As I burgeon from being a young professional to an older one, I look to the bookshelves of others when in new company.
A bookshelf can tell you a lot about a person; Their interests, their study, the gift they got from a friend and haven’t quite gotten around to reading.
And it got me thinking, that the average American might have not have books on their shelves at all. My bookshelf has a healthy mix of half read fiction, non-fiction, and comics from my student days.
After amassing a small collection of 20 or so books, I have noticed a slight pattern. Older books, on balance, have a stronger verbiage. When was the last time you read the word detumescence? I assure you, that when I googled this word, as you probably have, my cheeks turned red; both with pride of learning a new word but at the scandal of it being naughty.
Not only is the verbiage for older books on balance stronger, the thought processes of Non-fiction reads, seem to flow in a more logical fashion. I’m not speaking of a clear pedagogy like that from a textbook, but thoughts are fashioned in a way that is different from books published recently.
For example, Marshall McLuhan is a clown. But he is a clown who has written a book that is fairly popular by the name of Understanding Media. I have issues with how this book presents its ideas, but it shows a good example:
“Yeats presents Lock, the philosopher of mechanical and lineal associationism, as hypnotized by his own image. The ‘Garden’ or unified consciousness, ended.”
Be it that, “Lineal Associationism” isn’t a widely recognized term in psychology or philosophy, it still rings true that McLuhan tried to create or re-appropriate a term to serve his ideas into a greater topic.
When I read more recent books, there is no coining of new terms, there is no attempt at pedagogy. Instead many books are at a lower grade reading level to convey to a wider audience, and Current day writers use stories and anecdotes to show an idea in place of pedagogy.
Stories are powerful, but I find that previous topics in politics, economics, Science, etc. have become watered down with stories that are reductive.
But more importantly Books today don’t engage in a particular voice that I find more often in older Nonfiction.
Older books seem to have come from a more literate society. The average college student is having a hard time reading for their classes let alone reading in general.
Lately when I am reading, I find myself wanting to engage in books with headier topics. Only to open that book and find a 5th grade reading level reductive work that doesn’t explore the topic as much as I feel is necessary.
Does the average literacy of American’s being low hurt the average academic rigor of print?
Who knows, that is just a piece of my mind.
Best,
T
Piece of Your Mind 
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