LOL!

My Mom thinks I am loony cause I will be reading a real book, watching TV,and using the 'net at the same time. That, and reading books in my PDA.

Something depressing, from a post at littlegreenfootballs (sorry I don't have the original or the posters name).

Statistics I first came across in Dan Poynter's Self-Publishing Manual, from a survey he did years ago (I'm guessing the 80's). I don't know how accurate it is, and it almost seems to contradict what I see going on in libraries, with more people using libraries than ever before. Still, my hunch is he's probably closer to the truth than not, and one reason I say that is the rates of illiteracy are still very high:

One-third of high school graduates never read a book for the rest of their lives.

Fifty-eight percent of the U.S. adult population never reads a book after high school.

Forty-two percent of college graduates never read another book.

Eighty percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

Seventy percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

Fifty-seven percent of new books are not read to completion. Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.

Of the people who do read books, 53 percent read fiction, 43 percent nonfiction. The favorite fiction category is mystery and suspense, 19 percent. Nobody ever learns anything reading fiction and suspense - or romance.

Of the top 50 books, fiction outsells nonfiction about 60 percent to 40 percent.

Each day, people in the U.S. spend four hours watching TV, three hours listening to the radio, and 14 minutes reading magazines.

Those figures seem so abstract to me. Almost impossible to believe . . . of course, people do listen to the radio, which sometimes has facts on it.

One quibble:

Nobody ever learns anything reading fiction and suspense - or romance.

If it's done right, they learn plenty.

With the new Sony e-reader you can leave it "on" all the time. The only time energy is used is when the "pages" are turned. For measuring battery life Sony doesn't measure by time but by pages.

You know, when it's 90 degrees here in the summer, the last thing I want is another device that heats up my knees when I prop it up and try to read.

I understand the theoretical promise of reduced clutter and an unlimited library, but part of me wants to dismiss the idea of an e-reader as something guys get just to . . . you know. Just to have.

Of course, I'm a freakin' bigot.