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Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
Blog Headlines of the Week
Bookish Linkage
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We live in a post–authentic world. And today authenticity is a house of mirrors.
Bruce Springsteen, SXSW keynote speech
Maybe they’re asking the wrong people or perhaps I’m just highly abnormal. I’m thinking it’s the latter but a new reading habits survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows I’m a real outlier when it comes to reading.
The survey is billed as the first comprehensive examination of American reading habits since e-books came into prominence and is was based on telephone interviews from November 2011 to January 2012 using “a nationally representative sample” of people ages 16 and older living in the United States. It shows the “average” American read 17 books over the last 12 months while owners of e-book readers read an average of 24. For the categories into which I fall the averages are 15 for males, 18 for those age 50-64, 11 for white, non-Hispanics and 19 for college graduates.
So how many books do I read a year? Last year it was 147. The average over the last three years is 128 a year. The survey showed 5% of those 18 and older read more than 50 books. (Interestingly, a 1978 Gallup Poll showed 13% of the adults surveyed read more than 50 books.) So, it appears my addiction falls into the extreme category.
Although looking at reading habits overall, the survey also honed in on the use of electronic devices and differences between those who own them and those who don’t. There’s a number of other interesting tidbits in the survey. Here’s just a few:
- 80% of Americans age 16 and older say they read at least occasionally for pleasure. Some 36% read for pleasure every day or almost every day. Those numbers are 89 percent and 49 percent for owners of e-book readers.
- 44% of adults who read books were reading a book on a typical or average day. But 18% of Americans said they had not read a book in the past year.
- Ownership of tablet computers grew from 5% in November 2010 to 19% in mid-January this year. Ownership of e-book readers like Nooks or Kindles follows a similar track, growing from 6% to 19% over the same period. But 85% of those who don’t own an e-reader are considering buying one eventually and another 8% are planning on doing so in the next six months.
- 62% of those owning e-readers had Kindles, while 22 percent had Nooks. It didn’t indicate how many people are abnormal enough to have both like I do.
- 29% of adult book readers read an e-book in the past 12 months, amounting to 21% of all adults.
- 14% had borrowed the book from the library. Of the 16- and 17-year-olds in the survey, 37% got their most recent book from the library, as did 20% of those age 65 or older.
This report, titled “The rise of e-reading,” is part of the first phase of research being funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Subsequent reports will look at how librarians and library users perceive the situation with digital content and how people in different kinds of communities (urban, suburban, and rural) compare in their reading habits.
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.
George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
There seemed to be a lot of doom and gloom last week in the coverage of a new survey on reading in American schools. But it seems like a number of people, including at least one individual who contributed a piece for the publication, may need to look beyond the bare numbers.
Admittedly, the results seemed appalling on the surface. Fifth graders were reading books with an overall reading level of 5.1 (first month of the fifth grade school year), with 5.0 for boys, and 5.2 for girls. But those in grades 9 though 12 are reading at roughly the same level; 5.3 overall, 5.4 for boys and 5.1 for girls. But this isn’t an assessment of literacy or comprehension. Rather, this study looks at what kids were actually reading during the 2010-2011 school year, both as assigned reading and and what they chose to read.
To put those numbers in perspective, Steig Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest — longtime residents of numerous adult bestseller lists — each have a ranking of 6.2. Both The Great Gatsby and George Orwell’s Animal Farm have a rating of 7.3. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar came in at 8.6 and 10.8, respectively. Now I would prefer Larsson or Orwell over Shakespeare any day. But that doesn’t mean I have only a sixth or seventh grade reading level.
As these adult bestsellers indicate, books that have broad appeal, including such popular YA series as The Hunger Games or Twilight, aren’t written to the same level as a high school or college textbook. In fact, if you look at the top 25 books librarians recommend for grades 9-12 in the study, the average grade level is 5.2.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t issues raised by the study.
First, should students be challenged more? Sure, I may not choose to read Shakespeare today but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be read as part of the process of learning about literature. The academic setting is the only place many of us encountered such works.
Second, do we emphasize reading enough as students grow older? First graders read 31.1 million books last school year, 66 percent of which were read independently, while second graders read 58.6 million books, 81 percent of which were read independently. But those numbers drop each year thereafter. Thus, grades 9-12 combined read a total of 2.3 million books last school year — an average of less than 575,000 per grade — and nearly one-third fewer pages than sixth graders read (119.4 billion versus 337.2 billion).
Given the statistics, the study asked what should kids be reading? There are a variety of suggestios. The ones that struck me as most logical, particularly to address the amount of reading, have a common theme. Jeff Kinney, author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series: “Whatever captures their interest, in whatever format.” Librarian Terri Kirk: “The basic tenet of getting all students to read is to let them choose what they are interested in.”
I’m not a fan of the Twilight series and have not read all the Harry Potter books (the latter of which appalls my children). And I don’t really care where those books rank in terms of reading level. What’s important is that they get kids and young adults to read. Encouraging kids to read makes it more likely post-secondary bound students will have the ability to read at the appropriate levels, regardless of what they may choose to read on their own. And those who never set foot in a classroom after high school may just read because they like to. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.
