Personally, I’m a voracious reader. Nonetheless, I would estimate that over 95% of the books I read are non-fiction, precisely because I (as a guy) can’t get interested in the fiction books out in the marketplace today.

I had a similar experience to the one Tom Matlock had. I couldn’t find a traditional publisher for my book. After all, guys don’t read. And a fictional book about the friendship of 3 guys in their mid-twenties would have no audience, right? Hence, I took the self-publishing route. So far, I have no regrets. It gives me a sense of ownership (plus greater royalties) than any traditional publisher could offer.

Catherine: But you never read novel, I dare say?
Henry: Why not?
Catherine: Because they are not clever enough for you – gentlemen read better books.
Henry: The person, be it a gentleman or a lady who has not pleasure in a good novel must be intolerably stupid…
Catherine: But I really thought before that young men despise novels amazingly.
Henry: It is amazingly; it may well suggest amazement if they do – for they read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundereds and hundreds. If we proceed to particulars, and engage in never-ceasing enquiry “Have you read this?” and “Have you read that?” I shall soon leave you far behind me. Consider how many years I have had the start of you. I had entered on my studies at Oxford, while you were a good little girl working on your sampler at home.
Catherine: Not very good, I’m afraid.

Oh, she was, decidedly average at everything she was supposed to be growing up, but she had a good character. But I found the conversation amusing.

They try to make kids read stuff in school that is supposed to be great literature, but many kids still come out hating reading. Maybe something is wrong with the system.

Whiskey–I think what killed men’s interest in reading was the advent of television. People used to entertain each other with elocution, they no longer do such things. What we need is for the power to go out for awhile and have people rediscover this.

Let’s all write his producers and see if we can get it in there!

Fascinating re the Food Network and Cook’s Illustrated.

By the way, speaking of publishing, I hear Reader’s Digest entered bankruptcy protection today. I’m amazed it’s lasted this long, honestly. But I will miss it if it goes away. Welmer remembers the cabin trips and the stacks of old RDs, which I now realize probably stretched back into the ’70s!