Spatula Forum

“I just get sleepy when I read"

Ah yeah, work work work, now I remember what that's like. I know I haven't written much about the new job yet, but that's because it's constantly in flux, and I've been kind of learning a gazillion things every day. The nature of a start-up means it's always changing and so what I'm doing now I won't be doing a month from now, and so forth. I have gotten to design several pages for NZ's flagship paper The New Zealand Herald so that's been cool. Adjusting to the working life too after nearly a year out of the trenches has been tougher than I thought, too, and I'm missing the heck out of Peter of course. It's hard to know when to shut down and I keep having dreams of obscure computer command codes. Yeesh. Anyway, it's all a curious and action-packed environment and I will write more about it eventually when I figure out exactly what it is I have to say.

But anyway, this story about our non-reading habits just depressed me so much I had to blog two bits about it. Too many Americans don't like to read, do they? New Zealand actually has a pretty amazingly book-happy society (especially considering how damned expensive books are here), but of course like anywhere else there's a hefty non-reading population too I imagine. I just don't get it myself -- books have been like air for me since I was 6 years old or so. I'm constantly reading something, and usually manage 6-9 books a month. I actually get a bit jittery, like a caffeine withdrawal, when I don't have a book I'm currently reading. Wish more people out there were reading. All the arguments about "I don't have any time to read" don't really hold up when most people have no problem finding the time to veg out for 2-3 hours a night in from of the ol' telly, do they? Go read a book, people!