Reading is like eating wheaties?

The Company of Readers

I highly enjoyed the Ross reading this week. She provided me with many funny visual moments, like on page 5 when she lists different types of reading such as skimming, professional, pleasurable and reading aloud in a shared reading experience. I realize that the shared learning experience being referred to is most likely referring to adults reading to children in a story-time setting but I envisioned a large group of hippies sitting in a circle and reading aloud. I had to giggle because I have actually done this. When the author Hunter S. Thompson died, my friends decided to get together over some wild turkey while each of us in the group took turns reading our favorite Thompson exerpts aloud to each other. This was a fun shared reading experience and I am that hippie and so reading this made me laugh.

In the beginning of the Ross selection this week, she brought up statistics in opposition to each other. Some statistics show that readers are reading less because of the texting phonomenon. I believe that this may be true to a certain extent becuase of the time spent in our society on addictions to Facebook. I believe that the problem with our increasingly computer driven society is that people cannot seem to spend enough time doing in-depth reading for pleasure or information. They choose instead to watch movies and go online to play on Facebook which just sucks up too much time. But I guess Facebook would be a form of reading, wouldn't it? On the other hand, I know plenty of book addicts who manage to spend tons of time tweeting and Facebooking and still somehow find time for some serious pleasurable reading. Don't mistake me here, I am not saying that Facebook and television are affecting peoples ability to read but I am saying that these activities are taking time away from reading. I agree with the author that reading is practiced. We must practice to become more comfortable and if our time is spent on other things, this simply cannot happen.

Anyway, I feel that many readers get left behind for varying reasons. One reason which I have seen in my own family, is that a person might work a job which does not require reading, such as painting houses or other construction work. Long hours, hard physical labor and little time off may make this person more inclined to sitting and enjoying television rather than taking the time to navigate through a book or magazine. The example above is my father. He is a smart man and a hard worker but he does not read unless he has to and I believe this stems from not being read to as a child (mother was an alcoholic), not being instilled with a passion of reading for pleasure (as Ross's article alludes to), and as a result, he does not feel comfortable when reading today. Also he is just worn out after a hard day at work and wants to enjoy himself in a way that he finds relaxing, which is never reading. When he has been out of work for short periods of time, he doesn't read any more than he did while working. He just does not find it pleasurable. I think this is the same for a lot of people. This could change over time but he has to be committed to changing it.

What is the solution? Well, the strategy that I have taken with my father in particular is to try to introduce readings that he is interested in such as an article from Smithsonian or Nature. Also, I  have tried to get him to read through my papers from school. I am trying to force reading on him but in the most benign way possible.

Reading is a social activity

Oh, the models-those models which utterly confused me yesterday were made much more clear tonight in our discussion of them. Neither model really accounts for everything because it is a model. Models are not really supposed to be specific. I guess I never thought of reading groups as having so much power as to constitute their own group. That could be a really scary concept if taken on by the wrong group. There is one in particular that I am thinking of right now, but they don't really read, except for Sarah Palin's books, so I guess we're safe, huh?