"In an effort to better understand the reading habits of teens and the positive impact of reading in a teenager's life,StageofLife.com, a writing community for teens and college students, asked young adults from across the US to participate in its “Books and Teens” survey..."
Teen "statistics from the survey include:
--34% of teens see their mothers reading more than their fathers, compared to just over 12% of teens who see their dads reading more. Nearly 30% of teens rarely see either of their parents reading
--29.4% of teens use an eReader (Kindle, Nook, etc.) and 13.5% say they read on their mobile phones
--The majority of teens (63.5%) buy printed books from big brand brick & mortar stores like Barnes & Noble
--40.2% of teens have purchased a book online from web retailers like Amazon.com --1 out of 2 teens will buy an average of 2 books spending anywhere from $10 to $20 per month on books
--3 out of 4 teens had a parent, teacher, church leader or other adult recommend or give an inspirational book to them in the last year. ...
A surprising number of teens admitted that their book choice saved their lives as books acted as guides or crutches for support during particularly harsh moments."
From: http://www.stageoflife.com/StageHighSchool/OtherResources/Statistics_on_High_School_Students_and_Teenagers.aspx
SpyWriter Jack King "A new King of thrillers on the horizon" www.SpyWriter.com
31/12/2012
28/12/2012
Christmas Eve Tradition: Reading
"So Icelanders love books. And that love involves most of the population, according to Baldur Bjarnason, a researcher who has written on the Icelandic book industry. ...
In the United States, popular holiday gifts come and go from year to year. But in Iceland, the best Christmas gift is a book — and it has been that way for decades.
Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country in the world, with five titles published for every 1,000 Icelanders. But what's really unusual is the timing: Historically, a majority of books in Iceland are sold from late September to early November. It's a national tradition, and it has a name: Jolabokaflod, or the "Christmas Book Flood."
"The culture of giving books as presents is very deeply rooted in how families perceive Christmas as a holiday" ... "Normally, we give the presents on the night of the 24th and people spend the night reading."
From: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/25/167537939/literary-iceland-revels-in-its-annual-christmas-book-flood
SpyWriter Jack King
26/12/2012
How to understand women?
Quick answer: By reading women's fiction.
"In the Herald recently Dr Byrski wrote that men lose out badly by not reading fiction by women: "… does this account for some of what so many of us women see as emotional ignorance, and men's inability to express their feelings or to attempt to understand ours? … So could men benefit from reading women's fiction? I'd say without a doubt that men's relationships with women would benefit profoundly. ...
But can women's literature help men? Byrski's point is that it influences women over a lifetime of reading, by helping develop an intuitive understanding and providing a shared vocabulary which allows for the expression of emotions.
Perhaps women are more drawn to that kind of writing because they are naturally more emotionally literate, or more receptive to being taught. If men don't read it in the first place then perhaps they are less attuned and less teachable.
But you can turn that on its head. If men are by nature less emotionally intuitive, then maybe they need to make a more conscious effort to learn. Literature is one obvious teacher and has the great advantage of allowing the reader to engage with emotional issues without the storm and stress of direct personal involvement."
From: http://m.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/answer-to-battle-of-the-sexes-may-lie-between-the-lines-20121220-2bpat.html
SpyWriter Jack King "A new King of thrillers on the horizon" www.SpyWriter.com
"In the Herald recently Dr Byrski wrote that men lose out badly by not reading fiction by women: "… does this account for some of what so many of us women see as emotional ignorance, and men's inability to express their feelings or to attempt to understand ours? … So could men benefit from reading women's fiction? I'd say without a doubt that men's relationships with women would benefit profoundly. ...
But can women's literature help men? Byrski's point is that it influences women over a lifetime of reading, by helping develop an intuitive understanding and providing a shared vocabulary which allows for the expression of emotions.
Perhaps women are more drawn to that kind of writing because they are naturally more emotionally literate, or more receptive to being taught. If men don't read it in the first place then perhaps they are less attuned and less teachable.
But you can turn that on its head. If men are by nature less emotionally intuitive, then maybe they need to make a more conscious effort to learn. Literature is one obvious teacher and has the great advantage of allowing the reader to engage with emotional issues without the storm and stress of direct personal involvement."
From: http://m.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/answer-to-battle-of-the-sexes-may-lie-between-the-lines-20121220-2bpat.html
SpyWriter Jack King "A new King of thrillers on the horizon" www.SpyWriter.com
25/12/2012
Books expand the world
"I have been told that many schools have changed their core reading curriculum to include more modern commercial novels...
I believe there are serious consequences to the exchange of commercial writing to classic literature in curriculum. We are graduating students from American high schools, some on their way to four-year universities, with a limited and vapid literary foundation of vampires, werewolves, and wizards. This ignorance means that they will neither be able to complete a New York Times crossword puzzle or receive mercy from an English professor who's been teaching before Stephenie Meyers was even an idea in her parent's heads. At its worst, this American generation will go forth in a world with a great dearth of general knowledge, undoubtedly inferior to their contemporaries overseas who have had a more meaningful education, that will detract from many aspects of their lives.
Literature is not just an exercise in creative expression, it reveals and resolves, it engenders compassion and understanding, it expands our world far beyond the borders of the written page."
