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Putting the e- in English since 2007.
Your Host at "After Hours"
- Mr. Mac
- Tolland, Connecticut, United States
- A child of the 60's, graduate of Tolland High School, the University of Connecticut, and Wesleyan University, ready to begin his 34th year teaching -- all at Tolland High.
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Blog Archive
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2007
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March
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- The Myth of Multitasking
- Big Brother is Stirring. . .
- Interclass Smackdown (Round I) -- Answers
- RU into Hip-Hop?
- Julie Taymor is a Genius. . .
- Loon-y Tunes
- This Just In!
- Sound Familiar?
- "Entertainment" Tonight?
- TV Beatdown -- House, or Grey's Anatomy
- Grey's Anatomy
- House M. D.
- It's Not Easy Being Green
- Bang for the Buck!
- Well, Here's One Bit of Bright News. . .
- Know Your Rights!
- Block IV: Coincidence. . .
- All: Saturday Night Special (Galactic Edition)
- All: "Into the Silence"
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March
(19)
4 comments:
It bothers me that reading has this whole "you're a loser" tag stuck to it. I honestly think that not reading as a child doesn't let you push your imagination to it's limit (even though an imagination is limitless in my opinion) and they're missing out on adventures and characters and life lessons. Sometimes I wonder if children keep putting down the books - what will happen to future authors and literature? Maybe books (like the Harry Potter series) will cease to exist somewhere in our future if this doesn't change?
This week's Newsweek had a pretty cool article called "Baby Boomers and Books: A Love Affair with Literature" by Malcolm Jones. Here's a link to it:
msnbc.msn.com/id/17534882/site/newsweek/
They basically talked about how the babyboomers (people who grew up in the 60s (like Mr. Mac)) really became avid readers with such classics as Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22, To Kill a Mockingbird, Om the Road, and even The Cat in the Hat. He goes on to say that you write history trhough technology. Today, we all have digital songs on iTunes, iPods, and maybe even a couple CDs. He says, "My generation's equivalent of the iPod was the paperback book ... They were ubiquitous, plentiful and, most important, cheap; most paperbacks cost about $1. ... Everyone my age read paperbacks."
But the article then tries to explain why fewer young people read these days. "Books are almost never the cultural markers that songs or movies are, if only because it takes a lot more effort to read a book." One can get to know a movie or song very easily; they have a wide audience and are easy to take in. Sometimes, you can even know all about a song/show/movie that you hate just because it's on the airwaves so much. This doesn't really happen with books. However, he does say that books can definitively have more power and the great ones get their stories spread to millions more that who actually read the book when Hollywood makes a movie out of it.
Anyway, I don't usually read the articles in Newsweek, but this one was kinda cool and did a nice job trying to explain "The Death of Western Civilization" as Mr. MacArthur calls it and is often rankled by
Interesting how the kid who said that they would rather die than read had such excellent writing abilities.
Such a sad article (I love the illustration). When I was younger All I did was read. (well, I played outside a lot too but that is besides the point)
Matt made an intersesting connection to that newsweek article (I saw it). Its funny because those were the books that defined the baby boomer generation. And now, I look at the top books on the new york times bestsellers lists and it says a lot about our generation/ our day and age. Many of the books are cookie cutter action stories or diet books. What happened?
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