Having been raised on the common-sense wisdom and idealistic energy of "The Brady Bunch," Marcia's uplifting story of surviving in a callous post-Brady era was quite the read. But inarguably, I could have gleaned more educational information by scanning the back of my cereal box.
There are countless similar melodramatic celebrity tell-alls that pepper best-seller lists all year.
Then again, "Here's the Story" is as valuable, if not more, than half the "literary" best-sellers of last year. So why is the NEA touting "literary" reading increases -- and by literary, they mean any thriller, romance or mystery -- rather than warning us about the overall reading stagnation? Normally, government agencies will frighten us with tales of calamitous consequences should they not be funded properly. What's up?
And these days, a trip to the Internet will often inform and educate us more than a trip to the library. So there must be better methods to gauge literacy. Does the NEA really think that measuring book reading by quantity rather than quality is a productive exercise?
After all, I can offer rock-solid anecdotal evidence to the contrary. My home is teeming with hundreds of books -- and I even have read some of them. Yet most of you think I'm completely clueless.