[HPforGrownups] Reading

[Peg Kerr]

No: HPFGUIDX 3207

"Simon J. Branford" wrote:

> Susan asked: "Did kids really read more when we were growing up? (I may do a
> couple of polls). I remember being fairly rare in my obsession with books
> and reading, most of my peers did not read. It was great fun finally finding
> other people who did in high school and college. Still, many people I know
> don't read regularly."
>
> I read little while at school but now I am at university I always have a
> book on the go (and quite often more than one - not to mention fan fiction
> as well).

I have always been a voracious reader.  I watch no television now, and I never
understand it when people say, "I don't have time to read."  I have a full time
job and two kids, and I have time to read.  When I leave my job at the end of
the day, as I push the elevator button, I'm whipping my book out of my bag, and
I'm reading on my walk to the bus stop.

Once, I tried a week of reading deprivation, at the suggestion of _The Artist's
Way_, a book on creativity, just to see what it was like.  Boy, by the end of
the week, I was ready to claw my eyeballs out.  I am totally addicted to
reading.  I discovered that, whenever I am idle, my brain seeks out something to
read, whether it's the book of my seatmate on the bus (read over the shoulder),
or posters or boxtops or . . . My best friend, Kij Johnson (also a novelist)
also tried the same experiment and had the same reaction.  Toward the end of the
week, she got so desperate that she picked up a book on Japanese history and
read over two hundred footnotes, reasoning that she wasn't reading the text of
the book itself, so it wasn't "really reading."

There are worse vices I could have, I suppose.
Peg