lol

Um, I'll probably never see that movie as I've only seen bits of the show and don't care for it. Do they really kill her off?

Am I just the most gullible person ever?

No they don't kill her. it was just the thing to do though. Unlike the pricks walking out of the theater in 1980 saying, "i can't believe vader is luke's father!"

I probably ruined Lord of the Rings for people, as I walked out I mentioned to my sis-in-law that "I remember there was a skirmish."

The film was all skirmish. :lol:

That could easily be a Steven Wright quote.

Ohmigosh, I am HOME! Do you know how hard I have looked to find an internet community like this one? Intelligent, literate, readers! Who can be allowed to use profanity but not lean upon it like a crutch.

I have kids ages 10 and 12 and if being a parent who reads voraciously were enough to make them readers, believe me, they'd be readers. Alas, they are not. They are intelligent, do well in school and the 12 year old shows the makings of a fab writer one day...but they will not read for fun.

I blame the TV and video games. I never watch TV. Well, rarely, maybe twice a week for about an hour. It bores me and I almost always have to do something else at the same time. But my dear husband is one of those people who always have to have the damn TV on and it drives me batty. Say, I'm sitting on the couch READING a book, he'll come in from mowing the lawn or something, turn it on, then leave. As though he thought he was doing me a favor, resolving my TV deprivation. Ugh.

He has also accused me of "being antisocial" when I am reading. Oh well. Apparently the only time I am allowed to read is just before falling asleep, in bed. Any other time, there's other things I ought to be doing instead.

My parents were readers. My mom, especially. She died in December and I am clearing out her condo. I have counted the number of books to donate - just the ones I am not keeping. It's over 600. and about 400 of them are paperbacks purchased within the past 5 years.

My mom never wanted to give any of them away, but in the last year she finally agreed to start giving them to the library. I said - mom - let the library store your books for you, you can always borrow them again! That's why I don't have that many books, I just get them from the library when I need them. I have cards to six different libraries and I have used them all within the last six months.

But I am biased. I am an English major - facing my midlife crisis by returning to college full time. Good LORD I love school. You cannot imagine how much I ADORE being back in college. I am in heaven!

I am also a freelance copywriter. This gives me some insight into the dumbing-down of the average reader. I write for non-readers. I write to make them read, even though they don't think they want to. Quite a challenge, but I love it.

How do you decide what they will, and will not, read? I imagine there's a lot of anguish in the editing.:haha:

You use some gimmicks...gotta have an attention-grabbing hook, lots of white space, bold and italics, conversational tone, and nothing above a fourth-grade reading level.

Don't be too hard on your husband Juniper - my Dad was the same with TV all the way through my childhood - still is in fact. All his reading was done out of my eyesight except when he was reading aloud to us. I grew up a voracious reader, my sister not for pleasure and my brother... well - newspapers and internet. A modern reader.

Your children might "find" reading when they hit the right books. I know people it happened to in their teens. Otherwise, just take comfort in the fact they are intelligent and (I assume) value that trait in other people.

I am so happy to be working where I am now. In the first month I was a little put out that books were being passed round and not offered to me - despite the fact I identified myself as a reader. But I was new and bit my tongue. Now I've been there 4 months and I'm being included in the conversations about books. And people are starting to say, "I must bring that one in for you!" I thnk it was just a case of establishing myself.

Sadly, I lost a lot of my I-have-to-share-this-one books when I moved. If I'd have known, I'd have packed them very differently. Still - I got my poetry books, and they would have been harder to replace than bestselling paperbacks!

If TV and video games were responsible for not enjoying the activity of reading, I'd be a virtual illiterate. I am TV obsessed, I watch many hours when I have the time. I love video games (but only play massively multi-player types) and have followed their development with utter fascination since I first sat down to an Atari games machine.

I can relate to the 'anti-social' thing. When me and J were together, very early on before he calmed the fuck down, it would drive him mad when I went into a reading mood. He got over it. But he didn't read for pleasure much himself, except for the odd political memoir, for a long time. He still wouldn't turn to a book as his first choice of entertainment now. But that doesn't mean he isn't 'literate'. He has a very deep understanding of narrative structure (son of a playwrite, it's in his veins :P) and a brilliant mind. he chooses to apply that to the narrative form of computer games, and to an academic analysis of what narrative means in computer gaming, and how it relates to the gamer's experience.

