LITERATURE HU 300 Paige Erickson

Intelligent people after the age of 30 read nothing at all. By the character Ashenden W. Somerset Maugham. Cakes and Ale. What do you think? True? False?

Reading in America  In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts put out a study called “Reading at Risk,” about the decline of reading in America. In 2007, another study showed that 1 in 4 adults read no books in (Fram, 2007)  What do you think of these findings? Do they seem accurate to what you observe?  What might a decline in reading say about a culture?

Update on Reading  For the first time since the NEA began surveying American reading habits in and less than five years after it issued its famously gloomy "Reading at Risk" report -- the percentage of American adults who report reading "novels, short stories, poems or plays" has risen instead of declining: from 46.7 percent in 2002 to 50.2 percent in 2008 (Thompson, 2009).  (Note: Nonfiction is excluded from the study)  What might explain the increase of reading in the last 6 years?

Poets and Poetry a.k.a. 50 ways to make your parents cry

Ted Koozer  his hands fluttered like birds, each with fancy silk ribbon to weave into their nest, as he stood at the mirror dressing for work, waving hello to himself with both hands.

Is Poetry Important? What can it do?

Which books/authors do you enjoy? Which have inspired you?

Tibor Fischer  Istvan had laughed about it all, as he did about everything. Always of a jovial disposition, he had returned from his years on the Russian front, with one important souvenir: the inability to get worked up about things that weren’t 3 years on the Russian Front. You could tell Istvan that you were being conscripted into the Army and you had just been jilted by the girl who was most important to you and Istvan would just chuckle or, if you looked really miserable, guffaw loudly.  -Under the Frog

Iris Murdoch  She shivered again as at the light touch of some image, some thought. What was it? Then she realized that it was, absent from her for so long, the idea of happiness. No wonder she had not recognized it.  An Accidental Rose