"The No-Book Report: Skim It and Weep" by Linton Weeks

This Washington Post article is basically defining the word aliteracy. Weeks and others are basically saying that there is a huge amount of individuals who are becoming aliterate. This is not to be confused with illiterate. Aliteracy is basically an individual who knows how to read, but he simply chooses not to. The article goes through various examples and statistical information relevant to the amount of individuals who simply choose not to read. Weeks also confronts various issues related to the reasons that people don't read. He talks about the long lasting battle with "time". I agree with Weeks when he says that those who say they don't read because they lack time to read are simply not placing any priority on reading. They have time to watch 2 hours of TV a night, but not time to read? This doesn't make sense to me. I myself struggle with reading for pleasure. I honestly do enjoy reading; however I feel that in the past several years I have not had a healthy balance of reading (between textbooks and books that I simply want to read for pleasure). This is of course a personal fault and cannot be blamed on "time" or the fact that I simply don't want to read. I really like the point that Weeks makes in saying that we live in a highly visual world and we would much rather read bullets than blocks of text. How true this is! We would much rather have a professor send us the powerpoint notes than have us read the chapters in the book. After reading this article, I will be making a much more amibtious approach to reading for enjoyement. I feel that I have lost touch with reading, and the enjoyment that this has brought me in the past. I hope this will act as a wake-up call for me.