I find it a fascinating subject, the changing form of narrative and how we interact with that. I do not consider books tobe inherently superior to games, television, movies, theatre, or any other medium of expression.

Juniper, I know exactly what you mean about going back to college:) It's a wonderful experience isn't it? I enrolled at university in 2006 for a History degree and the last two years have been the happiest of my life. One more year to go and then on to postgrad, I hope.

To return to the reading theme: it can feel isolating to be amongst people who don't understand your love of reading. With my old circle of friends, before I moved away in my 20s, one of my defining characteristics was that I read books. One or two of the girls read magazines, and the lads would read computer manuals and glance at the sports news and the topless chicks in the tabloids. They all thought it was hysterically funny that I liked reading. I do not know why. We'd have the gang round, the lads playing Grand Prix, the girls kicking around and talking, occasional bursts of computer maintenance spilling out across the living room. This would go on for hours. I could handle it for a couple of hours, but I can only talk about banal shite for a limited amount of time before I run screaming to the bookshelves.

The lads I could talk to. I liked computer games, I could relate to them. The girls didn't appear to like anything. I am sat here now, desperately trying to recall what kinds of things we all talked about and I am drawing a virtual blank. A regular soap opera (Brookside) seemed to be their favourite topic. That and who was shagging whom.

Every group has roles within it. We fall into our place in the greater whole. My role within our little gang was to be the weird bird who inexplicably reads books:P (I don't count J in that description. He always understood what I got from reading and was as bemused by our friends attitude as I was). I just played up to it, fully embraced the eccentricity:P

It's funny Ju, we put the TV in the least comfortable place in the house because we consider it "anti-social". I guess it is perspective. Pete and I found we were watching a lot of tv and it was eating into our home time. I still have the habit of turning on the radio for no good reason, but today I'm listening to the rain on the steel roof, watching Pete make yogurt, and being anti-social on the interwebs. Maybe I'll get off-line and read some (really dated btw) Greg Bear.

Aaah. I woke up and read. Now I'm on the internet. I'm still on the internet using it as reference material to learn about new methods of puppy training. This is also reading, and I am being social enough to write to you guys about it.....I don't see one as being more important than the other.

Which one will be more effective in the long-run? I don't know. The Rilke I read this morning is related to dogs and the reference material I am looking up will be great, in a utililitarian fashion, and is of the same subject. Who knows? I don't think I've wasted any of my time at all. Anti-social? Maybe. But I don't apologize for being anti-social. There are times to come together with my husband and times to do my own thing. I think that's healthy.

Uh... er... nevermind :bolt:

Yes, I regretted that after I said it.........;) On many levels it doesn't really work for me. b'aaah!

Well, I didn't mean to sound so critical. I guess I just feel defensive of what Dana mentioned, being viewed as eccentric for reading.

Let me clarify. It's not that books are inherently superior to TV, video games, movies, theater, etc. All of those things can be wonderful, but 9 times out of 10 they are pure crap. Some TV shows make you think and educate you, some entertain you in stimulating ways, and some just yammer at you. I have no problem with sitting in front of the TV to watch a show. It's turning the TV on even when there's nothing good to watch, just to have it on, and watching anything...that I have a problem with.

I do value the ability to be alone with my own thoughts - or with other people, in the absence of external noise. Reading requires a different kind of effort and not everybody can get caught up in a book, some people just read and comprehend. But I think that is something that comes with practice, and if you don't put in the time, it can't happen.

As for the kids, it makes me a little wistful and sad that they're not falling in love with books the way I did; you love someone, you want to make sure they get the chance to experience all the wonderful things you've experienced. Like...say, someone says they don't want to go for a walk in the snow at midnight, and you drag them out anyway, and it turns out to be a beautiful thing they're glad they did.

*chuckles* indeed, Juniper, it would be nice if you could physically drag them through the wardrobe into Narnia.