Quick Reads ... the end of civilization?

Reading about this program on one of the blogs, I can see the idea behind it of trying to entice those who feel they don't have the time to get involved in big books:

Quick Reads, a four-year-old UK initiative to create terse but exciting books by best-selling authors and celebrities. As The Guardian reports, these works are aimed at adults who are new readers, are out of the habit of reading for pleasure, or simply prefer a quicker, less challenging read....the Quick Reads guidelines, which demand very short sentences and no words longer than two syllables.

By no means should a reader be challenged by words of more than two syllables. (!!!) It sounds like the Dick and Jane books for adults who should be literate by now. Why bother?

People don't read. Okay, don't read for pleasure though it is one of the best forms of entertainment. At least they should be reading for information about things that affect their lives. I approve of multiple forms of information sources including television but I think tv news has made people stupid; they don't read the newspapers anymore let alone books. They're used to being spoon fed everything by staring at the moving pictures on the box. And of course what's coming out of the box is geared toward the lowest common denominator and even lower.

Why can't we demand more and expect more from people? Yes, sometimes at the end of a day I'm so tired or had a bad time of it so I don't want to think or do much but our whole society has slid into this drooling malaise and we as a society find it acceptable which continues the slide. And this is what is ruling the world by sheer numbers; not the cream rising to the top. Not that I include myself in the cream -- I'm very middling. But come on! If you don't exercise a muscle it atrophies. So does the brain and we are encouraging it to the point of pudding. What celebrity A is doing makes the news more so than what is going on in the economy or what happened when this group of world leaders met today and decided the fates of millions because no one cares enough to do it themselves. It must feel like to them that they're dragging a gabillion tons of baggage behind them to try to get anything meaningful accomplished. Drugging of the masses by pablum.

Whoo boy. End of rant. More later....

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster