Here's a section from the chapter called The Pain of Overload: Ninety-nine percent of American homes have television, with the average set turned on fifty-five hours a week. Televised news is 24/7. We buy more books per capita than ever before and can choose from 63,000 new titles every year. How does one read a three-and-one-half-inch thick Sunday paper?
A single edition of the New York Times contains more information than a seventeenth-century Britisher would encounter in a lifetime. If I read two health articles every day, next year I would be eight centuries behind in my reading. We are buried by data on a daily basis.
Astonishing, isn't it? Instead of feeling frustrated, I actually feel freer, because there's no way anyone could read every new book that's printed each year. I've actually felt panicky before because I wanted to and knew I couldn't.
So I'm just going to read at my own pace, enjoy what I'm reading or put it down, relax, and enjoy life. The part about how much a seventeenth-century Britisher read in a lifetime kind of puts it in perspective, doesn't it? There will definitely be more quotes from this book.
4 comments:
That book was foundational for me when I read it in the midst of my childraising, homeschooling years. I give Swenson a lot of credit for keeping our family on an even keel, and sane.
I wish I'd had it to read when my children were young. Things might have been better.
Yes, pick up a book!
Build your library too.
--“A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man’s history.” Henry Ward Beecher
That's astounding! We don't watch our TV, don't get the paper, and mostly have old books :) I'm reading Ivanhoe right now.
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