Ever since NBC political commentator Tom Brokaw published a book several years ago called The Greatest Generation, this term has entered common conversation along with variations. Last year I read a book called The Greater Generation. Its thesis was that the Boomer Generation, that generation of which I am a member that was born in the years after World War 11, was greater than the greatest generation which, in Brokaw's analysis, was the generation that fought and won that world war which defeated Nazi totalitarianism.
Here is this author, an English professor at Emory University, calling the current generation, loosely called the Millenials, those born in 1980 and thereafter, the Dumbest Generation.
His thesis is that this generation does not read books, has little respect for the printed word, and spends its time on the Web, not reading substantive material, but spending their time with email and social networking sites like Facebook.
Furthermore, he goes into detail asserting that Web reading, with its emphasis on short snippets and conciseness, works against detailed and sustained confrontation with Words, as opposed to graphics.
He quotes a research study which talks about how people peruse web sites, how their eyes peruse the site, the point being that the norm is to scan and survey superficially rather give into sustained interaction to words and complete sentences.
The author would say that fewer and fewer people of this age group will spend the time necessary to reading, for example, Faulkner because they cannot devote to a Faulkner the necessary time and concentration.
In short, web browsing and the way people read off the web, militates against reading books.
By "dumbest" the author does not mean unintelligent. He thinks this generation is as intelligent as any past generation. What he means is that this Millenial generation is the least informed---they lack the general knowledge of past generations. Furthermore, this generation does not value knowledge as much as previous generations, or so the author asserts.
They are the least informed because they do not ready books, do not value the printed word, and their web browsing is mainly for social purposes and not to learn new and valuable things.
I do not know if the author is correct in saying that this is the least informed generation. I do think he is correct is saying that web reading is different than sustained print reading, and web or screen reading with the inevitable skimming with the eyes jumping all over the place retards the ability to read long texts like novels.
More later on this book and topic.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Print Literacy versus Web Literacy
For those of us interested in how technology will affect print reading, the following Web page is interesting. Here is an excerpt:
Print is immensely superior to the Web in terms of speed, type and image quality, and the size of the visible space. These differences are not fundamental. We will eventually get:
Print is immensely superior to the Web in terms of speed, type and image quality, and the size of the visible space. These differences are not fundamental. We will eventually get:
- bandwidth fast enough to download a Web page as fast as one can turn the page in a newspaper
- screen resolution sharp enough to render type so crisply that reading speed from screens reaches that of paper
- huge screens the size of a newspaper spread - in fact, I think that newspaper-sized screens are about the limit where it may not make sense to make screens any larger
While computers and print (in this article, the author focuses mainly on newspapers) are certainly different, it is intriguing that the author says computers will become more like print. Here is the link to the article:
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Dealing with Books
Week Four: Organizing Books
BY LIZ SEYMOUR - HOME DEPUTY EDITOR
Every disorganized person needs a scapegoat, and on Week 4 of my crusade to clear our hopelessly overstuffed attic, I chose my husband, Bob.Having already sorted through holiday decorations, I turned to books, smug in the belief that Bob was responsible for the boxes up there filled with volumes going back to college. I love books, but I don't insist on a lifelong relationship with every one of them. Nearly three years ago, for example, our local middle school organized a used-book sale and I donated more than 200 of my own books to the cause. Bob mysteriously went missing during this exercise. So as the piles of clutter spread like ivy across our attic floor these past few years, I convinced myself that if only Bob would thin out his books, the room would be usable, or at least accessible.On the issue of books I got surprisingly little help from Caitlin Shear, the professional organizer who has signed on to be my coach and hand holder during this process. Each week she has led me through the sorting, scrapping and separation anxiety of dealing with clutter. But when it comes to books, fiction and nonfiction, she is unabashedly a keeper."I am a big books person," she admits. "I tend to get rid of everything else before I will let go of a book." She has even allowed her husband, Mike, to keep his collection of science-fiction paperbacks from the early 1980s. "I am," she says, "a total bibliophile."So am I. My father was a book editor early in his journalism career, so the New York apartment where I grew up was lined with books. They were the only things my parents allowed themselves to collect, and somehow they made room for 1,100 volumes on shelves in three of our four smallish rooms. They added warmth and color to our white-wall rental.
Trying to get rid of those books after both my parents died was a nightmare. The local branches of the New York Public Library would not take them. A few nonprofits would have accepted them, but transporting 1,100 books across the city to the drop-off sites -- in a small car, with a baby -- while the landlord pressed us to empty the apartment proved too daunting.We were faced with the depressing prospect of consigning them and the memories they held to the incinerator shaft until my friend Alicia came to the rescue. She recommended Housing Works Used Book Cafe in SoHo, where all profits go to services to help homeless people living with HIV and AIDS. They would pick up the books as long as we could pack them up. Bob heroically pulled an all-nighter while baby and I slept until the truck arrived to pick them up the next morning. Unspeakable relief.Ever since then, I have been skittish about the size of our book collection, which peaked at about 600 when we moved into our house in the District seven years ago. So for this week's exercise in space clearing, I insisted that Bob join Caitlin and me in the attic to make tough choices. We worked independently for nearly two hours; we agreed that he would not make decisions about any of my books and I would have no say about his. As I piled up my paperback novels to donate, I could hear him muttering things like: "I bought that. I've never read it. Stupid me."In the end, we donated 25 hardcover and 42 paperback books to the Kings Park branch of the Fairfax County Public Library. More than half of those were contributions from Bob, including Joe Lieberman's autobiography; nearly a dozen books on the general theme of urban sprawl, including my personal favorite: a book-length federal document from the early 1980s known as the Urban Development Annual Report; and assorted other nonfiction tomes. We're down to about 200 books, neatly piled in 10 boxes lined up against the wall. For these, we plan to get proper shelves in the living room.Caitlin says that for many people -- including herself -- books are among the most difficult things to part with. But she has two tips for anyone trying to get a handle on an overgrown collection: First, check the condition of the book. "Are the pages so brittle and yellow that you're never going to read them?" If so, she says, donate. And second, "be realistic about the format you like to read them in." Most people never re-read paperbacks they've kept for a while, especially the smaller ones, she says.Here are a few other places in the Washington region that will accept book donations: Montgomery County's Friends of the Library and Books for America.
BY LIZ SEYMOUR - HOME DEPUTY EDITOR
Every disorganized person needs a scapegoat, and on Week 4 of my crusade to clear our hopelessly overstuffed attic, I chose my husband, Bob.Having already sorted through holiday decorations, I turned to books, smug in the belief that Bob was responsible for the boxes up there filled with volumes going back to college. I love books, but I don't insist on a lifelong relationship with every one of them. Nearly three years ago, for example, our local middle school organized a used-book sale and I donated more than 200 of my own books to the cause. Bob mysteriously went missing during this exercise. So as the piles of clutter spread like ivy across our attic floor these past few years, I convinced myself that if only Bob would thin out his books, the room would be usable, or at least accessible.On the issue of books I got surprisingly little help from Caitlin Shear, the professional organizer who has signed on to be my coach and hand holder during this process. Each week she has led me through the sorting, scrapping and separation anxiety of dealing with clutter. But when it comes to books, fiction and nonfiction, she is unabashedly a keeper."I am a big books person," she admits. "I tend to get rid of everything else before I will let go of a book." She has even allowed her husband, Mike, to keep his collection of science-fiction paperbacks from the early 1980s. "I am," she says, "a total bibliophile."So am I. My father was a book editor early in his journalism career, so the New York apartment where I grew up was lined with books. They were the only things my parents allowed themselves to collect, and somehow they made room for 1,100 volumes on shelves in three of our four smallish rooms. They added warmth and color to our white-wall rental.
Trying to get rid of those books after both my parents died was a nightmare. The local branches of the New York Public Library would not take them. A few nonprofits would have accepted them, but transporting 1,100 books across the city to the drop-off sites -- in a small car, with a baby -- while the landlord pressed us to empty the apartment proved too daunting.We were faced with the depressing prospect of consigning them and the memories they held to the incinerator shaft until my friend Alicia came to the rescue. She recommended Housing Works Used Book Cafe in SoHo, where all profits go to services to help homeless people living with HIV and AIDS. They would pick up the books as long as we could pack them up. Bob heroically pulled an all-nighter while baby and I slept until the truck arrived to pick them up the next morning. Unspeakable relief.Ever since then, I have been skittish about the size of our book collection, which peaked at about 600 when we moved into our house in the District seven years ago. So for this week's exercise in space clearing, I insisted that Bob join Caitlin and me in the attic to make tough choices. We worked independently for nearly two hours; we agreed that he would not make decisions about any of my books and I would have no say about his. As I piled up my paperback novels to donate, I could hear him muttering things like: "I bought that. I've never read it. Stupid me."In the end, we donated 25 hardcover and 42 paperback books to the Kings Park branch of the Fairfax County Public Library. More than half of those were contributions from Bob, including Joe Lieberman's autobiography; nearly a dozen books on the general theme of urban sprawl, including my personal favorite: a book-length federal document from the early 1980s known as the Urban Development Annual Report; and assorted other nonfiction tomes. We're down to about 200 books, neatly piled in 10 boxes lined up against the wall. For these, we plan to get proper shelves in the living room.Caitlin says that for many people -- including herself -- books are among the most difficult things to part with. But she has two tips for anyone trying to get a handle on an overgrown collection: First, check the condition of the book. "Are the pages so brittle and yellow that you're never going to read them?" If so, she says, donate. And second, "be realistic about the format you like to read them in." Most people never re-read paperbacks they've kept for a while, especially the smaller ones, she says.Here are a few other places in the Washington region that will accept book donations: Montgomery County's Friends of the Library and Books for America.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Recent reading
McMurtry's Dead Man Walking was a disappointment. To put it bluntly, it was dull, and that's the worse you can see about any book! I hope the last two books in the series are better, although I can't imagine either could be the equal of Lonesome Dove.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Ere a one oughten to red hit. Sho.
