This needs to be read in full (Professor Holbo is the windiest of the CT crew: bear with it):
Crooked Timber: Enrich Your Word Power:
I guess I just can’t quite believe that it could be true that less than 50% of the population has read any literature in the last year. (The idea that you can’t assign a 200-page novel in a college class? Preposterous. Can’t be.)
A great post and discussion about college kids who can’t read a 200 page novel without getting lost and who have trouble with literary devices like changes of voice and perspective. I can remember discovering college freshmen who had never read a book. 18 years old, old enough to vote, old enough to be conscripted, but no recreational book learning. And that was 20 years ago, before the Internet, before the ubiquitous PC, before video games (other than arcade games).