months ago, a collegue of mine noticed the library card on my keychain. "You go to the library?" he asked, incredulously.

"Why yes," I said, "Don't you?" Now, point of fact, I am generally the youngest engineer on a team, and quite often the only female.

"Oh," our site prep manager said, "I hate reading. I always have. I don't see the point of it."

"You must have all the time in the world to go to the library," our facilities engineer told me, "since you don't have any kids to keep you home."

I was pretty stunned. My parents took me to the library all the time, even when I was a baby. While I was in college my reading slowed down quite a bit (too many textbooks left no time for pleasure reads), but it's started to pick up again now that I have free time. At first, TheDude wasn't much of a reader, but he's started to pick it up, too. All I can say is that its pleasant, and it stretches my imagination.

Indeed, C-Span's Book TV is occasionally really good, and Reading Rainbow is a great program.

My parents took me to the library all the time, too, but my mom worked there, so there's that.

I take great pride in the fact that, after they fired my mom (they made her part-time position full-time and forced her to reapply; fifteen years on the job would have pushed her starting salary past what they were hoping to pay, so they hired someone fresh out of library school), I started to notice books that had been not mis-shelved, buit mis-catalogued. They had the best, and replaced her with shit.

The other library hijinx I like is that of my dad, who will scan certain sections looking for books that are politically catalogued and go lose them in the proper section, for example, when he finds a book on creationism catalogued with the science books, he puts it in religion where it belongs. He fights the good fight.

I'm proud of them both.