"It has occurred to me that writers' concerns about the decline of reading stem from more than just a self-preservation instinct; they are tied, as well, to the nearly-as-powerful need to connect. You don't have to read me, but read so you can talk to me. All writers were readers first, and most continue their lives as more prolific readers than writers; with fellow readers - unlike with fellow writers - we feel a noncompetitive bond. (There are no prestigious workshops, or covetous magazine assignments, or Pulitzers for readers.) Tell a writer you write and depression sets in, tell a writer you read and gratitude blossoms. Especially now, in the Blog Age, when it seems that more people want to write than read (not realizing that you need to read in order to write anything that is worth reading, or hasn't already been written.) But this is the inevitable result when a culture prizes self-expression over learning. It is the written equivalent of a room in which everyone is talking and nobody is listening, particularly to the dead. Literature, like French, has ceased to be the lingua franca for the so-called educated crowd."
- Thomas Swick, Have Book, Will Travel
This is a post for anyone who finds that Facebook or the Internet or television (or maybe even blog-reading, for that matter) has technologically seduced them to the point of no-return, indirectly causing them to leave dusty books on the shelves in their home library.
Pick up a book and read today.
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As long as you agree to continue to write, I will gladly stay in the "readers camp" and not venture to the the apparently more competitive "writers division". That way those like you who can comunicate much better then I, will always have some one to speak to.
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