Can read, won’t read books

It seems Posh Spice isn’t alone swimming in her sea of ignorance. For every three Britons with their noses in a bestseller, there’s one adult in the UK who does not read books at all.

Research by the Office for National Statistics, commissioned by the National Reading Campaign in 2001, found a quarter of adults had not read a book in the previous 12 months. The figure rose to almost half among males aged 16-24.

The BBC Has More

August 19, 2005 by Uncategorized 2

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2 Responses

  1. GregS* says:
    August 19, 2005 at 6:01 pm

    sea of what?
    “I just find that life is better than fiction. I travel a lot, visiting so many places and meeting so many strange and interesting people that I find books a bit pedestrian.”

    Sounds like he’s surviving being ignorant.

    “[Reading] opens doors to creativity and understanding and is vital for self-esteem and fulfilment. And if life is just flicking through magazines, it’s a sad reflection of humanity.”

    Donald Westlake finally came out with a collected volume of Dortmunder short stories. Otherwise I would have had to go into Boston and sort through various issues of Playboy on microfilm where the original stories were published. ‘Flicking through magazines’ can be just as entertaining, educating, and productive as flicking through a bestseller. Probably more so.

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  2. ash966 says:
    August 19, 2005 at 9:52 pm

    Re:sea of what?
    “I just find that life is better than fiction. I travel a lot, visiting so many places and meeting so many strange and interesting people that I find books a bit pedestrian.”

    Sounds like he’s surviving being ignorant.

    He’s not talking about going to Paris or Tibet and engaging with the natives rather than keeping his nose in a book. He is talking about not reading on a _commuter train_. Translated this means “I will sit next to you on a train or airplane and tell you long, boring stories of my life. My stories will be especially boring because I have a poor, stunted vocabulary due to lack of reading.” There’s a lot of talk about the damage voluntary non-readers do to themselves, what about what they do to others!

    –Andrea

     

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