By the way, based on a variety of tests, this post has an average grade level of 6.8 and only a 5.8 under the widely recognized Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level, according to Readability-Score.com. Clearly, I am not college material.
The existence of good bad literature — the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one’s intellect simply refuses to take seriously — is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.
George Orwell, “Good Bad Books”
Imagine arriving in the afterlife and discovering the analogue to a Gideons Bible is a guidebook urging you to leave.
At least in Anthony Weller’s The Land of Later On, the power(s) that be in the afterlife apparently believe that life, so to speak, is better reincarnated back on Earth as an entirely different person than spent in eternity. In the book, New York City jazz pianist Kip returns from the afterlife after a suicide attempt prompted by a neurological disease that prevents him from playing music. He writes The Land of Later On not to convince people there is life after death but to urge them to resist the guide-books’s ongoing encouragement to reincarnate once they arrive there.
 The eternity Weller envisions is much like life on Earth but, with practice, people can transport themselves to almost any time and place. Still, it isn’t quite the same. For example, you won’t be able to meet or chat with Shakespeare, Mozart or any number of historical figures because they decided to be reincarnated. Likewise, you can’t attend a historic event because they happen only once and cannot be experienced again.
For Kip, though, the ability to go wherever and whenever he wants isn’t all that important. Once slightly acclimated, he spends his time searching for his girlfriend Lucy, who died of leukemia a couple years before his suicide attempt. The effort is daunting given that even if he picks the right place, he must also pick the right time. And the search will be inevitably fruitless if Lucy has already returned to life as a new and different person.
Kip is assisted in the search by poet Walt Whitman, who clearly has ulterior motives and is part of an underground cabal trying to convince those in the afterlife not to reincarnate. The search for Lucy takes Kip to several centuries and places, including a truck stop in Oklahoma, a coffee house in Istanbul, the Indian Himalayas and the Marquesas Islands. To a certain extent, The Land of Later On has echoes of author Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld series. Ultimately, though, the denouement of Kip’s efforts is somewhat anticlimactic.
While Weller deserves stars for his writing, his concept of life after death never quite reaches full fruition. We learn that while no god is present there, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one (or more) somewhere else. This is especially so as it is clear that someone or something is in control behind the scenes. Who, for example, makes sure each new arrival finds a copy of the guidebook? While perhaps a little esoteric, these issues are rendered rather extraneous by the concentration on Kip and Whitman jumping through time and space looking for Lucy. It also produces some minor inconsistencies. Thus, although Whitman explains why individuals are encouraged to leave and become reincarnated, it is unclear how he gained such knowledge given that he doesn’t seem to know the other whys and wherefores behind this afterlife.
Perhaps Weller avoided delving any deeper into the philosophical issues to keep the book from becoming too recondite. His approach also legitimately leaves readers to ponder whether the afterlife is real or just Kip’s near-death hallucination. Still, a closer examination and consideration of those concepts would have made for a more ingenious story.
When immortality gets dropped in your lap the unexpected question is if you can enjoy living with yourself enough to stick around.
Anthony Weller, The Land of Later On
I knew when I wrote last month’s Bibliolust that I was tempting fate. My thought that “I may be setting myself up for a bit of failure this month” became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The two books I thought might make the “Did Not Finish” list did, in fact, make the list. This early in the year, that constitutes 15 percent of this year’s Bibliolust books. I’ve noticed this year that there’s been a number of books I’ve been giving up on. I think that’s because with all I have around to read, I am quicker to jump to something else.
But, of course, that doesn’t mean more books don’t attract my attention. With one exception, I think also think every book on the list this month came from blogs, not traditional review sources. Here’s what’s intriguing me:
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, Gilbert King — So far I think I’ve seen two reviews of this book, both of which raved over it. When you add in the early career of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and the fact the library has it, it equals being on the list.
Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, Blaine Harden — This book seems to have received increasing attention since I put it on my “hold” list at the library. Now to find out if all the rave reviews are justified.
The Good Father — There seems to be a growing genre of books about parents dealing with their normal and well-raised sons committing violent crimes. I thought a novel about a physician whose son assassinates the president was a unique twist and because the library had it, I am now on the reserve list.
The Mirage Matt Ruff — A good review attracted my attention buy what really sucked me in was the premise — an alternate history of 9/11. Alternate history is one of my preferred SF genres and this is the first novel in that line I think I’ve seen using 9/11 as the base.
The Sky Conducting, Michael Seidlinger — Anyone who’s read this blog knows my interest in dystopian lit long precedes all the recent ado about the Hunger Games. So when I saw another fan of the genre give this a good review, it got my attention.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed — This is never a good reason to read a book but it seems everywhere I look I am seeing this memoir — and with wonderful reviews. So I am going to join the crowd (i.e., number 10 on the library reserve list), hoping we are not lemmings.
Report Card:
January-March 2012
- Total Bibliolust books: 13
- Number read: 8 (61.5%)
- Started but did not finish: 2 (15.4%)
Cumulative (September 2008-March 2012)
- Total Bibliolust books: 216
- Number read: 170 (78.7%)
- Started but did not finish: 16 (7.4%)
I’m not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.
Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot
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