Lonely reading

What has happened to our reading habits? Rick Gekoski reported this week that when he was younger 'there was a common culture of books you were expected and assumed to have read. Not anymore.'

I know that there are many books I have read and my peers have not and vice versa. It is not that younger people are not reading books; it is that they are reading a great diversity of books. I don't know if this is a problem. It is certainly harder to talk about books with your peers when no one seems to have read the same thing but with technology ever evolving and specialising surely it is possible to find other who have read the same as you and wish to discuss it.

Twitter has many book groups who read a book a month and tweet about it to each other whilst they are reading it. This sense of community seems appropriate for this digital age. Young literary groups are also popping up in the cities with monthly meetings to discuss face to face what book they are currently reading.

Gekoski finishes by saying that he wishes 'that the pleasure of reading, across the whole spectrum of literature, in all its variety, were part of a shared culture amongst young people today. But it isn't, whatever...[his] irate tweeters may say. '

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