Reading. A Lost Passion?
I love to read. My passion for books started when I was very young. My mother read to me all the time and taught me to read long before I started school. I even read the dictionary when I was very young and today will read a cereal carton if nothing else is handy, although that's seldom the case. My mother passed her love for books to me as a special gift. I find so much pleasure in it. There's no end to the joys of losing myself in a good book, whether it's an escape into fiction or learning something new in a non-fiction book.
I invariably have a book that I carry with me to read while waiting somewhere, or eating, or having coffee; there's always an audio book in the car and then there's a book in the house. This, of course, means that I am usually reading three books at once.
There are so few children today who like to read. If it hadn't been for the Harry Potter craze, things would be worse but I know one teen who won a Harry Potter book and then won one of my books in a competition. Her response to me, when her parents told her to thank me for donating the book, was to tell me that she'd already won a book and she hates to read. To say that I was dumbfounded would be something of an understatement. What I hear from kids like that (she was the first but not the last to express that sentiment) is that they read what is required for school but they don't read for pleasure. Indeed, reading for pleasure seems to be anathema for them.
I hope we can somehow entice young people to read for pleasure. I hope they don't stop because the Harry Potter series has ended, for that might signal the end of books.
The reading devices now available would seem to herald the beginning of the end of the bound book. I hope not. At least if it happens, I hope it's not in my lifetime because I cannot imagine life without the pleasure of opening a freshly bound book, holding it in my hands and escaping into its pages and then marking pages with a carefully selected bookmark, to wait until the next time I can find a few minutes for that delicious escape.
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Sue Janson says:
Lost passion
Darlene, I couldn't agree with you more. I too love to read and have an audio book in the car, carry a book with me wherever I go, and read yet another one in the house. My mother and grandparents were avid readers, so the example was well set. Up until I was ten we had no TV, so chores came first, being outside as much as possible, and reading quietly were a natural part of each day. I have very fond memories of curling up in the cooler basement on a cot with a book to escape the hottest part of the day--no air conditioning either and Kansas summers were brutally hot and windy. I began reading books to my son as an infant and books became one of his favorite things. If he wasn't playing with his trains, he was reading...I stayed very busy just trying to keep him in enough books. However, during his high school years, I have watched his passion for reading fade and it truly saddens me. He has read all of the Harry Potter books, some more than once, but his pleasure reading pretty much stopped there. The bombardment of TV, video games, ipods, etc. has shoved reading to the back burner, not just for him, but for most of the kids I deal with these days. I can only hope that his love of reading, instilled as a young child, will surface again some day.
Genny Best says:
Reading: A lost passion
Darlene, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I was a bookaholic when I was a child and read all the time, even under the covers with a flashlight when I was supposed to be asleep. I think part of the problem is that there are so many other things available to children that are much more enticing, like video games, computers, WII, and others. Parents need to take a more active role in encouraging their children to read and take an interest in books. I know when I was a child, they transported me to many magical places.
Genny B
Brenda Ferner says:
Reading books
I agree there is so much more for children to do to-day. When I was very young, there were books or a short radio show once a day - so I read. And read. I read the dog for a walk, I read the way to the school bus. I learned to read before I went to school, and I learned the hard way, learning spelling and grammar, and how to write legibly - a skill I have almost lost! I think newer methods of teaching reading using so-called 'easy' methods were a disaster, and where children never learned to read easily for pleasure, there was no chance of them being able to share the pleasure later with their own children. Also - what happened to bed-time? How many children go to bed early enough nowadays to enjoy a story before sleep? They are all up playing games and watching TV. Times change, and we tend to think our ways were best, but to be honest, if TV, the internet, video games had been available when we were young - would we have spent so much time reading? There is still hope, though. With the green revolution, with the shortage of energy supplies, maybe at some time in the future, the TV and computer screens will go dark, and people will learn to read and write for enjoyment once more.... Who knows?