So here’s the deal: depending on how you interpret the numbers, one in four Americans didn’t read a single book last year* or three out of four Americans read at least one book last year. If you stick with the latter statistic, that’s a whole lot of reading going on. Remember, this is a really big country. The survey fails to wonder whether online reading plays a minor or major role in people’s lives. Americans are readers (as noted in my detailed pool-side survey of human behavior). Americans, possibly very much like our ancestors, are also busy people. At the

Today’s theme is “What I Did On My Summer Vacation”, though the fact that summer revelries have been condensed into 2 1/2 days should tell you something. Mostly that the child-free of the world are able to schedule their vacations for less crowded times of the year. Even though the trip is short, I, naturally, packed enough books to open a bookstore in an emerging nation. You never know when you’ll need an extra. The first book I chose was a particular reading disaster — it’s by an author that I so truly believe has a great novel in her

Okay, I admit it. I was looking forward to a more contentious summer. A summer filled with knock-down, drag-out fights. You know, the stuff in movies. By the ones who make the movies. To date, the negotiations between the Writers’ Guild and the studios have been remarkably, boringly civil. Which is to say, they’ve been almost non-existent. After starting off strong, the two sides exchanged a few blows before retreating to their relative corners. The studios, who had (rather lamely) introduced a plan to do a “study” took their offer off the table. Probably because any study that ends with