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Now, I am a member of Gaia. A really nice social networking site with games, cool items, and all that fun stuff. Now, in their aquarium section of the site, they have teamed up with Verizon Wireless to do messages in bottles. So you write a message and send it out on the web among other Gaians. It is interesting. Depending on who gets the bottle you can have some cool comments, others are just downright sick or rude. Not that I really care about that.
This post is about asking about a favorite book. The majority of hits off that bottle were about people who said they never read. Really, quite tragic. My siblings don’t like to read either. It might not help that my 10 year-old stepsister had to learn English as a second language, but she doesn’t read and gets intimidated by somewhat bigger books, some that aren’t that big at all.
It is really disturbing to see the number of people who don’t read. Libraries, journals, publishing companies are closing, cutting back, and re-organizing. It is rather scary that in this world, the written word is taking a back seat to movies, video games, and other instant gratification activities. I am guilty of this sometimes, but I always try to find time to read, whether it is a scanlation of a manga that I like, or re-reading an old favorite (like Austen’s Mansfield Park), or finding a new book to read (like Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons – not new as in recently published, but new as in ones I have not yet read).
I have a huge list of books that I want to read. My best friend Sassy says that as long as there are books to read that you haven't read yet, you can't die until you've read them all. It's a fun sentiment. My friends and I are all bookworms, bookaholics, bookaphiles. We read. We devour books. So it is hard to imagine a generation of people that seem to be bookaphobics. There are many books that are well worth the time you spend reading them, some that you wonder how they ever got published, but still worth reading at least once, right?
How do we get the younger masses reading again? Maybe it would help if parents weren’t so busy today and could actually spend time reading to their children, like my grandmother used to read every night to my sister and I.
I am only 24 and already missing those good ol’ days.
