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user-inactivated  ·  3567 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: CS Lewis explains why you should be proud to read children's books.

    Has there ever really been a period in history when the majority of the population was highly bookish?

When people excoriate the new generations for not reading, they're generally contrasting them to a period from about 1750-1980. How many Americans read Common Sense? New Yorkers lining the docks to get the next Dickens serial. A bunch of college-age Democrats assigning a poli sci reading list to each other in order that they might write a coherent Port Huron Statement.

If you were to compare the ratio of literate to literary, I imagine you'd find it at a low ebb.