From: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/fantasyland-the-limited-world-of-todays/
SpyWriter Jack King "A new King of thrillers on the horizon" www.SpyWriter.com
I believe there are serious consequences to the exchange of commercial writing to classic literature in curriculum. We are graduating students from American high schools, some on their way to four-year universities, with a limited and vapid literary foundation of vampires, werewolves, and wizards. This ignorance means that they will neither be able to complete a New York Times crossword puzzle or receive mercy from an English professor who's been teaching before Stephenie Meyers was even an idea in her parent's heads. At its worst, this American generation will go forth in a world with a great dearth of general knowledge, undoubtedly inferior to their contemporaries overseas who have had a more meaningful education, that will detract from many aspects of their lives.
Literature is not just an exercise in creative expression, it reveals and resolves, it engenders compassion and understanding, it expands our world far beyond the borders of the written page."
From: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/fantasyland-the-limited-world-of-todays/
SpyWriter Jack King "A new King of thrillers on the horizon" www.SpyWriter.com
22/12/2012
Where you live defines how you read
“Statistical modeling shows that the biggest factors at play when it comes to different reading habits are people’s ages, their level of education, and their household income,” Pew wrote in a post about the survey. “The type of community in which people live is not an independent predictor of their reading behavior or their activities at libraries.
Although reading books is a common past time, technology is helping to change how people read books.
According to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, reading is experienced differently depending on whether people are located in urban, suburban or rural communities.
Pew said that 78 percent of Americans age 16 and older said they read a book in the past 12 months. According to the survey, 80 percent of urban and 80 percent of suburban residents are particularly likely to have read at least one book in the past year.
Rural residents, Pew said, are less likely to have read a book in the past year, with 71 percent of the survey participants living in this area admitting to reading a book.
Among the urban community, 22 percent of the population read an e-book in the past 12 months, compared to just 17 percent of the rural community."
More: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112753041/reading-depends-on-community-122112/
SpyWriter Jack King "A new King of thrillers on the horizon" www.SpyWriter.com
Although reading books is a common past time, technology is helping to change how people read books.
According to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, reading is experienced differently depending on whether people are located in urban, suburban or rural communities.
Pew said that 78 percent of Americans age 16 and older said they read a book in the past 12 months. According to the survey, 80 percent of urban and 80 percent of suburban residents are particularly likely to have read at least one book in the past year.
Rural residents, Pew said, are less likely to have read a book in the past year, with 71 percent of the survey participants living in this area admitting to reading a book.
Among the urban community, 22 percent of the population read an e-book in the past 12 months, compared to just 17 percent of the rural community."
More: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112753041/reading-depends-on-community-122112/
SpyWriter Jack King "A new King of thrillers on the horizon" www.SpyWriter.com
19/12/2012
Every Executive Manager a Poet
"Poetry can also help users develop a more acute sense of empathy. In the poem "Celestial Music," for example, Louise Glück explores her feelings on heaven and mortality by seeing the issue through the eyes of a friend, and many poets focus intensely on understanding the people around them. In January of 2006, the Poetry Foundation released a landmark study, "Poetry in America," outlining trends in reading poetry and characteristics of poetry readers. The number one thematic benefit poetry users cited was "understanding" — of the world, the self, and others. They were even found to be more sociable than their non-poetry-using counterparts. And bevies of new research show that reading fiction and poetry more broadly develops empathy. Raymond Mar, for example, has conducted studies showing fiction reading is essential to developing empathy in young children and empathy and theory of mind in adults. The program in Medical Humanities & Arts even included poetry in their curriculum as a way of enhancing empathy and compassion in doctors, and the intense empathy developed by so many poets is a skill essential to those who occupy executive suites and regularly need to understand the feelings and motivations of board members, colleagues, customers, suppliers, community members, and employees."
More: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/the_benefits_of_poetry_for_pro.html
SpyWriter Jack King "A new King of thrillers on the horizon" www.SpyWriter.com
More: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/the_benefits_of_poetry_for_pro.html
SpyWriter Jack King "A new King of thrillers on the horizon" www.SpyWriter.com
18/12/2012
Sick society without literature
Can reading fiction cut selfishness, stop growth of mass-shooting psychopaths? One thing appears certain: reading fiction gives rise to empathy, and empathy leads to a more compassionate society.
From: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335520/goodbye-liberal-arts-betsy-woodruff?pg=1
From: http://news.blogs.wlu.edu/2012/02/21/washington-and-lee-professor-finds-that-reading-fiction-leads-to-empathy-helpful-behavior/
SpyWriter Jack King: SpyWriter.com | Facebook | Twitter
"Schools don’t exist as job-training camps. They exist to educate students. To be truly educated, students need to graduate with more imagination, not less. They need to face questions about what it means to be a human being — they need to stop sleepwalking, if they’ve started it already — and they need to start learning how to love strangers. We all know that becoming properly educated is a lifelong endeavor. But Washington gives students a huge disadvantage if it leads them to think that memorizing data and processing facts is 70 percent of living well."
From: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335520/goodbye-liberal-arts-betsy-woodruff?pg=1
"Based on the results of the post-reading exercises, Johnson concluded that the more immersed the readers were in the story, the more empathy they felt for the characters. In addition, he found that the heightened empathy led to an enhanced ability to perceive subtle emotional expressions such as fear or happiness. Individuals who experienced higher levels of empathy were also nearly twice as likely to engage in pro-social, or helpful, behavior as individuals experiencing low levels of empathy."
From: http://news.blogs.wlu.edu/2012/02/21/washington-and-lee-professor-finds-that-reading-fiction-leads-to-empathy-helpful-behavior/
SpyWriter Jack King: SpyWriter.com | Facebook | Twitter
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