Garth George: Leisure should be brought to book

I was astonished to read in the results of a survey published last week that 23 per cent of the men - nearly one in four - and 9 per cent of the women surveyed had not read a book in the past 12 months.

The survey was commissioned by New Zealand Book Month and asked 505 people about their reading habits.

It found, too, that a mere 4 per cent of men and 13 per cent of women had read more than 50 books in the past year - most of them were aged over 65 - and a huge 84 per cent had read only "at least one book" in the past year.

To a man who reads more than 150 books a year, or at least three a week, this Research NZ survey result was almost incomprehensible.

I shouldn't, of course, be surprised.

Television, the internet, video games and all sorts of electronic wizardry are all pervasive these days and I suppose that takes up most if not all of most folks' spare time.

I grieve for them, I really do.

There are those who will say that, since I am retired, I have all the time in the world to lose myself in reading books.

That is so.

But even when I worked full-time I read the same number of books.

It helps, of course, that my TV viewing is confined to sporting events and the odd news report.

I think the last time I watched anything but sport on TV was the coverage of the second major Christchurch earthquake more than a year ago.

The shallowness and superficiality of TV programmes leave me cold; and the disruptive advertisements drive me nuts.

I get my news from reputable sources - I read three newspapers a day, except Sunday and follow their websites - and my entertainment, as you may have gathered, comes from reading.

I read almost exclusively fiction; my non-fiction reading is confined to the Bible, and now and again to expositions thereon.

I have held a library card of one sort or another since I was 5 years old and I reckon that as long as local authorities provide libraries, I will pay my rates without complaint.

All the other things council's provide - water, sewerage, streets, footpaths and so on are merely a bonus.

Thus I was delighted to read in the newspaper a week or so ago that moves are afoot to provide a new public library in Tauranga as part of a development deal that straddles the old Greerton library and most of the surrounding properties.

And I was even more delighted to read in the Bay of Plenty Times about Te Akau Ki Papamoa School teacher Grant Cooper, who is encouraging boys to get passionate about reading for life.

"It's trying to get them away from Xbox and PlayStation," says Mr Cooper, who teaches a boys-only class.

Good on him. I wish him every success.

One of the things that also surprised me about the survey result is that 77 per cent of those surveyed said they preferred a "real" book to an electronic book.

I can only surmise that those folk have never owned an e-book, which is a magical piece of equipment.

My wife and I bought Kindle readers for ourselves for Christmas and my reading has been revolutionised. But that's a subject for another column.

The overall picture painted by the survey is that women are far more avid readers than men, which came as no surprise to Tauranga's chief librarian, Jill Best, who admitted that two-thirds of library card-holders in the city were female.

How sad. We can only hope that there are more Grant Coopers out there encouraging boys to take up reading and thus enrich their lives enormously.

garth.george@hotmail.com