Blank Zones

[Jeri Westerson]

I live in what I call a "blank zone." This is an area wherein people don't seem to have the need to read...anything. Newspapers, books, stop signs. In our forty mile radius there are two bookstores. To me, this is what a cultural desert looks like. Of course, I am here in Biblebeltania. In the southern U.S.? Nope. Try southern California. Yup, we got 'em here. About 70 miles east of L.A. in the Inland Empire. Although, the readers are hiding somewhere and they only seem to come out of the woodwork when the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books rolls around, because I find myself in line with them every April at the local Ticketmaster outlet getting tickets for this great event held at UCLA.

So I will see my fellow readers once again, moving as we do like a silent migration. They look just like you and me. They could be our baristas, or perhaps the cashier at the supermarket. But usually, they are carefully disguised, driving in large SUV's or better still, trucks with "Forgiven" logos in the back window. Secret readers, smuggling books in their purses. It's okay. We're with you. There are others like you. See you at UCLA.

[Patricia Abbott]

I am sorry to say the whole country is a blank zone. I go to my local library and nobody is taking out books-they are all at the terminals. I go to the local bookstore and they are all drinking coffee and looking at magazines. Or buying greeting cards. When did this happen?

[Cheryl Reynolds]

It amazes me too, when I am browsing the library's website for books and there are so many books where there's 20 copies available and not one checked out. Oh, there are longer lines and waiting lists for the bestsellers, but so many good books just SITTING there. *sigh* I go to the Friends of the Library book sales and there are books in the sale that are withdrawn from circulation that look like they've never been read! *sigh*

This is, I think, partly a side effect of the technological age. Movies, cable TV with 600 channels, computers that put us in touch instantly with the world, computer games--why should people READ about something when they can SEE it? People have no imaginations anymore.

Jeez. I sound like an 80-year-old curmudgeon. LOL And who am I to complain...here I am playing on the computer when I have about 600 perfectly good books that I've not read sitting here waiting for me.

Cheryl