"Read a Book? A Whole Book?"

"I wouldn't even mention this, except that this is the third time this has happened to me at a lunchmeat deli. I was short on ground sirloin for my recipe I had planned to make one night, and so I stopped at the deli and asked the man behind the counter for one-third of a pound of sirloin - that was all. He's a nice enough guy, always working very hard when I see him. He looked at me a few moments and said, "I'm no good with fractions, so can you tell me what that looks like on the scale?" I said, ".33." But people think Americans can compete in the global job market when they have the equivalent of a 6th-grade (or lower) education.

Thursday I went to my orthopedic surgeon, and like anywhere I go, I took along a book. It was 'Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism', which I am just finishing up. It's 800+ pages. I set it on a chair in the waiting room and went in the hallway to jump on a conference call on my cell. I came back in, sat, grabbed the book, and began reading. A fairly nice, older man in a full-bore leg cast chatted me up. "I figured that was your book when I saw you in the hallway. How can anyone read a book like that?" I looked up and smiled...what can I say to that? He went on and on about how he would never be able to read a book, any book (because it bored him to sleep), let alone a book that size. But he said he liked newspapers like the USA Today. A couple sitting across from him chimed in and agreed that reading a book was a complex task that was not appealing to them. A similar reaction has occurred in other waiting rooms, and also, when I've been waiting in the service queue at Verizon. My point: reading a book has become a groundbreaking event in this time and place. No one reads anymore. If you have ten pierced things stuck in your face, and your body has been assaulted by a tattoo artist, no one notices anything unusual. If you read a book, people are wonderstruck. You become an object of curiosity."

- Karen De Coster, http://www.karendecoster.com/blog/archives/003435.html

Does the term "sheeple" ring a bell?