Read this!

So the Natl Endowment for the Arts says we don't read enough:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/arts/19nea.html

Probably a fair criticism. Speaking from my own experience, I read far less now than I did five years ago. Here I am speaking of reading books, rather than magazine articles or websites or emails. After all, you do a different kind of reading in a book. The critical difference is the continuity of narrative voice.

In a short article, you're looking for content--what happened, who did it, where was it, etc. You get facts, but not much more. Even opinion pieces usually argue for one point of view on an issue but end up rather one-dimensional.

Books, on the other hand--fiction or non-fiction--have a strong narrative voice. At least good ones do. And I think that's the appeal. You can crawl into the narrator's skull and BE them in the sense that you can see the world through their eyes. Reading Nick Hornby gives me that experience, for example. I've said this before, but I think reading books is the best way of building the capacity for empathy. You simply can't get that from a movie or short articles, because you never get inside someone's thoughts in the same way.

OK, I'd better start contributing to the world wide detritus and crack open by paperback.