Seize the Day! (PART 4 of 6)
And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count.
It’s the life in your years.
~Abraham Lincoln
While you may not be able to control the world, you can control how you respond to it. So wake up! Get going! Life is short and time is fleeting…Here’s our fourth suggestion for how to seize the day:
Read broadly, read deeply, and read copiously
I’m a reader – an enthusiastic one. Always have been; always hope to be. It is one of the main ways I learn, keep up with developments, and derive pleasure. Much to my dismay, I read the following statistics recently:
- 58% of the U.S. adult population never reads another book after high school.
- 42% of college graduates never read another book.
- 80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
- 70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
I trust that if you are reading this blog, you do not fall into any of the above categories. But perhaps you are 
a reader of just one or two genres…you love fiction, or business books, or TIME Magazine. Perhaps you only like to read the sports page, mysteries or biographies.
Here is my challenge to you: read more broadly, more deeply, and more copiously. Here are some ways to get started:
- Read what your children are reading in school or pick up a significant work that you didn’t read in high school or college and read it to see what all the fuss is about.
Catch 22, by Joseph Heller
Moby Dick; or, The Whale, by Herman Melville
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Find a blog that matches an interest and subscribe to it or put it in your bookmark menu.
Fast Company
Boing Boing
Lifehacker
- Instead of getting your news from the local paper and the Wall Street Journal, check out:
The DrudgeReport
Salon.com
SportsBlogs Nation
- Spend a few minutes reading a poem or two.
The Art of Drowning, by Billy Collins
The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
- Be brave. Sit down with a graphic novel and experience this updated comic book genre.
Archewood: The Great Outdoor Fight, created by Chris Onstad
The Watchmen, by Alan Moore (writer), Dave Gibbons (illustrator)
I hope this will encourage you to expand your reading repertoire – and thereby your knowledge and pleasure. Let me know how it goes…and happy reading.
Interesting to see the reading statistics that you quoted. For me it’s rather difficult to believe so I tried to find out more.
All of this is credited to a study by a publishing company called The Jenkins Group. The study is not reproduced anywhere that I could find, so I have no idea of sample size, methodology, etc. While the numbers are quoted in quite a few places, the study itself is probably no more credible than a piece of market research that I might perform.
Just doing a quick search, I found a study by the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) that showed 56.5% claimed to have read a book within the past twelve months, with rates varying by age group. This study is several years old and reading rates are certainly on the decline (which is the real problem). But the Jenkins Group numbers don’t seem worth repeating.
http://www.nea.gov/pub/readingatrisk.pdf
I have found Amazon’s Kindle to dramatically increase the amount I read of all types of materials, and I was already a heavy reader.
Happy Holidays!
Gustav Beerel
The statistics that you mention are very alarming. Universities, federal agencies, foundations and private corporations continue to document the decrease in reading not just in the U.S., but worldwide. A report entitled To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence, released in November 2007 by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), showed correlations between the decline of reading and social phenomena as diverse as income disparity, exercise, and voting. As can be expected, there is no consensus on what this means or what to do about it. As a college research librarian, literacy volunteer and a daily reader, I appreciate your reminder to colleagues to read, read, and read! And I would add my own suggestion: share your books, discuss books and read to others. Every community has nursing homes or shelters and would welcome someone coming in to read with individuals that cannot. http://www.nea.gov/news/news07/TRNR.html