Files
kfitz.info/content/blog/2003-03-12-big-readers.md
Kathleen Fitzpatrick 655ad0ded8 upgrade to 3.0
2024-10-14 19:27:15 -04:00

13 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
Raw Blame History

This file contains ambiguous Unicode characters

This file contains Unicode characters that might be confused with other characters. If you think that this is intentional, you can safely ignore this warning. Use the Escape button to reveal them.

---
title: 'Big Readers'
date: '2003-03-12T07:30:46-05:00'
permalink: /big-readers/
tags:
- novels
---
[Book Magazine](http://www.bookmagazine.com "Book Magazine") has released this [list](http://www.bookmagazine.com/issue27/bigreaders.shtml "Book Magazine's list") of “Americas Biggest Readers” (via [Arts & Letters Daily](http://www.aldaily.com/ "Arts & Letters Daily")). Each member of this list of folks consumes up to 20 books a week, with a diet ranging from romances through mysteries to the classics.
Something about this article completely freaks me out. Is it the sense one gets of a kind of impending textual obesity in these folks from the relentless reading-is-like-eating rhetoric (which Ive of course reproduced above)? Is it the embarrassingly American celebration of quantity over quality? Is it that the nominees for [Biggest Reading Writer](http://www.bookmagazine.com/issue27/bigreaders.shtml#Writer "Biggest Reading Writer") and [Biggest Reader in the White House](http://www.bookmagazine.com/issue27/bigreaders.shtml#WhiteHouse "Biggest Reader in the White House") are themselves such horrifying spokespersons for the literary impulse in this country?