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"one book a week, one a month, one a year...?"
Before I started high school, I had to have some sort of interview with the vice principals of my proposed school. To this day, I don't know exactly what the purpose of this interview was, although I suspect it was more for my parents than for me in that it gave them a chance to check out the school I was planning to attend.
The most memorable part of the actual interview was when they decided to ask me how much I read. "So, one book a week, one a month, one a year...?" I was absolutely horrified of the idea of reading only one book a year. I read three a week, easily.
I figured that with the responsibilities of an adult living on her own, I'd never be able to average three novels a week ever again. So imagine my surprise when I looked at the books I've reviewed for January. In 31 days, I have read six full novels and five graphic novels, half of the next novel in the queue, listened to most of an audiobook, and about a quarter of a non-fiction book that I'm taking slowly for my research discussion group.
That's getting awfully close to three books a week right there.
I'd feel guilty about it, but my scientific writing process requires me to get completely away from the document so that I can see it with fresh eyes when I revise, so those books are providing me with a great way to work more efficiently. That might sound like a justification, but when I don't read, I do other things: play games, make crafts, do exercises, do chores. I think of all these things as necessary distraction tasks, like the shape rotation ones they use in psych studies -- if I don't have them, the process just doesn't work.
So I guess I'm just going to channel my inner teenager and be proud of all that reading.
The most memorable part of the actual interview was when they decided to ask me how much I read. "So, one book a week, one a month, one a year...?" I was absolutely horrified of the idea of reading only one book a year. I read three a week, easily.
I figured that with the responsibilities of an adult living on her own, I'd never be able to average three novels a week ever again. So imagine my surprise when I looked at the books I've reviewed for January. In 31 days, I have read six full novels and five graphic novels, half of the next novel in the queue, listened to most of an audiobook, and about a quarter of a non-fiction book that I'm taking slowly for my research discussion group.
That's getting awfully close to three books a week right there.
I'd feel guilty about it, but my scientific writing process requires me to get completely away from the document so that I can see it with fresh eyes when I revise, so those books are providing me with a great way to work more efficiently. That might sound like a justification, but when I don't read, I do other things: play games, make crafts, do exercises, do chores. I think of all these things as necessary distraction tasks, like the shape rotation ones they use in psych studies -- if I don't have them, the process just doesn't work.
So I guess I'm just going to channel my inner teenager and be proud of all that reading.
Time to read
(equivalent to about 2/3rds of a full-time job!)
Doing less of that, frees up enormous amounts of time for anything else, including reading. Reading 10 books a month, takes what ? 50 hours ? (yeah okay, so it depends a lot on what kinda books you read and your reading-speed)
Re: Time to read
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(Anonymous) 2011-02-01 06:23 pm (UTC)(link)- 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book 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.
... via a 2007 'Jenkins Group' study.
The reason I call 'dubious' is only because I personally have no frame of reference for this - I can't wrap my head around a third of people never reading, ever. I suppose that goes to show how much I take my literacy (and the literacy of my family and friends) for granted.
-Jay
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