Shut up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life: A Kick-Butt Approach to a Better Life, Second Edition, Revised & Updated

CHAPTER TEN

GET SMARTER

On average, people spend about 100 hours per year reading. Yet they spend nearly 2,000 hours per year watching television. Forty hours a week in front of the tube and only two hours a week looking at something with words on it—how can this be?

According to the American Booksellers Association:

• Eighty percent of Americans did not buy or read a book this year. (Congratulations: By buying and reading this book you are already in the top 20 percent of all Americans.)
• Seventy percent of American adults haven't been in a bookstore in the last five years.
• Fifty-eight percent of American adults never read a book after high school.
• Forty-two percent of university graduates never read another book.

Another study reports only 14 percent of our society will go in a bookstore or a library and actually walk out with a book, and only 10 percent of those people will read past the first chapter.

Is it any surprise that we are in the mess we are in? People are getting dumber every year. Our school test scores are evidence of that. Fewer people are reading and more people are stupid. Is there a correlation?

Want to have some fun? Ask people you know to name the last five books they've read. If they can name one it will be amazing. I promise, it's great fun! Then ask them what book they are currently reading. I'll bet you nine out of ten are not reading anything. By the way, here is a success tip for you: Don't associate with people who don't read. Seem cruel to dump people ...