An attitude to reading.

In this era, it appears to me that nobody wants to have it 'both ways'. We have adequate resources which allow people to be involved in a numerous amount of projects, hobbies, careers, etc... yet we allow ourselves to be absorbed by the frivolous.
In making that statement, I don't want it to appear that I'm saying people can't have fun... it just seems people seek too much enjoyment out of the unimportant.
Only one or two generations ago, in order to seek enjoyment you could go for a walk, a bike ride, or read... now it appears we have a nation of people with a very negative attitude towards reading, or people that have formed such biased opinions toward it they do not seek new genres.
Out of the few people I know who do enjoy reading, they tend to stick to one author, or one particular genre of reading and claim to not like others [authors or genres]. People may think my opinions toward this subject are biased because I'm in English student, yet the fact of the matter is that I didn't enjoy reading myself until I was well into my teens. I was never a bookworm at school, and I never read any children's literature that all my friends loved (Harry Potter included). But now it seems that my friends who enjoyed that simple way of having fun have now moved on to things that are 'easier' or money-driven. We seem to have become a generation that cannot fully enjoy a good book without listening to drivelling trifle that presents itself as 'interesting'.
I don't know anybody these days who would just go out and buy a poetry book, or people who seek to have libraries filled with collections- at least of classical authors. How is it that someone may find the works of Jackie Collins so much more stimulating than Louisa May Alcott, or Charlotte Bronte, or Robert Louis Stevenson? We still attribute so many references to these authors and their works, yet nobody knows. We have all heard of 'Long John Silver' and the phrases "pieces of eight" and "shiver me timbers" and what do we associate it with? Pirates? In what form? What does it mean? (He was of course, created by Stevenson in 'Treasure Island'- an amazing novel not many people have read.)
I am not trying to take the 'high and mighty' path by presenting myself as a highly read intellectual- as believe me, I am not at all (though I seek to be)- I just think that these lost canons in literature are slowly losing meaning. You've probably all heard of Stevenson, Bronte, Eliot, Woolfe- but could you tell me what their MOST famous works are even? (Jekyll and Hyde, Jane Eyre, Paradise Lost, A Room of One's Own... respectively). My only hope is that people may once again enjoy the works of classical authors and be familiar with their works- or at least pick up a book of another genre! I myself, until very recently, thought that I didn't like modernist poetry (I have confined myself to the Romantic works of Whitman, Wordsworth and Coleridge), and in my 21st year have only just discovered brilliant British poets such as Seamus Heany and Edwin Muir.
The point I am trying to make here is that, by all means, enjoy that which you enjoy... but begin to appreciate the simpler aspects of life which can fulfil you as well. This may be just in taking a walk, but in my argument, in literature. Don't just brush something off because you don't understand it- it doesn't mean the writer is bad- just that your contextual knowledge may not be great enough, or you just need to take time to re-read it and eventually find that hidden meaning or allegory which may surprise you, even if it is in your enjoyment of thus.

The very first post..

So just how important is a blog post anyway?
Will anyone read this blog?
Will it have any impact on the world?

Perhaps that's what Mark Zuckerberg thought before he created facemash.com, and eventually thefacebook.com

The problem with the internet is you can never really tell. There are some 1.73 billion internet users worldwide- that's around a sixth of the population with the world at their fingertips. Have we ever stopped to think just how amazing that is? And yet how insignificant it makes us seem?
We're all guilty of the lure of social networking (don't say you're not, else you wouldn't be reading this), and with that the self-absorption we fall into. Thinking that all out online 'friends' WANT to know we just stubbed our toe, or went to the store, or even as I was guilty of less than an hour ago... that I enjoyed a movie.
Even the fact I'm writing this now may seem high and mighty (or that I think of myself that way, rather), and that I have a ridiculous assumption that somebody will read this.
But so what?
We all have our reasons for this... acting like we're the best/sexiest/nerdiest/most intelligent/[add relevant adjective here] person out of the 'friends' we have, and assuming they actually want to hear all this shit.
For me it stems from some long childhood issues (I won't expand on)... something along the lines of why I am no longer able to keep a diary.

Who knows? Maybe I will someday be the next youngest billionaire in the US (though it's not likely considering I have no talent and do not live there) and everyone will hang on to every word I say.
I will however, for now, have to settle for using this blog as my diary, and hope that maybe I'll get some followers, who maybe might just agree with something I say. Or even more interestingly, ones who don't... I do enjoy a good debate!