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My oldest daughter was then making comments to me that most of her classmates don't really have books at home.
We live in an affluent upper-middle class professional area, with supposedly high education standards. However, it is mostly immigrant, where I will say there is a more of the ends-justify-the-means mentality and a higher regard for status than real learning.
I know a few families around here with extensive libraries (i.e., literally hundreds upon hundreds of books), but by in large, many more have no books, or fairly close to it.
My oldest daughter has literally counted the number of books in some peoples houses. After purchasing books at the school book fair a couple of weeks ago, my daughter said that most of her classmates had less books in their house than I purchased that day. She also commented another classmate said that her friend (who has like 8 books, excluding textbooks) has a lot of books.
Is this really what America is becoming, or am I in an atypical area?
What are the average and median number of books amongst families around your local communities?
Back in the 90s', or at least the late 90s'; there weren't many excellent Western books. Even the bestsellers were so 'not straight' to me; the books were filling with fantasies and bigotries. And the books were overly priced. And the magazines were only the tools of the propoagendas and the commercial manifestos. If I was not taking interests on this foreign people, there was not a chance buying myself the first reading chair.
Remeber the verse 'too much study making you mad'. So not having a personal libary was okay.
But I, personally, did not like ebooks.
EDIT: Sorry, back to the topic; I was the rare case in my community of having book shelves. The average households own no book at all.
Last edited by CPPU12345; 05-06-2016 at 08:40 AM..
Reason: EDIT:
We have bookshelves in every room. Grown up books in our bedroom, the study, and the guest room. Kids books in the living room, the playroom, the kitchen, and the kids' rooms. And a healthy collection of e-books and audio books on our tablets. And we go to the library once a week and have the kids fill up a large bag. We are definitely a book family.
Out of all of the other families with kids that we know, only two of them also have lots of books. One has a kid in gifted and talented, and the other has a kid in a super hard to get into gifted school. Besides my kid, those are the only other two gifted kids I know.
Same here. Te quiero libros!!!! I have them all over the place. In boxes. Garage . living room. Shelves. And I love e books because I can carry my latest book anywhere . it also helps my hide from the majority of folks who see book readers as elitist educated snobs. Sorry but this is the new world we live in.
It has never occurred to me that people seeing me reading might find me snobbish for doing so. I can't say I care, if that's the case.
I really never get rid of books.
When my husband and I moved in together, we did a purge of ones that we both had, so we didn't have a bunch of duplication, but that's really about the only reason I'd get rid of books. Given our differences in reading tastes, there was still a surprising amount of overlap!
I find from my observations through years of educating that books/reading being a big part of life is largely cultural (not in the ethnic sense of the word,in the true definition). If it's a generationally maintained thing in your family of origin and a social norm in your particular group or community, you're more likely to perpetuate it, barring confounding factors like learning disabilities that make reading a negative experience, etc.
There are other factors at play, but in general, it's comparatively rarely that kids who didn't grow up in reading-heavy environments end up greatly valuing reading as a form of entertainment or leisure.
Last edited by TabulaRasa; 05-06-2016 at 09:03 AM..
When I bought my first house back in 2003, I chose that specific house because as soon as I walked in, I saw that there was at least 20' of uninterrupted wall space on the left (it was a wall shared with the garage), and I thought, "FINALLY!! A place to put my books!"
That may sound odd to everyone outside of New England, but up here most houses have baseboard heat, which can take up literally 2 full walls in every room. It's hideous. I have always wondered, "Where do people put their bookcases?"
I ended up being able to fit 7-8 mostly tall bookcases on that wall -- I loved how it looked but I especially loved being able to have a lot of books OUT instead of stuffed in boxes. Here at my current house, I have 6-7 bookcases in my living room plus more in just about every other room. (None in the bathrooms, no room for them! )
I sometimes ask my students, "How many of you read for pleasure (or would if you had the time)?" Typically only about a quarter of the students in the class raise their hands. I am always saddened by this -- I discovered the joys of reading when I was a young child and now, at 57, it is still a total joy.
You'd be surprised. Babysitting in the 80s and 90s I was astounded by how few houses had any* adult books. Of course, they might have been in the master bedroom in some houses, but in other houses I chased kids through the master and there were none there, either. And this was before e-books.
*yes, that means even one. Some nights I'd be reduced to reading cookbooks.
*Reduced* to reading cook books? I've already read cook books just like any other book but I do wonder why you could not take the responsibility on yourself to bring your own books to babysit.
In our previous neighborhood, most people didn't have too many books. My neighbors had bookshelves installed and they commented that they didn't know how they were going to fill them. I didn't understand what they were saying -- I had never had that problem. My problem was that they'd be filled in minutes and I'd need more shelves. It never occurred to me people would have too few books to fill the shelves. (Although I read that a new thing is that interior decorators buy used books, often by color of the cover/binding, for decorative use. UGH!)
I have possibly thousands of books. We moved to the Boston area and I loved how in many of the housing listings, I saw many walls of bookshelves, filled with books. The house we bought had a study with built in bookshelves on 3 of the walls and a master bedroom with 2 columns of built in bookshelves. I haven't been inside enough houses in our new area to determine how many books most people have, but I know I have a lot.
And I always remember those studies that showed a direct correlation between student achievement and the number of books in their household.
Ebooks? No. Don't like them at all. A minimally acceptable substitute if no real books are available. But there have also been studies showing that you don't retain as much info when you read electronically as you do when you read something on paper. I have personally found that to be true. There's nothing like holding a real book.
My kids each have hundreds of books, and unfortunately, at least at this point, neither of them could care less. I keep hoping that will turn around one day.
We don't have many of our books out because I don't like others to touch our books since we have first editions and others that have some value.
The lack of books physically seen in one's home does not present them as being unintelligent, illiterate dolts.
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