Who here reads?

[jeremykeys]

No electronic books either for me. There's something totally captivating about the smell of an old bookshop. My parents used to live in St. Catherines Ontario. There was this big old 2 story house that was a used book store. People had to walk sideways sometimes to get between the shelves that were double stacked full of used books. It was awesome!
Don't know if it still exists. Haven't been to that town in several years.

[Derek Cook]

For me it's really comforting to know that people still like to read. My wife and I are avid readers. Many of my friends think we're strange in that we only have 1 TV. An old Sony Trinitron. We refuse to have one in the bedroom. It weighs more than a fridge! We also only have the most basic cable we can get. We do get Net flicks if we want to watch some things though. On the plus side, our living room looks like a library! One and a half walls are floor to ceiling books. Most shelves now are two rows deep.

Snap. We have only one TV as well, but the ability to play music in most rooms. Well we have two TVs now as daughter wanted one - but she had to buy it hersel as I don't believe in TVs in bedrooms!

I watch the news in the morning (but prefer to get the detail in the newspaper) the odd documentary or series and a few films over the weekend. Life is to short to waste it staring passively at a box all day!

[Joe Gerardi]

Jeremy- One of my all-time favorite bookshops is right there in Toronto. It's called The Sleuth of Baker Street. IIRC on Merchant St. I haven't visited there in almost 20 years, but the last time I did, the GF sat in one of the overstuffed armchairs, and a cat plopped itself down on her lap in seconds. Being a cat lover, she was content for my entire visit. The kind of place you can walk into, grab a book, and sit and read it an hour if you like.

I am really into the Lovejoy Mysteries, and they were hard to get in the US, so I would get UK imports from them. Mail and phone only for years, we finally got to meet in the late 90's.

Haven't been there in years, though: Savannah is quite a distance from Toronto.

..Joe

[andrew_culture]

Not just read, but I will only read physical books: none of that electronic crap for me! I love the feel, the smell of books.

And you're not alone on TV. I have ONLY Netflix- no cable, hell, not even rabbit ears to get off-air signals, and only one TV in the house- in my living room.

Granted, it's a 55" HD smart TV, but I do love my movies. There's something about "They Were Expendable," or "Only Angels Have Wings" seen on a big screen.

Between flying my planes, playing violin and keyboards, taking my telescope out, reading, and shooting, I have little time for TV.

After all- it's not called the boob tube for nothing. (And I don't mean for the porn channels!)

..Joe

I got a pestering phonecall from my cable / internet provider last night asking how much tv I watch. None was the answer, my daughter watches BBC Kid's TV but me and my wife just always seem to have something better to do. They offered me an extra ton of channels and I had to remind them that I don't need them!

I love collecting old books (I have over 70 Mark Twain old editions) but love reading on my Kindle because I can see it without my glasses on!

[jeremykeys]

My wife and I just have basic cable. We do have a good internet connection. Now they have something called Skinny cable. It's cheaper and they have even fewer channels. We'd go for it but it doesn't come with our main news/weather channel. If it did, we'd jump on it. We used to have a more expensive package but one day I did a calculation. Since we're both T work in the day and asleep at night, it turned out that for the short bit that we were actually watching tv, it was costing a ridiculous figure per hour. Since there rarely is anything good on, I couldn't justify paying a lot of money for crap. We do watch some tv but not much. Gimme a good book any day! Or my studio, or cottage, or fishing, or just about anything else but tv.

[gnbutt]

Hello Jeremy, I love to read, several books or novels a month anyway. The news on TV seems to be full of doom and gloom around the globe, events that make headlines to capture your attention, the media is great for that. A good book tells me a story about something or someone. I really like books about anyone who has radically changed conventional thinking, someone who has prospered despite all the odds and failures along the way. I am an analyst by trade, books about new technology, great creative people who think "out the box" has always intrigued me. Cheers !

[Broadwave]

I've recently read Clive Barker (almost everything), Stephen Fry (Making History is particularly good), Stuart Maconie (The Pie at Night) and David Lagercrantz (Fall of Man in Wilmslow)

Reading a REAL book is a great way to wind down - For some reason, an e-book isn't the same.

But I still occasionally binge on TV series' that I wasn't originally familiar with - Homeland, Spooks, Stranger Things etc.

[nitecrawler]

For some reason I get the impression that most of us here that responded to this subject are older. I remember when I was younger, I did not read as consistently as I do now. I would go in spurts as one author or subject would interest me here and there. I wonder how many 20 and 30 something musicians read these days?

[jeremykeys]

For some reason I get the impression that most of us here that responded to this subject are older. I remember when I was younger, I did not read as consistently as I do now. I would go in spurts as one author or subject would interest me here and there. I wonder how many 20 and 30 something musicians read these days?

That's a very good question. Myself, I've always been an avid reader but my speed has seriously dropped off. Where once I could blow through 100 pages now just doesn't seem to happen. But conversely, I think I'm getting more out of the stories.

FYI I'm 61.