Do your friends read?

[fajrdrako]

From Booking Through Thursday:

There was a widely bruited-about statistic reported last week, stating that 1 in 4 Americans did not read a single book last year. Clearly, we don’t fall into that category, but . . . how many of our friends do? Do you have friends/family who read as much as you do? Or are you the only person you know who has a serious reading habit?

Most of my friends read. Most of my close friends read a lot. It says something about the friends I cultivate, and our shared tastes. If I only read four books in a month, I think I'm badly slipping. And I am. There was a time when I commonly read four books a day - back when I was a sick teen who spent a lot of time in bed with no energy to do much else. That, and a serious book addiction.

I even have a handful of friends who read more than I do. Scary, isn't it?

All my family read, whenever they had the chance, and if they didn't get the chance, they made it. I have only one relative, as far as I know, who wasn't a constant reader - a second cousin who was dyslexic: reading wasn't the pleasure for her that it was for the rest of us.

Now, my very best friend through my teens didn't read fiction at all. She read for information, she read for school-work, she read magazines like Canadian Living, but she never read for entertainment as I did. As far as I know, she has only ever read one novel. But we had a humdinger of a role-playing game going for twelve years straight.

Comments

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

My sister has never read a book. She failed highschool because she couldn't read a book. Twice. None of her four sons have ever read a book, other than what they had to read for school, but I think they used crib notes.

My old secretary never read a book, but she did read magazines. She knew everything there was to know about useless celebrities.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I imagine I know a lot of people who haven't ever read a book; it just seems rare amongst my acquaintances and almost unheard of amongst my nearest and dearest.

I try to be a magnet for book-readers and it looks as if it's worked.

[teaphile.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about reading habits this morning. My mother is a voracious but undiscerning reader of fiction (never non-fiction). She absolutely cannot distinguish quality; there's no such thing to her as "a good plot but flat characters" or "good characters but trite prose". Books are either good or bad (that is to say, over her head), nothing more.

My dad does not read fiction. He reads newspaper headlines (but rarely the articles that explain the headlines) and magazines. I think he read a couple of Ken Follett books when he was flying overseas a lot, but he probably couldn't tell you which ones.

They are equal in their inability to digest metaphor or interpret text in more than one way.

And yet my sister and I both have English degrees. Neither of us reads as much of any genre as we used to, but at least half of any conversation we have is about what we're reading. Same goes for the majority of my friends.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

My mother had somewhat different reading tastes than mine, but there was a lot of nice overlap, too, and I often liked the books she recommended - many of them mentioned above. Like E. Nesbit or "Precious Bane", which I suspect I never would have found on my own. Although I didn't always read her recommendations, I can't remember ever disliking a book she had liked. I remember how much she once hated a book by Sydney Sheldon when she read it - I can't see his name without chuckling at the memory.

She was great with metaphor and subtext. Perhaps she passed the trait on to me genetically. I don't think my father was - we never talked about that. We only ever talked about facts. Hmm. That says something about the relationship and personalities, I think.

I don't think my father read any fiction that wasn't science fiction - if he did, I don't remember. And he usually read non-fiction, but loved SF too.

Maybe the English-major genes in your family just skipped a generation.

[nacbrie.livejournal.com]

My dad's dyslexic, so it was quite funny when I was a child reading Enid Blyton (or, um, Patricia Cornwell) novels, and having arguments with him about who got which Famous Five novel first. Because his dyslexia wasn't so much 'serious' as 'untreated', as soon as he learnt to cope with it he was anxious to catch up on 35 years of reading. Starting with Enid Blyton.

But our family's always been very bookish. Our house was full of books (although quite a large number of them were either 'HTML: The Definitive Guide', 'Visual C++' and 'Programming PERL'; or 'The Emotionally Abused and Neglected Child', 'Abnormal Child Psychology' and 'Patterns and Outcomes in Child Placement'), and I remember the trauma of being sent to Irish College when I was eleven or so and not being allowed to bring any books, not even any in Irish. I think I survived by gleaning every possible scrap of information from the ketchup bottle at the dinner table.

