Why Only One Out of Thirty-Three People Read Books

It happens every spring, but this year, the questioning has been particularly intense. Every month of April, on occasion of the London Book Fair, newspapers publish articles speculating if it still makes sense to publish books.At the turn of the century, one thousand book titles were published for every feature-length movie made. Today, the ratio is one to six hundred. The number of movies produced every year has increased and, at the same time, the number of published books has diminished."We live in a visual world," sociologists argue. "In many areas, the written word is becoming a relic of previous centuries." Media analysts blame the trend on video-games and portable DVD players. Others simply say that reading requires too much effort after our long work schedules.In my view, those commentators are missing the point completely. Despite the abundance of cheap visual entertainment, readers' motivation remains strong. The reason why people read books has nothing to do with the demands of society and everything to do with individual psychology.1.- MINORITY VIEWS: Visual media, due to its structure and economics, is unable to express minority views in a consistent, intellectual manner. In this respect, all has been tried and all has failed. Complex ideas cannot be transmitted without the written word. No photograph and no movie can replace a chain of reasoning built in clear sentences.2.- DIVERSITY: Films, television, and radio, despite the growing number of channels, can only thrive when they aim at large audiences. They can offer multiplicity in the multitude, but no original ideas. Digital video has reduced the budget necessary to make a movie, but not the distribution costs. Actors, good lighting, and a decent soundtrack are still expensive. Books, on the other hand, can still be published and distributed cheaply.3.- FRESH IDEAS: In a movie, special effects cannot cure the problems of a weak scenario. Even great acting is unable to sustain a filmed story that doesn't make any sense. How long ago is it since you saw a really thought-provoking movie? How often do you gain deep insights from watching television? The written word remains the ideal means to transmit innovative ideas.The good news about reading is that three per cent of the population still remain avid readers. One out of thirty-three is not a bad proportion at all. A strong audience for writers is still there and it is not going to become smaller in the foreseeable future.Do people read internet blogs for the same reason that they love books? Is it because they want to read original ideas? Do they do it in order to enjoy some fresh writing?
I suspect that, for most, the main drivers are the joy of discovering something new and a steadfast refusal to join the other thirty-two.
JOHN VESPASIAN writes about rational living. He has resided in New York, Madrid, Paris, and Munich. His stories reflect the values of entrepreneurship, tolerance, and self-reliance. See John Vespasian's blog about rational living.

How to Start Beekeeping For Business

Many people have no idea that beekeeping is an extremely profitable industry and is a million dollar industry.But although there is a lot of money to be made, the money does not come without a lot of time and hard work.If you are planning to start a beekeeping business you will want to do as much research as possible.One of the most important things that you have to realize is that it takes some time for bees to adjust.Bees may not produce a large amount of honey when you first begin a colony because they may eat their own honey or they may simply not be able to produce much honey after a harsh winter season.Therefore if you want to be successful at beekeeping you will really have to understand what you are doing.It may be cheap to just setup everything and hope for the best but if you have no idea about the special equipment and techniques that are required for getting maximum results from your bees, you can just expect to get poor results.If you are ready to properly learn about beekeeping, you should start by joining a local beekeeping association or reading beekeeping books.thebeekeeper.info is an excellent resource for learning how to get started with beekeeping for business.Beekeeping is very similar to farming in the mindset that you have to adopt. It is essential to stay on top of the latest trends and learn about new techniques in order to keep your business successful.If you would like to read more about beekeeping for business go to http://www.thebeekeeper.info.
About the Author
Aaron Foreman is a writer on beekeeping and recommends Beekeeping for Beginners as the most comprehensive guide to beekeeping available.
Learn more about how to start beekeeping for business at http://www.thebeekeeper.info

Reminiscences Of A Must Read Book

If you haven't read it, Edwin Lefevre's Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is a classic book for active investors & traders. Although written in 1923, it is filled with useful thoughts, ideas and stories for anyone interested in trading, sentiment, charting, as well as general trade money management.
It details the fictional speculator Larry Livingstone, who is widely believed to be a pseudonym for fabled trader Jesse Livermore. Livermore/Livingstone utilized the ticker tape and chalk boards in the "bucket shops" to determine how a security would move in the short-term, without much regard to the fundamentals. The often used phrase (quoted in different ways) from this book is "The Tape Tells All" .... meaning the Chart (in modern terms) tells you what you need to know about the stock .... fundamental news, sentiment, etc are all shown in one way or another on the chart.Jack Schwager interviewed 30 of the greatest traders of all time (in his famous book Market Wizards) and asked them what book they found most valuable and would recommend to aspiring traders -- the most frequent response by far was Reminiscences.
Here is a sample of some of the many quotes from this timeless book that will certainly make you think and can help set the proper mindset of a successful investor:
But if after a long steady rise a stock turns and gradually begins to go down, with only occasionally small rallies, it is obvious that the line of least resistance has changed from upward to downward. Such being the case why should anyone ask for explanations? There are probably very good reasons why it should go down.
The speculator's deadly enemies are: Ignorance, greed, fear and hope. All the statue books in the world and all the rule books on all the Exchanges of the earth cannot eliminate these from the human animal.
At the same time I realise that the best of all tipsters, the most persuasive of all salesmen, is the tape.
I trade on my own information and follow my own methods.
Among the hazards of speculation the happening of the unexpected - I might even say of the unexpectable - ranks high.
The game does not change and neither does human nature.
A speculator must concern himself with making money out of the market and not with insisting that the tape must agree with him. Never argue with it or ask for reasons or explanations.
It sounds very easy to say that all you have to do is to watch the tape, establish your resistance points and be ready to trade along the line of least resistance as soon as you have determined it. But in actual practice a man has to guard against many things, and most of all against himself - that is, against human nature.
He will risk half his fortune in the stock market with less reflection that he devotes to the selection of a medium-priced automobile.
"I can't sleep" answered the nervous one."Why not?" asked the friend."I am carrying so much cotton that I can't sleep thinking about. It is wearing me out. What can I do?""Sell down to the sleeping point", answered the friend.
When I am long of stocks it is because my reading of conditions has made me bullish. But you find many people, reputed to be intelligent, who are bullish because they have stocks. I do not allow my possessions - or my prepossessions either - to do any thinking for me. That is why I repeat that I never argue with the tape.
Remember that stocks are never too high for you to begin buying or too low to begin selling.
I did precisely the wrong thing. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it out. Of all the speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.These are just a few of the pearls of wisdom found in this entertaining book that has held the test of time. Livermore was certainly a proponent of trend following ("the trend is your friend" is often attributed to him) and letting winners run while cutting losers short.

