Reading an average of just 15 minutes a day will get your through about 15 books per year. It’s simple math. Even somewhat slow reading, about 250-plus words per minute, and reading 5 days out of each week, will net you 15 two-hundred page books per year. This modest investment of time can yield personal development, awareness of history, spiritual growth, professional development, and more.
Stunningly, about half the adults in USAmerica do not even read one book per year. Who’s stealing our reading time?
In Who Stole Our Reading Time (Books Blog at the Guardian) Alan Bissett writes that the “sound of fizz” is all around us:
In the 90s, there were a mere four TV channels (Britain). Each household had a single phone-line, usable once at a time. Only geeks played “video games” … Now, the reader is under assault from hundreds of television channels, 3D cinema, a computer-gaming business so large it dwarfs Hollywood, iPhones, Wii, YouTube, free commuter newspapers, an engorged celebrity culture, instant access to all the music ever recorded, 24-hour sports news … A leisure time that was already precious has been chewed into by text-messaging, Facebook and emails. Almost everyone I speak to claims that they “love books but just can’t find the time to read.”
For those swept away by the “sound of fizz” the consequences are dire.
So besieged are we by the entertainment industry that we are being stimulated only in certain directions. The sound of fizz is everywhere. Sustained concentration on the printed word, whether in-depth argument or fictional narrative, creates a particular cerebral event which visual-dependent media cannot. The assault upon this has meant the very theft of our thinking space … (the) pregnant, mental pause of reading has come under threat like never before.
Good reading FREES US from the mass identity that is underway all around us. It takes us far in helping to preserve and develop our individuality. Life is too precious to be mass-conformed. Raise the standard. Spread the word. Inspire children, youth, and adults to read. Just 15 minutes a day is a nice start.
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