"That was fast," the boy said.
"I know this place like the back of my hand," the girl announced confidently.
I gave them some privacy and moved away with a little smile on my face. In the 1980s I would have said that about our local bookstore just a 5 minute bike ride away.
You know, I don't think reading is dead just yet.
I've experienced this same feeling lately, watching teenage gamers at my local game store, or even watching YouTube videos put out by younger people so obviously invested in reading or tabletop gaming. When you need every bit of positivity a lot of these days, I take some comfort in that the next generation of geeks is ready to shoulder the load and teach the generation after them to love these pastimes.
*I only got a cursory glance at them, so I couldn't tell if they were high school or college age for certain, but my guess was they were about 16 years old. Maybe 17.
Pretty sure I've said this here before but the whole of Fiction, not just the YA, Manga and Graphic Novel sections, are stuffed to bursting with teens and twenty-somethings every weekend. It's a huge change from a decade ago, when the average age would have been 50+ and quite possibly a lot higher.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's very much not just the geeky end of the spectrum. It's across the board from the nerds to the popular kids. About the only subgroup that doesn't figure much is spoty young men but you'll often find them two floors up in the sports and business sections - they still read.
Not sure exactly when or why it changed. There was a point where it looked like reading books was going become a legacy activity. Not any more.
I feel I have to correct one typo in that comment. "Spoty young men" should be "Sporty young men". Not spotty young men. Although...
DeleteI was at a Barnes and Nobles last evening and can confirm a lot of teens were there, looking and buying books and comics (both manga and western comics). I had a silly smile on my face while wandering around.
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