One Week

I understand the average American watches four hours of television a day. That’s twenty-eight hours a week. I also understand the average American reads two hundred and fifty words per minute. Therefore, if the average American would turn off the television set and spend those twenty-eight hours a week reading, he could read all the poems of T. S. Eliot, all the poems of Maya Angelou, two plays by Thornton Wilder, including Our Town, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and all one hundred fifty psalms in the Old Testament. That’s all in one week. – David McCullough

This just astonishes me. It also makes me wonder why I don’t get more books read. Then I remember how many computer games I play, how much television I watch, and how much stuff I read that isn’t in books.

You read a lot as well, I’m willing to bet. You’re reading this blog. You may read other blogs. You probably read the newspaper or the news on the web. You read e-mails and memos and instruction manuals at work. There are also comic strips, web strips, magazine articles, recipes, letters, post cards, insurance information, advertisements, ingredients lists, cereal boxes, etc. You do read. You are a reader.

But can you imagine how much more you or I could read if we would watch one fewer show a week? Just one? You know the one I mean. The one that you only watch because there’s nothing better on right now or because that’s what the gossipy woman at the water cooler insists on talking about every Wednesday morning and you want to be able to be in on the conversation or because it’s got that really good looking guy in it and you just want to turn the volume down and watch except he’s also got a really sexy voice so you don’t want to miss any of it. You know, that show, the one that if you had a gun to your head you’d give up first. One hour a week. That’d be an extra 15,000 words every week. Wow. I’ve already trimmed my TV watching, but my computer game playing could use a good pruning. I know where I’m getting my extra 15,000 words. How about you?