阅读criticalthinking.docVIP

You Are What You Read By LEAH PRICE Published: December 23, 2007 In 1605,?Francis Bacon?observed that “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Today, as we supersize our burgers and abridge our books, reading and eating continue to provoke symmetrical anxieties. Surveys now diagnose too little of one, too much of the other; regression analysis correlates calorie surplus and book deficiency with drug use, divorce and teen pregnancy. Last month, the?National Endowment for the Arts?lengthened that list. “To Read or Not to Read,” its 2007 report on American reading habits, identifies who reads as the best predictor of who exercises, plays sports, volunteers, votes and stays out of jail. These data, the study goes on to suggest, refute “assumptions that readers are passive, isolated or self-absorbed.” So what’s the X factor that will make you not just civic-minded and muscular, but also friendlier, outdoorsier and less wrapped up in your thin, law-abiding self? The N.E.A. refuses to speculate, acknowledging only that “strictly understood, the data in this report do not necessarily show cause and effect.” The obvious explanation is tucked away in a “technical note” whose fine print acknowledges that “no attempt has been made to ... delve into racial, ethnic or income traits of voluntary readers.” We’re not the first generation to invest reading with miraculous powers. But until radio and television dethroned the book, social reformers worried about too much reading, not too little. Advice about when and where not to read was once a medical specialty. In an 1806 diagnosis, a British doctor hypothesized that the “excess of stimulus” produced by reading novels “affects the organs of the body and relaxes the tone of the nerves.” Reading at the table interfered with your digestion, reading before lunch with your morals. Another expert, in 1867, warned that “to read when in bed ... is to injure your eyes, your brain, your