Project Gutenberg is pretty impressive. I think the author has misconstrued a shift in reading emphasis to be a diminishment in reading itself. It isn't. I read more on the Internet than I did as a book-a-day junkie. I've cut the latter habit back to a more manageable book a week or even two if I'm feeling lazy. But I read around 12 hours a day between work and leisure.
What the Internet also offers is a way for a hugely greater number of people to have their words read. I agree with the author that some of the changes within the commercial publishing industry have become cramped and self-destructive, but I and my fellow FReepers don't depend on it. (Good thing, too, because it's a b17ch to find an agent these days. Ask me.) But I'm being published just as soon as I hit the Post button. That's a power no common man ever had in all of history.
What is happening with the Internet is absolutely compelling intellectually. We're in the middle of a ferment whose issue we cannot imagine. Twenty years from now it will seem peaceful.
My two teen girls read like crazy. My youngest always has a book with her.
Reading is one of life’s pleasures.
reading is fundi
mental