Every novel is a long, involved, fictitious story that is intended to entertain or instruct the reader. In order to better understand a novel one should understand that it starets with a setting adds charachters and then gets into a plot.
One viewer has decided that women are the readers. A couple of years ago,
British author Ian McEwan conducted an admittedly unscientific experiment. He and his son waded into the lunch-time crowds at a London park and began handing out free books. Within a few minutes, they had given away 30 novels.
Nearly all of the takers were women, who were "eager and grateful" for the freebies while the men "frowned in suspicion, or distaste." The inevitable conclusion, wrote McEwan in The Guardian newspaper: "When women stop reading, the novel will be dead."
McEwan's prognosis is surely hyperbole, but only slightly. Surveys consistently find that women read more books than men, especially fiction. Explanations abound, from the biological differences between the male and female brains, to the way that boys and girls are introduced to reading at a young age.
One thing is certain: Americans—of either gender—are reading fewer books today than in the past. A poll released by The Associated Press and Ipsos, a market-research firm, found that the typical American read only four books last year, and one in four adults read no books at all.
A National Endowment for the Arts report found that only 57 percent of Americans had read a book in 2002 a four percentage-point drop in a decade. Book sales have been flat in recent years and are expected to stay that way for the foreseeable future.
Among avid readers surveyed by the AP, the typical woman read nine books in a year, compared with only five for men. Women read more than men in all categories except for history and biography.
"Reading requires incredible patience, and the ability to 'feel into' the characters. That is something women are both more interested in and also better at than men," says Brizendine.
Rekindling the Reading Magic.
There are exceptions to the fiction gap. More boys than girls have read The Harry Potter series, according to its U.S. publisher, Scholastic. What's more, Harry Potter made more of an impact on boys' reading habits. Sixty-one percent agreed with the statement "I didn't read books for fun before reading Harry Potter," compared with 41 percent of girls.
I believe with my own reading that I can drift into a new world of any book I am reading giving me the escape I may need for that particular moment. I relate to all my charachters and feel either their joy or sadness. Books warm the heart and ecery story being told can be as complex or simple as the next with still a point to made across each page the reader.
These craft books interested me since I am married to a dutchman. :) from the Netherlands. They were published sometime in the 1970s and are very similar to a lot of the American vintage craft books. I love just about everything about them and it all seems very current.
