Gather ’round, kids, time for a boring and pointless story. I was reading a post at Violent Acres earlier. Have I mentioned lately that I love that blog? Seriously, read that, it’s a good article. But anyhow, I started looking through the trackback entries, out of sheer morbid curiosity. Didn’t find very much in the way of interesting posts, apart from a post on reading, of all things.

Oh, yea…don’t consider yourself to be a good reader if you solely read blogs. Go read a real book.

The link is to DailyLit, a service which promises to send a book to your email, a couple of pages at a time. What in the hell is wrong with people? At what point is it logical to say to yourself, “I wish I read more, so I’ll have these fine people send me a few pages a day in my email,” instead of just picking up a book? At what point did society as a whole become so feeble-minded that two pages at a time was considered a feat!?¹ I’d go insane if I had to read less than a few dozen pages in a sitting. (Actually, that’s what they made me to for most of high school. That would explain some things…)

But most of all, at what point did reading become a duty and not a recreation? The people who want to read because they enjoy reading a good book don’t need a fucking email every day to do so. I don’t need to be instructed to pick up my copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide or Dark Knight Returns.² I do not need to be coerced into rereading Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass. So who does DailyLit exist for? Some prick with an office job who wants that elitist feeling of being more widely read than Bob in the next cubicle down? I don’t buy that it’s the people who are “too busy” to read. My father’s “too busy” to read. When he’s not at work, cooking, or playing his guitar, you know what he’s “too busy” with? Hey, that TV ain’t gonna watch itself.³

¹ A Christmas Carol, 86 pages in the paperback, is divided into 36 segments on DailyLit, just a hair over 2 pages each.
² Try to tell me comics aren’t literature. I dare you.
³ It’s times like this that I’m glad that my dad, who I love dearly despite all evidence to the contrary, uses his computer about as much as I watch TV.