Thank You For Reading This Blog

Thank you for reading anything, for that matter. A poll released in 2007, conducted by The Associated Press and market-research firm Ipsos, found that the typical American read only four books last year, and one in four adults read no books at all. Maybe they were too busy trying to figure out how to use their Kindles. Maybe they were taking advantage of all the literature that is readily available for quick and easy download on Al Gore's Internet. You could be reading Dicken's "A Tale of Two Cities" in mere seconds, depending on your download speed. Or not.
Instead, you could be catching up on your daily dose of YouTube. Or perhaps you would like to commune with the funny, furry creatures on Lolcats. Then there's always updating your Facebook status. These are all worthy pastimes, all of which could be the twenty-first alternative to curling up on the couch with a good book. With your laptop or iPod and you Snuggie, you could approximate the experience in a very post-modern way, even if it were only ironically. Books are, after all, such a burden.
I live in a house full of them. Several of our book shelves have been layered with an extra row of volumes of various sizes. The window seat next to our bed has become a vast repository of printed material for my wife's easy consumption. As for myself, I try to keep just the current book on top of the dresser, next to the clock. I can't scatter my train of thought like that. Each issue of "Entertainment Weekly" gets read front to back during the week of its publication, then becomes part of the greater stack of stuff I have read.
And to think there was a time that I wanted to contribute to this mass of printed material. How much cleaner and simpler to tap out these digital missives to the masses on a daily basis without the mess and fuss of actual publication? When I click on the "publish" button, I'm an author. My reading public, dwindling though it may be, awaits. Statistics suggest that you're more women than men, so I'll try and keep this in mind for future posts. Or, you could head on over to Amazon and pick up the book in which you could find one of my trademark bittersweet memories. Sorry, it's not yet available in digital form.