General Discussion

My mom didn't just "read" books. She came armed with a sharpened #2 pencil, acres ballpoint pen, and ax6" ruler to UNDERLINE sections of pages that she would then have her daughters read to get the "main idea" of some subject that she wanted to pass along to us. She did the same with newspapers (whenever I traveled somewhere I would bring back a week's worth of that city's newspapers).

She (and many of the women of her generation who grew up during the depression and WW2 which was generally "pre-TV" ) became "radical" in young adulthood. We had a subscription to "Ms." magazine in the house starting from when it was first published and my mom even went to a talk given by Gloria Steinem back in the '70s here in Philly.

I have my own bookcases full of mostly (ancient) history, some economics, Star Trek books, lots of pop fiction, and hobby books. Got rid of most of my old college chem books when I ran out of room. For awhile, I had read almost every Lawrence Sanders book from his "Deadly Sins" series (starting with The Anderson Tapes" ), a bunch of Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Issac Asimov, etc.

Many of my recent ones are ebooks (am currently tackling "1929", the writing style of which is gloriously engaging considering the subject).

Of course with DU and dozens of news sites, I am now literally "reading" all day long and can't remember the last time I turned on the TV.