Nah, I’m not taking issue with what you said other than the first sentence. I read through the comments and had the same reaction as Petronius; people seemed to be awful condescending, as in, whoa, hey, Americans read? Especially oldtaku, who took the time to remind everyone that the Bible counts as a book; though, if you want to be pedantic about it, it counts as several, since it’s a compilation of 66 religious books.
And yep, I get that people just don’t have time to read, and those of us who do tend to pick, well, it’s not always cerebral, given that Glenn Beck is on the NYT Bestseller list. When I was switching hats between newspaper production and IT, my reading consisted of grabbing a book (or toward the end, a Kindle) and reading until I dropped the book (or, unfortunately, the Kindle.) I somehow got through the first five books of A Song of Ice and Fire this way; can’t really say that I retained a whole lot of it, but I remember enough to feel sorry for people who watch the TV show and get attached to certain characters. I have a lengthy list of classics on my Kindle 3 that I might get to…someday.
