“It is easier to introduce new ingredients into something that is light and fluffy than something that is hard and dence.” – Alton Brown, Good Eats: Butter Episode

How true is that. Beyond the obvious mention of food and recipes, it is just as hard to sell ideas to the board of a large company, literary agents, and the overly religious. It is especially hard to give the gift of knowledge to school age children who have been turned away from the educational institution.

In my many years in the schools that I attended I could see the issues as i stared out over the top of my books. I knew that there were those kids that enjoyed school and those that didn’t. In truth, there were many more who hated the act of learning. Cracking a book seemed to cause them physical pain.

While I could see it going on, I never understood why. What was it about myself that loved the reading and the work, where the other students just wanted to hang out. And even dearer to my heart, why did they hate reading so much? Did they not realize that reading was something they would need for the rest of their lives? By the time we were in high school, hundreds of my peers were still incapable of properly pronouncing words. In foreign language classes we were often held back as the teachers had to go back every day and teach English grammar on top of the foreign language lesson of the day.

So now I look back and I try to figure out what caused this dislike to be so strong. All my friends ever said in response to my questions, “I don’t know I just never liked reading,” is as unhelpful as it can get. So here is what I came up with.

Negatives of Reading

Time

The most obvious of the issues, sitting down to read a book takes time. As with any activity in order to enjoy it you have to put in time. Of course, a chapter book requires a large amount of time, depending on length and individual reading ability.

Imagination

Books lack pictures or videos. This forces the reader to see what’s going on in the story in their own minds. A challenge based on the fact that the reader may not be willing or able to conjure up images of their own.

Effort

Similar to time there is effort in reading. The reader must hold the book, flip the pages, read the words and comprehend the message.

Money

In order to read there tends to be a money requirement. Each book can run from $6-20 bucks depending upon your cover choices. Or course, I just remembered that there are such things as Libraries. While this lessened the money worry, it does add to the effort category. And we must remember that not all public libraries contain everything that could be desired.

Distractions

In today’s world distractions area a dime a dozen. Video games, movies, friends, that fuzz in your belly button, the list goes on.

Movies

Movies have been recently tackling the book world. They’ve been gobbling up the good stories, twisting or destroying that story, and then throwing it up onto a silver screen. Why read the book when the reader can see it in action? Score.

But then again, all I see up in that short list, is a bunch of excuses that I would counter if that was the point of this article. However, as it is not, I would still like to say that even after this moment of pondering, I have no doubt that I will still continue to read, and love it forever.