A new favorite of mine. Some criticize this book for its various narrators and difficulty, but I think it is very engaging and enthralling. It didn't bother me none noways, in fact. Now, sometimes I couldn't tell every detail of what was going on, and, in reading about the book since finishing it, I found some things that I missed, but I was swept up by Faulkner's writing style. Nothing much happens with the plot: Addie dies, her family takes her to Jefferson to be buried, they have to get a new team after theirs drowns in a river, Darl one night sets fire to the barn where the coffin is, and they bury her. Yet, what makes it is the beautiful language.
Usually, when I read any book, I want to establish some sense of what it means, what it's about. With this book, however, I was so into the writing style that it didn't much matter to me. Indeed, I feel like I wish I could live in Yoknapatawpha County with these characters, if I could stand the farm living life. I don't think I've felt that way about a book before. I'm sure Darl and I could be good friends.
I like how you come to understand the characters more deeply throughout the book, how their different perceptions combine to a rich whole, and how they can easily go from speaking with "durnt" and "beholden" and "paw" to keen intellectual soliloquies that equally take your breath away.
A new favorite of mine. Some criticize this book for its various narrators and difficulty, but I think it is very engaging and enthralling. It didn't bother me none noways, in fact. Now, sometimes I couldn't tell every detail of what was going on, and, in reading about the book since finishing it, I found some things that I missed, but I was swept up by Faulkner's writing style. Nothing much happens with the plot: Addie dies, her family takes her to Jefferson to be buried, they have to get a new team after theirs drowns in a river, Darl one night sets fire to the barn where the coffin is, and they bury her. Yet, what makes it is the beautiful language.
Usually, when I read any book, I want to establish some sense of what it means, what it's about. With this book, however, I was so into the writing style that it didn't much matter to me. Indeed, I feel like I wish I could live in Yoknapatawpha County with these characters, if I could stand the farm living life. I don't think I've felt that way about a book before. I'm sure Darl and I could be good friends.
I like how you come to understand the characters more deeply throughout the book, how their different perceptions combine to a rich whole, and how they can easily go from speaking with "durnt" and "beholden" and "paw" to keen intellectual soliloquies that equally take your breath away.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove
This book is one of the great reading experiences of my life. What a story, what characters, what great writing.
McMurtry is great at creating characters. He seems to be able to create characters at will. It's extraordinary.
The novel ends without any happy notes. No relationships are resolved. No one is happy. Perhaps in the sequel there will some kind of happy ending.
McMurtry is great at creating characters. He seems to be able to create characters at will. It's extraordinary.
The novel ends without any happy notes. No relationships are resolved. No one is happy. Perhaps in the sequel there will some kind of happy ending.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Harry Potter's Disappearing Act
For the first time in over ten years, no Harry Potter book is on the best-seller lists, according to the Book Review and The New York Times. The seven book series has sold around 375 million copies. Its reign as a best-seller began at the end of 1998, with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, just eight days after President Clinton was impeached by the House.
The series' success is astounding. The Book Review created a new best-seller list for children. Later, as more copies were sold and J. K. Rowling published more books, another best-seller list was created for children's series books.
Harry Potter's run is probably not over yet, however. The sixth film is to be released in November; no doubt it will spur Pottermania's reappearance.
The series' success is astounding. The Book Review created a new best-seller list for children. Later, as more copies were sold and J. K. Rowling published more books, another best-seller list was created for children's series books.
Harry Potter's run is probably not over yet, however. The sixth film is to be released in November; no doubt it will spur Pottermania's reappearance.
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