We spent a fair amount of time talking about the difficulty for books to continue to compete with alternative forms of entertainment and for book shops such as Waterstones to remain vibrant and successful in a publishing age of disruptive innovation led by the new game changers on the endcap, Amazon and Apple.
NPR on the decline in the difficulty of books assigned to high schoolers.
A new report into what children are reading at school shows a "marked downturn in difficulty of books at secondary transfer", it was revealed today.
He still has difficulty reading books or watching movies for pleasure, so heavily was his studying of religious texts and documentaries.
The report found that while the average difficulty of books rose as pupils got older, it did not match the rate at which reading skills should be improving.
The report's author, Keith Topping, who is professor of educational and social research at Dundee University, said that results also show a "sharp contrast" in the difficulty of books read by primary and secondary pupils.
"More authentically Blair", says his biographer, "is the style of stringing people along and keeping options open, while waiting to see what happens and whether anything falls into his lap .The underlying difficulty both books identify is, simply, the lack of a philosophical compass.
Parents can set up individual profiles for each child, track progress, and adjust the reading difficulty of books.
The selection of one particular quote in Carr's essay from pathologist Bruce Friedman, a member of the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, who commented on a developing difficulty reading books and long essays and specifically the novel War and Peace, was criticized for having a bias toward narrative literature.
B. Ifor Evans, writing in the Manchester Guardian, similarly argued that, due to its difficulties, the book "does not admit of review", and argued that, perhaps "in twenty years' time, with sufficient study and with the aid of the commentary that will doubtless arise, one might be ready for an attempt to appraise it".
Another major difficulty for digital books is how to price them.
