A Depressingly Dumbed-Down Generation: Bookless and Simply Clueless (in the USA and even God's Own)

So revealed the affable Hillary Barry - alongside her simply incomparable sidekick - upon tonight's 'Seven Sharp', as they showed anecdotal interviews done with both Americans and kiwis, the latter apparently all within 100 metres or so of the Birkenhead (Community) Library. Hard to say which was more plain-as-daylight evident - staggering - simply awful: the respondents' ability to recall *even just one book they'd ever read, or their clear as the proverbial mud utter cluelessness - in the case of many of them (of either younger or older generations, but especially the former, and **surprisingly more so among the female participants) - the majority evidently hardly even aware of what a book actually was.

One particularly stunningly bright gal even gave the interviewer an odd, quizzical, double-take look,  conjecturing as to whether a magazine constituted a book...!!!

"Good God" - which I say with all due reverence, addressing the Almighty with the dignity He (and only He) ever deserves: "help us all!"

*In the American sample only one in four could recall the title of a book they'd - ever! - read, though truth be told, I'd doubt those Aucklanders sampled here - and in what's a well-to-do, affluent as suburb to boot - statistically outdid the yanks.

**In view of the anecdotal observation (of many, through the years) that - at least in New Zealand - women (at least of a previous generation) tend to read books an awful lot more than do men.