{"id":10665,"date":"2015-06-17T06:11:31","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T13:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=10665"},"modified":"2015-06-08T14:15:14","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T21:15:14","slug":"open-space-never-neglect-the-written-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2015\/06\/17\/open-space-never-neglect-the-written-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Space<\/em>: Never neglect the written word"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cReadership is at an all-time low.\u201d These aren\u2019t just words that editors and writers see in their nightmares: if we\u2019re not careful, they could become the fate of our society.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s going on with reading these days? A huge problem seems to be what<\/i> people are reading. Different demographics are given different things to read, but that can really alter their perceptions of reading. For example, many young adults are better suited to Hemmingway than Diary of a Wimpy Kid<\/i>, <\/i>but they may never consider that because they are constantly handed the latter.<\/p>\n

The same goes for adults who desperately claw their way through War and<\/i> Peace<\/i> just to say they have done it; decisions like that can make or break one\u2019s relationship with literature.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
This article originally appeared in our June 10, 2015 issue.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our society\u2019s stigma against being a quitter takes a large toll on reading, as well. Often what happens when people attempt to read books that they know they won\u2019t really enjoy is that they refuse to read another book until they finish, because they\u2019ll feel like a quitter if they stop. But the result is that the book they\u2019re attempting to read just sits and collects dust because they detest it so, and that person\u2019s reading in general ceases.<\/p>\n

A word of advice: quit it. Just giving up the book allows you to read something much more enjoyable, thereby salvaging your book-reader relationship. It\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n

Also, stop making excuses about being too busy: the sad fact is that folks all too often simply don\u2019t force books to take precedence, so they are often put on the back burner when brought up against more \u201cimportant\u201d activities. It\u2019s understandable: people have big, crazy, stressful lives, but reading provides a soothing way to relax. Reading 10 pages is not going to unbalance whatever else a person is doing.<\/p>\n

The biggest injustice to our bibliographic friends, however, is sill television. Television is good, television is great, but TV killed the radio and it\u2019s trying its best to off our good friend the book.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of people who claim they would really, truly love to read more but just don\u2019t have time. Yet these same people watch upwards of 10 hours of television a week.<\/p>\n

People don\u2019t have<\/i> to read; it\u2019s not like breathing or eating. But saying such things is an insult to paperbacks everywhere. It\u2019s truly amazing what people can accomplish when they do touch that dial. Cutting back to, say, eight hours of TV would give a person two full hours of vocabulary- and imagination-expanding reading time.<\/p>\n

Actually, I take it back: people do <\/i>have to read in order to get the most out of life. So this summer, let\u2019s be sure to set aside some time for the written word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cReadership is at an all-time low.\u201d These aren\u2019t just words that editors and writers see in their nightmares: if we\u2019re not careful, they could become the fate of our society. So what\u2019s going on with reading these days? A huge problem seems to be what people are reading. Different demographics are given different things to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views","category-june-10-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10666,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10665\/revisions\/10666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}