this quote from Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains , is particularly annoying to me:
“for some people, the very idea of reading a book has come to seem old-fashioned, maybe even a little silly – like sewing your own shirts or butchering your own meat. ‘i don’t read books,’ says Joe O’Shea, a former president of the student body at Florida State University and a 2008 recipient of a Rhodes scholarship. ‘I go to google and I can absorb relevant information quickly.'”
what is irks and saddens me about this is the complete shortsightedness, thorough lack of understanding about why we read. we don’t read merely for data gathering. we read for learning, for pleasure, for experiences, for encountering thought and art and beauty.
Agreed. I generally read for pleasure. I have an active imagination and need things to keep it occupied since I’m to old to play house or army with the neighborhood kids. :-p Speaking of reading . . . Where the heck are your capital letters?!?!
He is a bad representative of a Rhodes Scholar. 🙂 I think of another one, Bill Clinton, who reads constantly, sometimes not sleeping just to read, and shares it with everyone around him. That’s the kind of reader I want to be. Not just reading for myself, but within community. That’s why I blog and podcast and join groups in GoodReads and bookclubs in person and online. You can use the online environment to expand the reading experience, not replace it.
I did get a lot out of the Carr book, though. It made me re-think how I approach students in the classroom too.
@Kathy, capitalization is highly overrated! 🙂 @Jenny, thanks for posting a better Rhodes Scholar example! i also really like the idea of reading in community. (funny that the two friends to comment are both GoodReads people! 🙂 i too liked Carr’s book (though i haven’t finished it yet!) though i was highly suspicious of his points when i began reading. i got hooked on it with an informal reading group that started in the library with that book.