A study has shown that 1 in 6 parents of under-11’s  never read to their  children before bed, while a third read to them once a week at most.  Under 11’s spend three times as long browsing the web and watching TV than reading.    And what are they watching?

Society, as re-designed by the big corporations, keeps parents struggling so hard to maintain their standard of living that they have no time or energy to read to their children or to turn off the electronic gizmos and insist on the kids reading a book.  The standard of written English in the US is appalling, with shocking spelling mistakes and misuse of language creeping into the media.  If you cannot use your own language properly, have not mastered grammar or spelling, and have a tiny vocabulary, what hope is there for intelligent conversation or for getting your message across?

And now the government want schools to abandon the great books of fiction and read government reports!  That is, government reports, for instance, that talk about “utilization” instead of the Saxon word “use” ( I am immediately suspicious of anyone using the former word, unless he is an engineer in a car factory)

Epicureans should, almost by definition, read.  If not, what will you discuss in the Epicurean garden?