Overall, Britain has the lowest rates of reading for pleasure in the developed world.
Continued government censorship and the lack of emphasis on reading for pleasure in the schools haven't helped.
WSJ: 'Finnegans Wake' Is Greek to Many; Now Imagine It in Chinese
It may simply be the distractions of videos, computer games, and television which explain the decline in reading for pleasure.
Ofsted's report on reading found that, while overall standards are improving, many children are not "reading for pleasure" even when they are strong readers.
The offputtingly dull curriculum may explain, for example, why a survey of Riyadh high-school students found that fewer than one in six did any reading for pleasure.
Immediately upon finishing Great House, I felt I had to read History of Love and counted the days until my vacation, when I would finally have a few blissful evenings of reading for pleasure.
"The government is firmly committed to making reading a daily part of children's lives and we have a range of initiatives to encourage all young people to take an interest in reading for pleasure, " a spokeswoman said.
Are we now turning out children who are competent readers but who have little interest in reading for pure pleasure?
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a good post up on reading-for-pleasure vs. forced-reading in the context of schooling and public education.
No problem, as we've got super-Earth-searching satellites, military mice and vertical farms, all for your viewing reading pleasure.
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In his fiction, the ratio of smart to stupid is far more advantageous than it is in real life, but this is a minor complaint, gladly passed over for the pleasure of reading pages of implausibly brilliant speech.
It will be a pleasure to be a Reading player for another year.
Besides being evened out and pulled in, the Kindle 2 is also astonishingly thin -- just 0.36-inches -- which makes it a pleasure to carry, though we miss some of the bulk of the original for reading duties.
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