That being said, I do have friends who don't read at all, but they tend to be friends from school or work (i.e. from a very restricted setting where one doesn't have much choice in people to befriend). I certainly don't have any close friends who don't read. The scariest non-reader story I have is of a girl who sat beside me in Spanish during 3rd Year. She couldn't get her head around the idea that I would spend my free time in the school library and even volunteer in there - I mean, what would I do? When I answered "read books and magazines and newspapers," she replied, "What, magazines like Vogue and stuff?" No, magazines like The Economist and National Geographic and stuff. She shook her head in disbelief. (This girl later said that she wanted to study Law in UCD. When I pointed out that Law students often had to, you know, read things, she said that she wouldn't have to: she would sit with a laptop in the bar and guys would buy her drinks and do the reading for her.)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Enid Blyton sounds to me like an eminently suitable place to start reading. I certainly enjoyed her books immensely - and learned a lot from them in a way British kids wouldn't. Not so much that they were old-fashioned but they were so delightfully British, they were a window into another country where the geography was so unlike my own. I think now that Canadians are actually more like the British than they are like Americans in attitude and outlook, but on the surface - especially in kids' books - the contrasts can be overlooked very easily.

Patricia Cornwell is good too, though I think I've only read one of hers.

Not being allowed to bring books - ooh, painful! I hope they had a lot of books at the school for you to read. What language they were in hardly matters. If the only reading material around was in Serbo-Croatian, I'd be learning Serbo-Croatian very quickly, I assure you.

"What, magazines like Vogue and stuff?"

LOL. Some people just don't get it.

This girl later said that she wanted to study Law in UCD. When I pointed out that Law students often had to, you know, read things, she said that she wouldn't have to: she would sit with a laptop in the bar and guys would buy her drinks and do the reading for her.

Well, I'm sure that would be very educational. Though the effect of the drinks might be counterproductive to actually remembering anything - ?

Did she actually become a lawyer?

(This might explain something about the law!)

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I don't read a great deal of fiction – only if I'm dissecting it for a purpose (such as how my boys have been ill-used in historical fiction, for example, or as background for fic). I don't differentiate reading for research and pleasure because research is pleasure, probably the highest form of it.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't generally differentiate now between reading for pleasure and other kinds of reading, because I've been out of high school a long time now. But back in school - there were lots of things I had to read that were no pleasure at all! Now that I can choose, if I don't like a book, I stop reading it.

Technical manuals... Well, I don't read them much at all.

Phone books, I read. Interesting names.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

My whole family reads like mad - my father less so, but still he'd never be in that bookless 1/4. When we were kids, there was very little money about and no airconditioning (in Florida) - but three blocks away was the public library, and my mother took us there several times a week (I always figured this was as a favor to us, but now that I think about it it must have been quite a relief for her too!). She read in any spare minute she got (not a lot) and I think that's one way we learned that reading is just plain enjoyable.

When I was single and had no internet, I read 3-5 novels or non-fiction books a week. Now I probably have a similar word-count, but most of it online, although I always have a book going. My husband used to run a used/rare bookstore, and he probably reads more than I do.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

three blocks away was the public library, and my mother took us there several times a week (I always figured this was as a favor to us

I smiled at this. It's so wonderful when maternal selflessness and self-interest dovetail in the same actions!

I've always thought it would be wonderful to run a bookstore. Any kind.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

When I was growing up, our family was known as the family that borrowed more books from the library than any others. Admittedly, this was a single library in a suburb, but it still meant we carted a lot of books back & forth.

I know people who don't read, but we tend to have less to talk about. I know more people who don't read much fiction: that I figure is more of a choice on how you spend your time. It would drive me crazy not to read fiction, but other people argue they'd rather learn stuff in order to change the world, or build something, or make a difference otherwise.