What do People Read Here?

Don: Can either of you tell me who the most popular authors are today? Perhaps you can, Ronald. You see so many people on the train to and from London.

Ronald: Yes, I do, and they seem to read newspapers mostly, but if it is a novel it’s certainly a paper-back and usually a detective story or a spy thriller of the James Bond type. I myself prefer something with more meat in it, a travel-book or a biography, for instance.

Colin: I think novels are for women. They have so much more time on their hands, and they can't do without romance.

Ronald: I rather agree. Most of the male commuters I see who are not reading newspapers are poring over books about politics, history, or do-it-yourself manuals showing them how to make their wives a corner cupboard out of an old box or build a model railway for their sons. This sort of thing give them a purpose in life, which novel-reading certainly doesn’t. If they want light entertainment they have always got the telly.

XII. Answer the questions.

1. How does Don propose finding out the reading interests of the people?

2. What do commuters to and from London usually read?

3. What kind of novels do they usually read?

4. Comment on Colin’s words: “I think novels are for women. They have so much more time on their hands...”

5. What do most of the male commuters usually read?

6. What do men do, according to Donald, if they want light entertainment?

XIII. Comment on the following words by J.Steinbeck.

" Let’s take the books, magazines and papers we have seen where we have stopped. The dominant publication has been the comic book. There have been local papers and I’ve bought and read them. There have been lots of paperbacks with some great and good titles but they were greatly outnumbered by the volumes of sex, sadism and homicide. What has come of the emotional life of the nation? "

XIV. Here is a list of quotations from established literary authors. You have to choose from the list one which you would like to have framed in a place of honour in your room. It should express a thought or idea you approve or a key feature of your own personality. Explain your choice.

“No man, but a blockhead, ever wrote for money.”

Dr.Johnson

“Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”

T.S.Eliot

“I have spread my dreams under your feet,

Tread softly for your tread on my dreams.”

W.B.Yeats

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drugs used by mankind.”

Rudyard Kipling

“But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”

Andrew Marvell

“Beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.”

Aesop

“Those who can – do; those who can’t – teach.”

G.B.Shaw

“A classic is something everyone wants to have read and no one wants to read.”

M.Twain

“Reading doesn’t make a man wise, it only makes him learned.” S.Maugham.

“All men are created equal. But some are more equal than others.”

G.Orwell

“And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

The Lord’s Prayer