What will life be like if people stop reading?

Met enige vertraging opgepikt: het interessante essay van Caleb Crain uit de New Yorker van 24.12.2007: "Twilight of the Books: What will life be like if people stop reading?" Hij besluit met een vergelijking tussen tv-kijkers en boekenlezers, uiteraard in het voordeel van laatste categorie:

"The reader is also alone, but the N.E.A. reports that readers are more likely than non-readers to play sports, exercise, visit art museums, attend theatre, paint, go to music events, take photographs, and volunteer. Proficient readers are also more likely to vote. Perhaps readers venture so readily outside because what they experience in solitude gives them confidence. Perhaps reading is a prototype of independence. No matter how much one worships an author, Proust wrote, “all he can do is give us desires.” Reading somehow gives us the boldness to act on them. Such a habit might be quite dangerous for a democracy to lose."