Image by ndh via Flickr
I have an eReader now, a gift from Edie and Mick. It tells me it can store a thousand books all by itself. Should I care to purchase it a Micro SD card, it will happily store 30,000 tomes. So much for my room lined floor-to-ceiling with books I’d need a wheeled ladder to peruse.
When I was first teaching reading in the middle school, it was vogue to use incentives to prod the children to “free” read. Free reading was whatever books the children read outside of class or during the silent reading periods during home room. The lures mainly centered on candy, but we gave them pencils, junk toys of a Happy Meal nature and even tempted them to read as a collective and then rewarded entire classes with pizza parties. Incentives, or bribery as it is more commonly known in parenting terminology, had limited life spans. Children quickly tire of toiling for trinkets. Even the most eager student eventually reaches saturation.
But imagine my amusement when I discovered that eReaders offer incentives to adults to read more.
At the bottom of the reader’s screen, a note periodically pops up informing me I have an award I can claim and post to FaceBook. Normally, I tap a finger, which makes it disappear and I continue reading, but last night, I decided to investigate what constitutes an award by Kobo eReader standards.
The award has popped up before and is called The PrimeTime Award. When I opened it, I found this message:
Your television must be lonely because this is the fifth time you’ve read during primetime!
I didn’t know whether to laugh or fear for humanity.
For the record, once again, we don’t have cable, satellite or … until Edie gave her father a six month subscription as a Christmas gift … Netflix. We are strictly a dvd family, and even then, Rob and I return more unwatched movies to the bookmobile than not.
The once and never again reading teacher in me finds turnabout hilarious, but the literate adult sighs. Knowing full well, as I do, that most people would rather do anything else but read, I can’t claim surprise that even eReaders must prod and cajole. It’s hardly a sign of the coming apocalypse. Not like Rick Santorum surging in the Iowa Caucuses is a harbinger of evil. It’s a smaller and more subtle sign of civilization’s continuing quest against complete idiocracy. But heavy sigh. Just heavy sigh.
Related articles
- New Year’s Eve Meme (anniegirl1138.com)
- eReader Guilt (mychemicalfawn.wordpress.com)
anniegirl1138 
I’m just not ready to put aside books for an e-reader, despite the obvious perks. (I like to read in the tub, which is a big drawback.) Oh, and I vividly remember reading in elementary school for Pizza Hut coupons. No such incentives for my students anymore.
Hi,
I have yet to get an e Reader, but I would certainly like to have one, so much better than trying to store books once the bookshelf is filled. 🙂
I watch most of my TV on the net, that way I can watch whatever I feel like at the time.
Thank You for visiting my blog.
I have a Kobo Vox and I love it! I had the first generation Kobo. I’ve never thought about buying the memory card … I currently have about 200 ebooks on the Vox and that’s plenty.
Haha! A friend tried to convince me the other day that I was really missing out by not watching TV. (I do watch a couple of shows, mostly UK-made, via Netflix, but never regular primetime TV.) Somehow I don’t think so. Although I will say that not watching TV makes me an outsider at work sometimes – it’s amazing how many conversations center around it.
I must agree with the last. Watching tv is the new small talk replacement for the weather. Although, the weather is still acceptable once they find out I am a luddite about tv.