When a new semester begins, I stop reading...period. I quit reading for pleasure (as I currently look at Robert Anton Wilson's "Prometheus Rising" sitting on my night stand with a book mark stuck only 47 pages into it), and I find myself struggling to read the assigned readings for class.
Last Spring semester I read (very painfully) 100 pages per night, covering 4 different English classes.
"Jesus," I asked myself, "Do other students have it this bad?"
I have since scoured the internet looking for statistics on the average amount read by college students in a week, and came up empty. However I did find some interesting facts:
- 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
- 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
(A survey by the Jenkins Group: http://www.jenkinsgroupinc.com/)
Also, recently NPR released a list of the 100 books everyone should read (http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/books_music/top100.html), and after discussing it with another class I was startled by how few of the books were read by fellow students. After this discussion we spoke about how much they loathe reading what doesn't interest them.
My question is this: Do you feel that college does spoil one's inclination to read beyond the classroom? And if so, how could we remedy this dilemma?
:::::::::::::::::::::::::Interview with Cormac McCarthy:::::::::::::::::::::::::
Wall Street Journal:Does this issue of length apply to books, too? Is a 1,000-page book somehow too much?
CM:For modern readers, yeah. People apparently read only mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better, and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written 100 years ago are just not going to be written any more and people need to get used to that. If you think you’re going to write something like The Brothers Karamazov or Moby-Dick, go ahead. Nobody will read it. I don’t care how good it is, or how smart the readers are. Their intentions, their brains are different.
5 comments:
I've found myself in the same situation every semester. As a kid, and even in high school, I was almost always in the process of reading a book for my own enjoyment, sometimes two at a time. For my high school graduation, I was given a gift certificate for Half Price Books. I bought a ton of books that I had always wanted to read and brought about 10 of them with me when I moved to State College. Steinbeck's Winter of Our Discontent has moved from one dorm to another, and now is in my apartment. I don't think I've read past the first chapter.
To remedy this situation, I decided that this semester I would make time to read for enjoyment every day, even if it is only for a few minutes on my lunch break. At the moment, I'm reading The Fellowship of the Ring. I try to read it for just ten minutes a day, so that I rediscover the joy of reading. Sometimes, I get a bit carried away. I started reading it during my lunch break a couple weeks ago and ended up skipping my next class so that I could continue reading. Irresponsible? Possibly. But it was better than discussing the American Renaissance in class.
It seems counter-intuitive that I'm forcing myself to read for enjoyment, but I've found that it's making all of my reading more enjoyable. This semester is pretty reading-intensive for me, but it seems that squeezing just a bit of guilty-pleasure reading into my day has rekindled my love of reading.
The sad thing is that most people probably do have time to read. Three of my roommates spend literally hours every day playing video games. When I stagger in from the library after digesting Homer, Chomsky, and Emerson all in one evening, I just want to scream at them "Read a damn book!" But to each his own. As for me, I'm over half-way through Fellowship of the Ring, and Catch-22 is sitting on my desk, begging for a re-read. Who knows, maybe someday I'll even open Winter of Our Discontent. Maybe.
I definitely can attest to the brunt of this argument. I'm one of those people who tries desperately to meticulously plan my day and make sure I use my time the best way possible. Yet, somehow, reading for pleasure never really fits into the equation.
I feel it's because when I'm reading something I actually enjoy, I feel guilty, because there is a bunch of other school related reading that needs finished first. Therefore, reading for pleasure during school takes on the same meaning as vegetating in front of the television for two hours, or browsing Facebook. The story is totally different during summer and winter breaks, because I feel that all of my spare down time is spent reading for pleasure: books that I don't want to put down and literally can't.
I find it weird that as English, journalism, and writing majors, literacy is nearly second nature to us, and should be enjoyable. So why is it that most of us don't read for pleasure because of a heavy school load? My roommates, none are English majors, read for pleasure on a daily basis. One makes weekly trips to the library because she finishes books so quickly. I find myself slightly envious of her position, partly because I would love to be able to fit in that much relaxation reading, and partly because I wish that I could sit down with my school assigned readings and approach them with the same fervor that I do when I read something for fun.
I think utilizing this approach could be beneficial. If I went into my school assigned readings looking to read a story, one with quirky characters and a gripping plot, then maybe I wouldn't cringe every time I had an extremely long assignment to complete.
I agree with everything said, and I just have to say that I think it is incredibly sad that a group of English majors finds it so hard to read to pleasure, especially since the desire is there and very, very strong. Every semester I come to school with the same box of books that I want to read (outside of class readings) and every semester I find myself without the time, or even the energy, to crack open one of those books. It has taken me last semester and this to get half way through In Cold Blood, which is quite a fantastic book. This is a book that would usually take my three to four days, at the most, to get through. But, like the others students, my time is so consumed by American Poetry and don Quijote that reading for fun is just not an option. And if I do find my self with a little extra time, its spent getting ahead on homework. Not to mention that reading almost 24/7, starts to strain the eyes.
Out of my three roommates, two are able to find time for pleasure reading and neither one of them is an english major. My third roommate, a journalism/english major is in the same boat as me (and every other egnlish major, apparently).
Reading all the time as we do really does effect pleasure reading, however, I do not think that the joy of reading is diminished. It may not be for pleasure, but there is a certain pleasure in completing the readings for a class. I love to read, that is why I am an English major, and even required readings are a part of that love.
Eddie, however, is on to something, 10 minutes a day is not a lot of time, it wouldn't be too hard to get a few minutes in before going to bed. Plus, it could really help you rediscover the joy of reading something of your own choice!
Like the rest of you, I never have time to read for pleasure while in college. I hardly have enough time to read my assigned readings for my classes either. Unlike the rest of you, however, I am okay with putting my reading for pleasure on hold for now. I love reading so much that I know it will be a part of my life forever. If in these next three years of college I will not be able to pick what I want to read, I know I’ll have the rest of my life to do so. By being forced to read literature for school, I am discovering great authors and stories that I would have never chose to read on my own. I am becoming a more intellectual and knowledgeable person because of it.
So Uncle Evil J, for me, the issue isn’t with having no time to read for pleasure, but with the problem you raised in the last paragraph of your post. I think it is sad that our society of today does not have the attention span to read a book of 800 pages. Is writing those long, beautifully-crafted novels a dying art? If this is true, I am saddened by how our society is progressing. Will all novels eventually become outdated?
Cormac McCarthy said that our brains are different. I beg to differ. I don’t think it is our brains that changed; I think it's the values of our society that have changed. The increasing influence and emphasis on media is to blame. With all of our technology, we look to the media for pleasure instead of a novel.
As an English teacher someday, it is going to be my challenge to choose the right literature that will get my students excited and willing to read and to bring back to books! The love of reading starts in school, and who better to endorse that message than the English teacher?
As with everyone else, my pleasure reading becomes non existent during the school year. This is due to severe time constraints, and as Eddie mentioned I know that once I start reading there's no stopping me and my studies will suffer. I found the statistics shocking, not so much that a third of high school graduates don't read another book but that 42% of college graduates don't. I know that I get a bit worn out by reading countless pages of a book that I despise but at the end of the day I maintain my passion for reading.
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