Novelist Alan Bissett wrote a fascinating post in The Guardian’s books blog, titled Who stole our reading time?
It points out explicitly what we all experience: we read less today than ever before. And I’m not complaining about the young generation; I’m comparing now and then within the same generation, whether mine or Bissett’s (who is about a generation younger than me). The basic observation is that nobody has the time, or the will, or the ability, to finish books the size of War and Peace anymore; or to read the voluminous classics of centuries past at all. Bissett links this to the flood of entertainment options, whether TV, gaming, or the Internet; as he says, “A leisure time that was already precious has been chewed into by text-messaging, Facebook and emails. Almost everyone I speak to claims that they “love books but just can’t find the time to read”. Well, they probably could – they’re just choosing to spend it differently.”
The problem, Bissett opines, is that this has dire consequences for our collective intellect, because it steers our mental development in a limited direction: “Sustained concentration on the printed word, whether in-depth argument or fictional narrative, creates a particular cerebral event which visual-dependent media cannot.”
Read the post to form your own opinion. For my own part, I still consider myself an avid bookworm, but this definition is beginning to lose plausibility – I read so much less than I voraciously used to before. It may or may not have dire consequences, but it is a sad change for me personally. Yet another impact of the new century’s rampant Information Overload.
I agree – but like everything else, if you really want to do it, you’ll make time for it. I love Victorian fiction and read a lot of it. My favourite is Trollope who wrote over 40 novels and still had a full time career with the Post Office where he introduced the postcode and the post box. Read the Chronicles of Barsetshire for the perfect antidote to info overload
I got an ebook reader about two years ago. Since then I’ve probably read more than in the previous five years. I spend about three hours on public transport each day, so being able to carry something smaller than the smallest paperback that never ‘runs out’ of reading mid-journey is great. It also means I’m reading things that on paper would be bigger than I want to carry, things I wouldn’t necessarily want to read in public, and classics I’d never have got round to if they weren’t pre-loaded and I hadn’t just finished a ‘bought’ book with an hour of my journey left to go.
So it turns out that I had plenty of time to read after all, just the biggest obstacle to reading for me was just not always having a book with me.
@TechieBird – That’s fascinating… to be sure I’d rather read in an armchair before a fireplace, but with 3 hours a day available, you’re doing the right thing.
For my part I spend hours driving, so my solution was to get an iPod and listen to eBooks on my car audio system – I do some reading that way. Still not as good as an armchair, but nice nonetheless.
Update: discussed this with a younger chap 31 years of age – and he says that he used to be a real bookworm (same as me) and today he not only doesn’t find the time to read (same as me), he also can’t concentrate when reading a book because his mind has grown used to jumping from distraction to distraction. 🙁