Perks of Reading

Via al.com:

Creating lifelong readers

Posted by tscarrit November 25, 2007 3:31 AM

If you are reading this col­umn, chances are you are more successful than the average person, more involved in your community and less likely to be in prison.

That is not because of anything I have written. It is because you have chosen to read.

A new study by the Na­tional Endowment for the Arts suggests that reading transforms lives. "Regular reading not only boosts the likelihood of an individual's academic and economic success -- facts that are not especially surprising -- but it also seems to awaken a person's social and civic sense," wrote Dana Gioia, chairman of the NEA.

While correlation is not the same as cause and ef­fect, it is clear from the new report, "To Read or Not To Read," that all kinds of posi­tive measures go along with voluntary reading. Those who cannot read, or choose not to read, do not fare so well.

After considering data from a number of studies, the NEA reports three conclusions: "Americans are spending less time reading. Reading comprehension skills are eroding. These declines have serious civic, so­cial, cultural and economic implications."

Read more

theteach

Assigning Classics and the Love of Reading

I have always believed that kids shouldn't be subjected to reading the classics in middle school and high school because it teaches them, more than likely, to hate reading as adults.

Joe Queenan's essay called "Summer Bummer" supports my claim, essentially, and names works by Hardy, Eliot and Dickens as the bugaboo texts teachers insist on assigning as summer reading for adolescents . And he's talking about "Advanced Placement" kids. I can imagine what "average" kids think about reading such indecipherable texts.

Give Queenan's essay a read. There's a good laugh at the end of it. :)

theteach

Bibliophiles burn books...

Two bibliophiles who run a used bookstore in Kansas, MO decided to make a bonfire of a huge pile of books nobody wanted.

But according to Dave Barry in his NYT article books don't burn easily. They smoke and create ash, they smolder. And anyway the Fire Department came and said they can't burn books or anything else in this way.Tom Wayne and Will Leathem love books but thought they would burn the books to make a statement.

Books are just things, paper bricks of commerce taking up room. But they are also holy vessels, containing the written articulation of our experiences and dreams, allowing us to point to an arrangement of words and exclaim: “Yes! That’s it exactly!

The two book lovers decided they could make a cultural statement about the decline of literary reading in the United States, where, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, fewer than half the adults read even one novel or play or short story a year that is not required for work or school.

They took comfort in knowing that book fairies do not magically make overstock disappear, that books are quietly but routinely destroyed by publishers. And they adopted as their motto a quote they attributed to the poet Joseph Brodsky: “There are worse crimes than burning books. One is not reading them.”

Book links; Book Expo America

From Bookspot:

What book had the largest first printing? Can I borrow books online? Where can I find audio books? What is a first edition? What should I do with my old books? When were the first books written? Where can I find book discussion questions? Can I sell my textbooks online? Where can I find reading lists? Where can I download books from the Web? Find answers to more questions...

Found these good questions on Bookspot, an interesting website. Check it out.

BookExpo America June 1, 2, 3, 2007

theteach

Mark Twain quotes

Mark Twain on Reading

Photo courtesy of Dave Thomson

I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic... something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
- "Disappearance of Literature" speech

I do not read anything but history and biography. You perceive that for me to presume to indicate the hundred authors which a person ought to read, would be folly. No, leave me out: My testimony would not be valuable.
- letter to Joseph B. Gilder, 5/16/1886

It is so unsatisfactory to read a noble passage and have no one you love at hand to share the happiness with you. And it is unsatisfactory to read to one's self anyhow--for the uttered voice so heightens the expression.
- My Father Mark Twain, Clara Clemens

Don't explain your author, read him right and he explains himself.
- Letter to Cordelia Welsh Foote of Cincinnati, 12/2/1887. Reprinted in When Huck Finn Went Highbrow, DeCasseres

Misattributed quote:

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.

- In Nice Guys Finish Seventh, (1992) by Ralph Keyes: "Abby Van Buren once made this observation in her advice column. A reader said she should have credited the thought to Mark Twain. Abby apologized, explaining that she genuinely thought the idea was her own. Perhaps it was. Although this saying is often attributed to Twain, no one has ever confirmed that he said it" (p. 111).

However, a subsequent researcher reports finding the quote in a newspaper, The Chicago Heights Star, Chicago, Illinois, 1 Feb 1949, as a stand alone quote attributed to Mark Twain. This places it much earlier than "Dear Abby," but with no acceptable confirmation of source.

theteach

Photo: Books in my Office

Just thought you'd like to see some of the books in my office. There is no rhyme or reason to the organization of them and as you can see I don't stand them up in the way you'd expect. Laying them on their sides two deep allows me to shelve many more.

Of course when I need to look for a particular book I have some difficulty seeing the ones in the back. But I remove, let's say, 3 of the books in the front at a time, then look behind, take another 3, then look. I never take more than 9 books into my arms at any one time.

All this and I was a book indexer in an earlier life.

Solitary Reading

We need the slower and more lasting stimulus of solitary reading as a relief from the pressure on eye, ear and nerves of the torrent of information and entertainment pouring from ever-open electronic jaws. It could end by stupefying us.
- Storm Jameson

Books and Reading Stats

From MobileRead, the following disturbing statistics. Proves what an exceptional bunch of folks we are!:

One might think that book writing hopefuls are some sort of elite minority, or at least a peculiar minority. Not true according to a survey by the Jenkins Group, because about 80% of Americans want to become an author.

Here are quite a few more interesting statistics collected by Dan Poynter and presented by Robyn Jackson, which are sure to dash any romantic notions about the book business:

* 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
* 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
* 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
* 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
* 57 percent of new books are not read to completion.
* 70 percent of books published do not earn back their advance.
* 70 percent of the books published do not make a profit.
* A successful fiction book sells 5,000 copies.
* A successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies.
* On average, a bookstore browser spends 8 seconds looking at a book's front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover.
* Each day in the U.S., people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines.

Original link at:
MobileRead

theteach