billnewbie, how many years of college did it take for you to develop the mentality of your pathetically heckian response?

What a pathetic response. Poor baby!

billnewbie, one of the words in that book title should be replaced by the word "Brains". Then you can claim it's your autobiography.

You mean besides the "Good Book"? Why yes I have. The tittle is "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist". I recommend it to you. But somehow I doubt you'll be reading it any time soon since you don't take reading assignments, especially those that might threaten your rather fragile faith.

billnewbie, your narcissism and your wish to impose christian sharia on this site is duly noted.

Read any good books lately?

Compliment yourself all you like, Gazettefan. That's why you post. And there's nothing in the Gazette's rules against posters who post to aggrandize themselves. So keep kissing that mirror as much as you want!

billnewbie, I'll take the complement of your utilizing one of my alliterations (it's obvious that your college education hasn't nourished your literary skills). However, you might want to talk to your clergyman about the fact that your reality and your hallucinatory brain pan have merged.

Patting yourself on the back again, Gazettefan? That just never gets old, does it?

I noticed that you seem to be having trouble staying on point again while tossing yet more "brainless bromides" my way. Maybe you should turn down the TV while you type. You may have fewer "typos" if you do. And you may even come up with wittier bromides to impress yourself with when you have less background chatter to distract you.

Uh Billnewbie, ball is in your court.

billnewbie, thanks for showing that my comment was so well written that even one of the millions of people I referred to can almost understand it.

It's just too bad that you're a special case whose concentration and comprehension problems are aggravated by a particular one-book ideology of which you would be hard pressed to find anything in that book, despite its claims of prophecies, that deals with or even anticipates the width and breath of what makes a modern well-read person.

You left yourself wide open for what I almost posted, but I restrained myself. So you owe me one, Gazettefan.

If you find yourself talking to someone who can't listen, can't stay on point, thinks and speaks only in brainless bromides and political pulp, gets confused easily, and is prone to anger due to a lack of articulateness, you have been talking to one of the millions of Americans whose "informational" input comes mostly from about six hours of TV a day and who can't read anything lengthy beyond internet chunks.

@birdman agree
like
LOL
l8er ☺

George Will column in Washington Post/Opinions recently addressed the topic of good writing/writing well.[ “William Zinsser and good writing as art”, published March 13 ]
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Many posters will agree, perhaps, that society’s trend toward snippets of information on email, Facebook, etc. has produced large numbers of folks whose language skills languish as a result.
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Logical extension of this world of short clips might well be that readers’ ability to stay focused while reading compound, complex sentences has suffered. Lost reading skills - - fewer books read.
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Could well be part of the problem, in my opinion.

I believe the lack of reading results in a low information public.

When you're consumed with reporting and editing the news of the world, light reading is best at home. Have you tried an e-reader? I love the library's Overdrive system. The best part: materials are deleted from your device when they're due. No overdue fees! (I invariably forget to return my "analog books" to the library on time.)

-Beth Tallon

I've been watching less tv lately. I have a stack of books on the counter to read and several pages on my Amazon.com wish list (I always check with Bookworld here in town before ordering off Amazon). My mom encouraged her children to read. She loved reading and at one time had intended to become a librarian. She made weekly trips to the public library with myself, my sister and brother. Mom made sure we had money for the Jack and Jill magazine and The Weekly Reader.

When I was older, she encouraged me to buy books. I started with The Bobbsey Twins, and graduated to the Tom Swift series. I also bought paperbacks through the Scholastic Book Club at school. I discovered comic books at the neighborhood drugstore, Terrace Pharmacy - across the street from Mercy Hospital (remember Sherm?) - and had quite a collection of them at one time. I migrated from superhero comics to science fiction and started collecting Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov, and other popular SF authors. My Dad's family subscribed to the Reader's Digest Condensed Books club and after those hardcover collections passed through several hands in the Chicago area, they made their way to our home.

When I got bit by the computer bug, my reading changed from paper to monitor. I got involved in local computer bulletin boards, and when the Internet came to town, I discovered Usenet newsgroups. I do a lot of reading on the Internet now, but I still love to read books. I usually wait until the weekend for reading books, because when I start one, I want to keep reading until I finish it.

The Gazette should consider starting a Book Blog and build a stable of reader/reviewers for a variety of genres and a distributed workload to let the reviewers contribute at their own pace and not feel pressure to produce on a schedule.

I have found that today's television has made me read more. I seldom watch television after football season is over. And being retired and having time to go to the library is nice. Janesville has such a great library, it is one of the places I visit when I am in my home town. Every man over 50 years old should read Duane's Depressed by Larry McMurtry. I found it to be the worst book I had ever read until I got to the last chapter, then I thought it to be one of the best.