Booking Through Thursday

Statistics August 30, 2007
Filed under: Wordpress — --Deb @ 1:59 am

There was a widely bruited-about statistic reported last week, stating that 1 in 4 Americans did not read a single book last year. Clearly, we don’t fall into that category, but . . . how many of our friends do? Do you have friends/family who read as much as you do? Or are you the only person you know who has a serious reading habit?

Not being American none of my friends fall into it. However, at school I was the only one amongst my friends who was an avid reader. A few of them did read occasionally but most of them only read when they had to for school. At school it was sort of considered uncool to be a reader. Not that I cared. I never hid the fact that I read and most of my friends accepted it. I did have one friend who read just as much as I did. However, she had been bringing back a book I had loaned to her and when someone asked her if she had actually read it she made some sort of sarcastic comment. It wasn't directed at me since no one really ever made fun of the fact that I was a reader. But she didn't want to be known as one and so scoffed to hide it. I remember being upset with her. Simply because she was one of the most intelligent girls in the school and was well known for being intelligent. Yet she decided she would rather hide it just because she was worried about what one person thought. I think I was more disappointed with her than anything else. I guess she just didn't like her whole persona of being the good girl who always studied. I met her a few years after we had all left school and we had both moved on to different Universities. After saying hello she told myself and the friend I was with that she was supposed to be in class right now and that she was going to be late with an assignment but had went shopping instead. After telling us this she said something about how she bet we would never have thought she had done something like that at school. Mind you she must have changed her mind about that image as she is now doing very well for herself.

Now most of my friends are readers. I still read more than a lot of them but most of them always have a book on the go like myself. We all really love talking about books and swapping them. I really missed that growing up (unless of course you count my parents). We all have at least one type of book that we like in common so we always have something to talk about when it comes to books. It's hard to describe to the non reader the excitement you feel when you find friends like that.