Innocent Bystander wrote:Fair enough, Walden, but I know a few people who do not read. At least, not for pleasure. They read road-signs and thumb through newspapers and magazines, but when confronted with a book their reaction is "Ugh!".
I used to chat with a young fellow at my job who's nose was constantly in a book and I'd always want to know what he was reading. However, he'd inevitably ask me the same question, to which I had no reply. Eventually, he got bored and probably thought I was an idiot.
He did, however, lend me "Clockwork Orange", which I thoroughly enjoyed and I was amazed how much fun it was to read. The movie he lent me as well, but it didn't live up the the book. And Kubrick . . . Yikes!
And while I think of myself as an intelligent person, I don't like to curl up on the sofa and read. I don't mind reading to learn something but I can't get into fiction. I don't think I was this way as a kid . . . I remember sitting in the gym on a non-PE class and reading while the kids chatted loudly. The din was incredible. I used to be able to block it out all that external noise. Now I can't even read with music on.
Reading takes a certain amount of concentration and most of that goes into my daily life, so I have little left over for reading. Modern fiction is ghastly . . . I remember getting a discarded paperback by Patricia Cornwell. Interesting at first, but then she's explaining the details of a meal and the lives of the character and getting so off the track and stalling the story. All to fill a book and say, oh what a clever writer I am!
I haven't even finished the Harry Potter series . . . I find I get annoyed with the constant explanations of basic terms she's been using since the first novel.
Maybe Clockwork Orange is a challenge to understand . . . which makes at all the more interesting to figure out.
OK, they're all booked-up.
