Adults Reading

A new report came out regarding the reading habits of adults, and there's some good news: there has been a slight increase in the number of people who read at least one novel, short story, play or poem in the last year. Notice that this doesn't include non-fiction works (what I mostly read), or newspaper/magazine reading. I suppose that even this little increase is good, but I'm still baffled by how little adults read in general, especially now that the Internet provides us with so many ways to access material.

There is also an interesting discussion going on about separating literary reading from all the rest. As an English teacher, sure, I'd like to see the canon continue to expand. But if people are reading very popular books like the Harry Potter series, or those recommended by Oprah Winfrey, then I'm all for it. Reading is reading. There's clearly a link between reading comprehension test scores and pleasure reading among students, so increasing pleasure reading should clearly be a goal. Perhaps if they see adults around them reading, young people will follow suit. Another vote yes for Reading Workshop.

Texting

I love texting. As someone who doesn't particularly like talking on the phone, I like being able to communicate quickly--especially when a phone call would just take up more time. Also, you can say things in a text that you may not in person, or at least force someone to read what you've written that they may not listen to (i.e. a belligerent child). Just recently I found out that social email is becoming obsolete--why wait for an email when a text message is quicker? For the workplace, I suspect email will be around for quite a while because no one wants to feel like they're on the job 24/7. I'm not one of those people who stays plugged in to work email--when I'm working, I check it. But when it's the weekend or vacation, I rarely log on. I wonder, what will replace texting?