The Rift Between Us

A story about Malcom X comes to mind.

One day he was driving by the NY public library and he saw some youngsters playing dice against the side of the building.

He got out of his car and ripped into them saying how they could use what was inside that library to improve themselves.

Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason says that about 40% (if I remember correctly) of Americans haven't read any books in the past year. The definition of "book" in the cited survey was broad. For example, it included romance novels and the Bible. Newspaper readership is also down from the past, although some of that may be due to people reading from online sources.

The term "elite" has been used by some people as an insult, but the truth is that it doesn't take much reading to be part of the intellectual elite if most people choose to be aliterate.

what do you think about audiobooks? Do you think its simply the act of reading, or the act of taking time to learn something, or to get more information from your daily life?

I read books, and then I have a 90 minute ride to work where i try to listen to audiobooks.

Just wondering what you think the most important aspects of it are.

I love audiobooks. I have tons of them on my iPhone, which I listen to usually through my car. I do the big NYT bestsellers like Tipping Point and Blink, and stuff like Flight of the Creative Class and The World is Flat. But then I also have a lot of philosophy/atheism stuff, like all the Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens stuff. Plus tons of classics.

I think it's a great medium.

do on and offline magazine articles and lengthy news reports count?

encyclopedia entries?

where would a book on dragons and crystals fit into this schematic?

: )

-=T=-

I'd say it also depends on what you're reading. If what you're reading is trash, then it's not going to give you much in the way of intellectual stimulation. For example, if all you read is trash blogs and stupid gamers' forums, you'll still be an idiot, and you'll probably become more of one simply by reading them. On the other hand, if you read books, newspapers, intelligent magazines, intelligent blogs (such as this :) ), other Internet sources with real information, and even web forums populated by people with real intellectual curiosity, then you'll do better.

I think only half of it is the actual reading. My girlfriend has never been big on reading books, because she has some type of reading comprehension problem. She has to read things a few times before her brain registers it properly, so she reads very slowly. However, her intellectual curiosity compensates for that, and she is very intelligent. Therefore, I conclude that it's not really the reading so much as the desire to learn.

I like the acronym, I think it's very appropriate. My wife and I love to read and have amassed a large collection of books -- although I must confess, most of my reading tends to be technical in nature.