I found this short excerpt on NPR tonight. Slavery is still exists. Yeah, I thought, in symbolic way. But, author Benjamin Skinner writes in A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery, that you can still buy people - yes, human beings for sale - today. Check it out at Author Struggles to Stay Removed from Slave Trade and read an excerpt from his book online.
Today I found this slightly disturbing article Why Women Read More Than Men. Despite the title, the article does not explain scientifically why women read more than men. However, it does list many observations that women are reading more these days than their male counterparts. According to the article:
One thing is certain: Americans—of either gender—are reading fewer books today than in the past. A poll released last month by The Associated Press and Ipsos, a market-research firm, found that the typical American read only four books last year, and one in four adults read no books at all.
Only 4 books? In a year? And one in four adults read no books at all? At first that number seems staggering. However, when I look at my own life, I realize that while I am a reader, my husband is not. He reads plenty, but it is all in cyberspace, while I love to lose myself in the imaginative world of the author. Another interesting point brought up by the article is:
Among avid readers surveyed by the AP, the typical woman read nine books in a year, compared with only five for men. Women read more than men in all categories except for history and biography.
It seems in a very general way that they are arguing in this article that women are more fiction readers and men more non-fiction. I think that is a very big stereotype, but again, due to personal experience, I must say that I read a lot of fiction, whereas my husband gravitates to more non-fiction short articles on the web. Again, very non-scientific, but an interesting conversation piece nonetheless.
So, what are you reading? Fiction, non-fiction, articles in cyberspace? Or are you one of the four adults who reads no books at all? I just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It details how she and her family moved from Tuscon to a family farm in Virginia and tried to eat locally for a year, growing a large majority of the food themselves. I really enjoyed it and already made one of the recipes - will divulge in another post. Curiously, a non-fiction work. I just started a Kiran Desai novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, a fiction piece. It is too early to tell if I will like it, but will keep you posted.
I keep hearing energy debates on how to tackle our dependence on oil and reduce our green house gas emissions. Today I read a report on how Spain is turning the debate into a real life test case. The article is Spain Runs Europe’s First Commercial Solar Plant. The plant is using the sun’s rays to heat water to run steam generators. If this solar energy plant works, this could be a real energy solution for sunny locales. It is exciting to see global warming move from a debate to a real world scenario.
StoryCorps airs on Friday mornings on our local NPR radio station. I usually miss it due to oversleeping and running late, however, I can check it out online and still catch this amazing program every week. This week was an unbelievable story called Wisconsin Author Trip: Meeting J.D. Salinger. In the late 1960s, Jim Krawczyk drove to New Hampshire to meet his favorite author, J.D. Salinger. I can’t tell you what happens, you have to go and read it for yourself.
Yay! NPR’s summer reading list can be found at NPR: Summer Books 2007.
I love finding new books to read and usually have too many books for the limited time I have for reading. I have Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss in my “to read” pile. I am also actively reading Villette by Charlotte Bronte, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, and Grace Eventually by Anne LaMott. I am also trying to frantically catch up with the avalanche of New Yorker magazines that keep arriving in my mailboxes and after a weekend in Portland with one of my friends, another big stack of “to read” novels.
My picks so far this year are The History of Love by Nicole Krauss and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. I LOVE to read and can’t get enough. So, now I have another source of summer reading teases. NPR will keep updating this summer reading page, so keep checking back - there are sure to be more good reads!