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: 80% of humans would prefere to read a book o0n an electronis
:The very fur that read books relize the time and integerty to reading, understanding, and writeing a book
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:life with out books is like an artist without color
:books carry knolage that we learnd in the past
:Books tech us what regrets humans made in the past so we dont make the same mistakes agean

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What is happening to the econimy not haveing books?

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In an art history class one morning, the professor asked his students "What would the world be like without color?" It would be sad and depressing. And a writer asked himself what would the world be like without words? It would be a world without poetry and blogs. A world without reading would be like staring at a blank page, or having a thought that you could not share, because if you did no one would be able to understand.

A world without reading would be a library without books, or a website without content. What would eating your cereal in the morning be like without understanding the puzzle on the side of the box? It would be an e-book without words and reading books under the covers would not exist because in a world without reading there would be no books to keep you up at night.

We're reading more today in 2014 than when the Sumerians invented writing 6,000 years ago. It's not just clay tablets. We're reading on our smartphones, on our computers, on our e-readers, and on tablets the Sumerians could only dream about.

The brain is an active sponge and reading is not something we do passively. Reading meaningful content is food for our brains. Like an artist needs color, a cook needs ingredients, or a computer programmer needs code - the brain needs reading.

For a child, reading's importance is first learning to recognize letters, or to count to 20, or for a parent, reading aloud a favorite children's classic before bedtime. For a physician, it's getting updates on newest medical breakthroughs, and for a student it's learning skills that will equip them for a competitive job market. Reading is essential.

If you're interested in becoming a better reader, contact us to get the boost you need.

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Without Reading's Importance What Would The World Be Like?

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In an art history class one morning, the professor asked his students "What would the world be like without color?" It would be sad and depressing. And a writer asked himself what would the world be like without words? It would be a world without poetry and blogs.

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A recent national survey shows a strong growth in digital reading, with 252 million Chinese aged between 18 and 70 reading books and articles online in 2010 and about 83.6 percent of the respondents saying they would prefer the electronic version of a book if available.

So will e-reading replace books one day? "There are now many ways of spreading knowledge like the computer, which may one day replace Gutenberg's invention," says J.M.G. Le Clzio, "but I cannot imagine a world without books." He hastens to add, though: "It (the book) is a tool as indispensable as hammer, knife, lamp or teapot, and as delicate as violin, flute and percussion instrument."

Le Clzio, "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization" as the Nobel Committee described him while awarding the Literature prize in 2008, was invited by Nanjing University to deliver a lecture on "Books and our World" on Aug 21. Talking to China Daily on books and new media, he says books have played an essential role in the development of the world, by granting universal access to knowledge and turning it from the privilege of dominant classes into ordinary people's rights a role it performed especially well during Enlightenment.

"Without printed books we would be living in a totally different world. It may prosper as well, but it will be a closed world resistant to progress, desperately imbalanced, filled with unfairness and injustice." He cites the ancient Mayan civilization as an example. What was once illuminating and ripe disappeared for want of print: "There was no democracy and hardly equality before the law while the quality of citizen dwelled on a relatively low level."

"In such a world, knowledge would not serve interaction or social progress, but only draw a new line between those who have knowledge and those who don't There can still be marvellous wonders like the Pyramid, but the people will only build them like slaves, not understanding the meaning of their labor."

The essential role of the media, old or new, is to offer everyone in society equal access to culture and knowledge, so that no one is illiterate and thus socially inferior, says the author of masterpieces such as Desert, Onitsha, Wandering Star: A Novel and Terra Amata. "The book, however old-fashioned it may be, is the ideal tool. It is practical, easy to handle, economical. It does not require any particular technological prowess, and keeps well in any climate."

Compared with new media that have the advantages of being timely, interactive and having larger information capacity, traditional books have a unique and eternal charm: "A book has nothing to do with video or audio; it is like slow food, the content of which must be dealt with slowly." For Le Clzio, and for others who share his passion and pleasure, a book is something to "digest", to "reflect, to read one part of it and leave some" for another day. It offers a different path from the culture of fast food, that is, reading through network-based new media, and it will always appeal to those who wish to get a thorough understanding of knowledge.

"Its (the book's) only flaw - and this is where I would like to address publishers in particular - is that in a great number of countries it is still difficult to gain access to books." In Mauritius, which he calls his "little fatherland", the price of a novel is equivalent to a sizable portion of a family's budget, while in many developing countries in Africa and other continents books remain an inaccessible luxury.

That has been a paradox for him as an author, and for which he often cites Swedish writer Stig Dagerman to describe: "While all he (the writer) wanted was to write for those who are hungry, he now discovers that it is only those who have plenty to eat who have the leisure to take notice of his existence." As a remedy, Le Clzio has proposed joint publications with developing countries, establishment of funds for lending libraries and book mobiles, and greater attention to requests from and works in so-called minority languages to make literature and books continue to be a wonderful tool for knowledge.

His wife, sitting beside him, adds that he has devoted much effort to that work. "He sends books to libraries that need books, and goes to publishers and lets them send books too." His new book, a collection of short stories, will hit the stands in France in October.

Like some other writers, Le Clzio has maintained the habit of writing with pencil and paper, his wife says. In fact, it was in Nice just after the end of World War II, when material shortage was most serious, that he wrote his first text, on the back of a ration book, using a carpenter's blue and red pencil. "Pencil is the normal tool (of writing) for him."

