Applicable (Vaguely).

Readers Today

The reader survey questions covered a spectrum of inquiry ranging from reading habits to book preferences to daily activities. The general conclusions reached were that yes, students at TCU enjoy reading; no, they do not read terribly often (beyond class work); yes, they prefer hardback to e-book (purportedly); and YES, they waste amazing amounts of time. (Though we have to acknowledge that, as a class of English and Writing majors and minors, our idea of well-spent free time are likely very different from many others.)

I have a few issues with the survey:

First off, the samples were hardly representative of the actual average. We interviewed only TCU students, and even though we may have gone outside our friend circles, I doubt very many of us actually walked up to people we had zero connections with. Even if we had, TCU has a very specific demographic--generally, we were most likely to end up with people who would check the same boxes at the doctor's office. I also felt as if we were condemning students for not reading enough. The questions themselves may have shamed respondents into giving us inaccurate answers.

Second, we have to give students a bit of a break. While in school and classes, a lot of us simply don't have time to read for pleasure. I know I have two reading-intensive majors; I'm lucky to get what I need for class done most days. If we do manage to get our reading done, a lot of us need to step away and do another activity for a little while. It is asking quite a lot for somebody to follow five hours of required reading with three hours of pleasure reading. Yes, we have free time that we waste, but most of this free time is in 5 to 15 minute intervals--just enough to check Facebook or watch a quick YouTube video. These breaks are just something to break up periods of intense mental activity.

Granted, these are largely assumptions I'm making about the TCU student, assumptions based on my personal experiences. BUT the fact remains that we didn't question enough students closely enough to really know there relationship with reading. It seems to me that we are crying 'Wolf' just a touch too early. Reading is changing, readers are changing, but I think it is far too early to predict reading's demise.

I don't think the elements of language and reading are disappearing. I think the voices of people without the ability/care/instruction regarding language are louder--made so by social media. Before, the people who had a public voice were well-read and well-spoken. Now, where everybody can have a public voice, the illiterate are just more in your face.

We need to promote reading and literature as much as possible because they are important. We also need to be careful not to overgeneralize about reading habits.

The Future of Reading Mini-Investigation

I read an article called 'Onward and Upward with the Arts: Future Reading' by Anthony Grafton, published by The New Yorker in 2007. A lot has changed in the reading world in the five and a half years since this article was published--ereaders are even more popular and ubiquitous devices, self publishing has taken off, and new technology has made it even easier for people to read on the go--downloading straight to their phones. (Some countries, i.e. Japan, even have books that are published nowhere but on cell phones. These serial books (published and sent to smart phones in small sections)  are both reminiscent of and astoundingly different from books such as The Three Musketeers which was also originally published in serial form, but through the medium of newspapers.)

Much of what Grafton had to say about the subject of future reading is still very relevant and worth thinking about. Discussing the long history of information recording and storage, Grafton posited that digitalizing literature (and other readables) was merely the next step in cataloging technology. The ultimate goal, and where the digital age can take us, is to make more books available to more people. We would have greater access to books published in other countries and cultural arenas. The article even went so far as to claim that it would become easier for writers and readers in remote places with less access to available books prior to digitization to read and publish their own work. We could avoid the erasure of books that has been seen in the past where the most popular and prevailing works are preserved and republished while others are forgotten about entirely. Digitalization of books would make research and cross-referencing far easier and more comprehensive. A lot of good will be made possible.

What the article was less clear about, and where the real interest in future reading lies, is the issue of how readers will actually approach reading and not just how they might potentially approach reading. The social life of information is the idea that the "form in which you encounter a text can have a huge impact on how you use it." The feel of the pages, the ease of the ereader--these are going to be the types of salient things that dictate the reality of future reading. Digitization of written word is happening, regardless of how we feel about it. I hope that Grafton was right when he wrote that data will "illuminate rather than eliminate" physical texts.

Starting Off

There is nothing sadder than a blank blog. Except maybe a brand new ice cream cone dripping perfectly good deliciously out of a hole in the bottom. But I would still have to rank that tragedy a distant second to the utter forlornness of a blank blog shooting blinding rays of white space into your eyes. Thus, an introduction is needed, though it is not actually part of the class posts or assignments.

This blog is for my Books and Print Culture class, and the posts will likely follow topics along those lines for the foreseeable future. Before the nitty-gritty begins, I'll fill up just a bit of the white space with a few random facts and oddities about me. Really I'll do anything to avoid the horrid anxiety of knowing that  a pure white, blank blog associated with my name is floating around URL land.

So, here we go. I love pineapple. I'm scared of stickers. Cages was the first (and only) book to ever make me cry. Catch Me If You Can is a phenomenal movie. I am the "Did You Know...?" girl. I don't feel right if I don't run almost every day. I'm pretty positive that I am allergic to the cold. Harry Potter for life. I still don't have a smart phone, but that's okay because my little cockroach is miraculously on its sixth or seventh life now and still going strong. I want to do something with my life that will help the world. I want to live abroad. I've been desperately trying to learn Spanish for about six years and am still rather incompetent. Otters are awesome. Having a favorite color doesn't make sense to me. Go Frogs.