No books????

According to the paper this morning, almost 1/3 of Canadians did not read a book last year.

For someone like me, that's almost unthinkable. Not that I read a lot of books for pleasure last year - I'm actually below the average for those 2/3 who did read for pleasure last year.

Despite 1/3 of the population never reading, the 2/3 that did, did so quite voraciously, consuming an average of 20 books each in the year. But why is there such a sharp division between readers and non-readers? It seems C.P. Snow's "Two Cultures" could be updated for the twenty-first century, but instead of a divide between the sciences and the humanities, it's a divide between those who read and those who don't.

Several members of that 31% that didn't read a single book are enrolled in my composition class, and I suppose the one thing that statistic does is make me realize my students' admission they don't read for pleasure isn't an abberation, but just to be expected. Thing is, I have a couple of family members who don't like reading for pleasure who I know have finished at least one book that they didn't have to read last year. So what's the difference between them and those hordes of other people who didn't read a single book?

I don't have an answer for that. Part of me says that's okay, because that's not my world. But then again, if I'm to teach people who never read for pleasure, I might understand them better if I could answer that question. Something to puzzle over at least.