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Thread: 30% of British households don't own a book.

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    Moderator chuckskull's Avatar
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    30% of British households don't own a book.

    Yup not joking and to top it off there are now more poundshops in this country than bookshops.


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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    We must take action! What will they do?!

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    Herr Doktor Oetker, ja!!! pollaxe's Avatar
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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    One suggestion is that they could drop the price of eBooks.. as a recent Kindle convert, my wallet is screaming at me!

    It's depressing though, I don't know what the answers are...

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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    I find that absolutely gobsmacking though now I think about it quite believable. No wonder the country is full of brain dead numpties. And no I don't believe that computer and Internet access is a replacement for a book.
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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bluecube View Post
    I find that absolutely gobsmacking though now I think about it quite believable. No wonder the country is full of brain dead numpties. And no I don't believe that computer and Internet access is a replacement for a book.
    If you can get reliable and more importantly, up to date, information, for free, then why would you go out to buy a book instead?

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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    What about fiction rather than non fiction? It doesn't have to be about finding information. Which arguably is better served in paper form than on a screen as there is less distraction, the eye can rove and pick up details that cannot be gleaned from a screen and it's easier and faster to flick back and forth between multiple sources of information.
    An Atlantean Triumvirate, Ghosts of the Past, The Centre Cannot Hold
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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    Something that dawned on me earlier. If you excluded the Bible, Twilight and Harry Potter what the percentage be?

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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    Where exactly has this information been sourced from? Who did the study and research to find that 30% of households don't own a book?

    I find this information very difficult to believe. No books, at all, not a single one, in the entire house?

    And don't tell me you read it in a book somewhere

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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    I don't own any books.

    I do own technical manuals related to my career, but I don't count them. I have nothing I would read for recreation.

    (I do have lots of eBooks, but they don't count).

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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    8 out of 10 cats. A highly respected scientific show...

    The poundshop thing was in the local rag.

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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    I can't help judging people who don't have at least one well-stocked bookshelf in their home. Any kind of books - fiction, non-fiction, technical, whatever. But no books at all? If that's the case, then I generally make the assumption that they read the Daily Mail.

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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bluecube View Post
    What about fiction rather than non fiction? It doesn't have to be about finding information. Which arguably is better served in paper form than on a screen as there is less distraction, the eye can rove and pick up details that cannot be gleaned from a screen and it's easier and faster to flick back and forth between multiple sources of information.
    I guess you have never wasted ^H^H^H spent an afternoon surfing Wikipeda.

    I find that I can easy spend hours on that site clicking links from one page to another, flicking from electrical engineering to railway locomotives, to civil engineering, to materials science, to chemistry, to nuclear physics, to A-bomb design, to astronomy, etc.

    You can learn a huge amount, and as long as you stay away from fan pages and the like (eg: Biographies of Simpsons characters), it is all facts to take in and far better flicking between articles and sources than you could with a dead tree library
    Last edited by chrestomanci; 04-12-2011 at 11:40 PM. Reason: Correct spelling

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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fraz View Post
    I can't help judging people who don't have at least one well-stocked bookshelf in their home. Any kind of books - fiction, non-fiction, technical, whatever. But no books at all? If that's the case, then I generally make the assumption that they read the Daily Mail.
    With the advent of e-readers and the like, isn't that the sort of viewpoint that will need revision in the very near future?

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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bluecube View Post
    What about fiction rather than non fiction? It doesn't have to be about finding information. Which arguably is better served in paper form than on a screen as there is less distraction, the eye can rove and pick up details that cannot be gleaned from a screen and it's easier and faster to flick back and forth between multiple sources of information.
    That's a matter of opinion. For me, an active screen is much much easier to read, as well as having vastly greater flexibility.
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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    Whats a book? i dont own any other than the Motherboard manuals i keep for no reason as i have never read one.

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    Re: 30% of British households don't own a book.

    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post
    With the advent of e-readers and the like, isn't that the sort of viewpoint that will need revision in the very near future?
    Yes, definitely. I read pretty much everything on my Kindle nowadays, and am even in the process of thinning out my bookshelves a bit, so I can totally imagine in ten years that it'll be common not to see physical books in houses any more. As much as I like books, I also like not having loads of clutter... :-/

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