But keen love for paper books does not prevent Le Clzio from employing modern technology as well. He thinks new media like the Internet, if well used, can help books play their role better by promoting understanding and interaction. "I love very much the Internet, and I think it is a great invention People will get better understanding, better news circulation, every kind of communication."

He thinks new media can serve to further break the monopoly of power on knowledge and information by granting universal access, by making everyone understand what is happening. "It probably can bring peace. Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded - ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day."

But to perform that role, the Internet must be used to spread the knowledge of books and written language, or we would enter the process of "drawing a new line to divide those who have access to communications and knowledge, and those who are left out". He hopes that every "child receives the benefits of writing" through the progress in communications so as to "provide a foundation for equality".

The only flaw of the Internet is that its information can be untrue, he says. But "books can be wrong too". The need is to make access to knowledge and culture universal because the more people know the less possible will it be for them to believe in wrong information. "Neither books nor new media can foretell the future but I believe in progress."

(China Daily 08/31/2011 page9)

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A recent national survey shows a strong growth in digital reading, with 252 million Chinese aged reading books and articles online in 2010 and about 83.6 percent of the respondents saying they would prefer the electronic version of a book if available.

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"I should be doing a lot more reading." This thought flashes through my mind every time I sit down at my desk and stare at one entire wall that is lined with books. There's probably 150 feet of shelf space, entirely filled.

People who come downstairs where my desk is located usually make the same comment: "Wow! You've got a lot of books!" It's true, but not as many as I once had. The collection is just a fraction of its original size.

I didn't grow up in a library, but sometimes it felt that way. My parents met and married during World War II. Both were avid readers. In 1948, they settled into a large colonial-style home in the San Francisco Bay Area, and for the next 30 years a steady stream of books flowed into it.

If a major earthquake had struck during that period, it's possible that an avalanche of paper would have poured down from every direction.

It wasn't until about the fourth grade that I realized what a tremendous resource I had all around me. I was doing a report on the coelacanth, a prehistoric fish that was believed to be extinct until rediscovered in the early 1950s. An encyclopedia gave me the title of a book, "Old Fourlegs: the Story of the Coelcanth" by J.L.B. Smith, a scientist who played a key role in the hunt for a living specimen.

I asked my dad to drive me to the city library, but he said we didn't need to. Then he went and pulled a copy of "Old Fourlegs: the Story of the Coelcanth" from one of the shelves in the living room. I was astounded. It had never occurred to me that grown-ups would buy a book about an exotic fish for their own personal enrichment.

Reading habits can tell you a lot about someone's character and worldview. My dad was interested in almost everything: history, natural science, crime, biographies, mysteries, westerns, politics - there wasn't a genre he hadn't explored.

As a teenager I made a modest effort to familiarize myself with some of the famous titles in 20th-century American fiction. While kids at my high school were reading "The Greening of America," " Siddhartha," and "Love Story," I was plowing through "Arrowsmith," "The Jungle," " The Sun Also Rises," and " Winesburg, Ohio."

When my mother thought a book was significant, she sometimes jotted a notation on the title page. Her copy of " Gone With the Wind" includes this comment: "September 1936 - Everyone this year is super-enthused about this book - one of the most talked of in my lifetime."

I never think of people in the 1930s using the word "super" in conversation, but there it is.

Some of the books are signed by total strangers. A copy of "The Virginian" is inscribed, "To Marilyn Bishop, congratulations from Joe and Grace Borden." This is a clue that one of my dad's favorite pastimes was browsing the aisles of used bookshops. How many secondhand bookstores even exist anymore?

World War II was the central event of my parents' lives, and I saw evidence of it on shelves throughout the house. The titles "Up Front," "Here Is Your War," "Last Train From Berlin," "A Soldier's Story," and "They Were Expendable" lined the shelves.

One of my favorites is a racy bestseller from 1951 that seems to have vanished from our national memory: "The Revolt of Mamie Stover," by William Bradford Huie. It's the story of a prostitute who becomes a force to be reckoned with in the freewheeling society of wartime Honolulu.

My dad read for one or two hours in bed every night. His mind was like a stadium filled with fascinating writers such as John O'Hara, Robert Graves, Raymond Chandler, Agnes Newton Keith, and dozens of others sitting side by side, ready to speak up if their name popped into a conversation.

When my mother passed away, my dad sold the big house and moved to southern California. Many books went with him, and a lot more stayed behind in a storage unit he rented for me.

I've moved three times since then. Over the years, the library my parents created has dwindled as my wife and I sorted through the shelves before each move and decided which volumes we should keep and which ones could be sent back into circulation.

What's left is still impressive, and I've got a few special targets in my sights. I'm positively going to tackle the " USA" trilogy by John Dos Passos, and after that I'll try for James Boswell's "The Life of Samuel Johnson."

Books connect a reader to all of humanity, to people in faraway places during the cavalcade of recorded history. It would have been nice to keep every one of my parents' books within my reach, but having hundreds of them doing nothing but sitting idly on shelves year after year isn't a good idea.

The best place for any book is in the hands of an avid reader, someone who enjoys seeing words on paper, and can't wait to find out what's going to happen on the next page.

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"I should be doing a lot more reading." This thought flashes through my mind every time I sit down at my desk and stare at one entire wall that is lined with books. There's probably 150 feet of shelf space, entirely filled. People who come downstairs where my desk is located usually make the same comment: "Wow!