Having Fun in Reading With Book Clubs

People, who want to read books, have fun and entertainment in life. Books not only increase our knowledge, but also they also give us a sigh of relief from stress. These books are helpful for making our future because it gives us the par of excellence. By reading books, we can get the perfect solution of our problem. They give us the proper way to solve problems. An individual, who reads books, becomes mentally and spiritually strong. But today people do not want to read books because they want a fast alternative for getting information. They want to access knowledge by browsing various websites. The main benefit of Internet is that we can access it from any part of the world within a few clicks. On Internet, we can get knowledge on any topic. The people, who have the busy schedule in life, want to use net because it saves their money and time. There are so many book clubs available that attract the people for reading. These book clubs are also known as discussion groups or reading groups because they also organize a meeting of its group members. The meeting of the clubs gives the full freedom to the members to give his views over books. Most of the book clubs also provide a monthly magazine that gives the information about the recent published books.
India Today Book club, the exclusive book club, brings the wide collection of unique and distinctive books in the different categories for instance, Art and Reference Books, Fitness and Health, Classics, Children’s reading books, Information technology, Gardening, Medicine, History and many more. This book club sends books at the member’s address at no extra cost. It also provides the superb quality books on the heavy discounts. An individual can easily afford these books at the reasonable prices. This book club also gives a facility to its members to send a book as a gift to their well wishers. It sends the books in a very awesome gift wrapper. For placing order on ITBC, you have to select a book and payment of mode. You can also make payment by credit card, cheque or Demand Draft. This club provides books for the whole family.
To summarize, if somebody wants to make his bright future, then he should read books. These books really help him in making his career.

Having Fun in Reading With Book Clubs

People, who want to read books, have fun and entertainment in life. Books not only increase our knowledge, but also they also give us a sigh of relief from stress. These books are helpful for making our future because it gives us the par of excellence. By reading books, we can get the perfect solution of our problem. They give us the proper way to solve problems. An individual, who reads books, becomes mentally and spiritually strong. But today people do not want to read books because they want a fast alternative for getting information. They want to access knowledge by browsing various websites. The main benefit of Internet is that we can access it from any part of the world within a few clicks. On Internet, we can get knowledge on any topic. The people, who have the busy schedule in life, want to use net because it saves their money and time. There are so many book clubs available that attract the people for reading. These book clubs are also known as discussion groups or reading groups because they also organize a meeting of its group members. The meeting of the clubs gives the full freedom to the members to give his views over books. Most of the book clubs also provide a monthly magazine that gives the information about the recent published books.
India Today Book club, the exclusive book club, brings the wide collection of unique and distinctive books in the different categories for instance, Art and Reference Books, Fitness and Health, Classics, Children’s reading books, Information technology, Gardening, Medicine, History and many more. This book club sends books at the member’s address at no extra cost. It also provides the superb quality books on the heavy discounts. An individual can easily afford these books at the reasonable prices. This book club also gives a facility to its members to send a book as a gift to their well wishers. It sends the books in a very awesome gift wrapper. For placing order on ITBC, you have to select a book and payment of mode. You can also make payment by credit card, cheque or Demand Draft. This club provides books for the whole family.
To summarize, if somebody wants to make his bright future, then he should read books. These books really help him in making his career.

A Better Way to Read Your Favorite Books

Audio books are sometimes the better way to "read" books. For people with a busy life style it is the only way they can take in books. They will listen to these audio books while driving and while doing household chores, and some people listen to audio books while working out.When audio books were first created they were not created as a way for busy people to read. They were created to help blind people that could not read print. This occurred in the year 1931. There were audio books that were created for a project called "Books for the Adult Blind Project". The American foundation for the blind first created audio books in 1932. In the year 1932 the first machine that allowed mass production was created and from that point on there were plenty of audio books created. In 1935 the United States government approved a program for blind adults to be mailed free audio books and this was called the Blind Project.Later on in the years with the popularity of the cassette tapes and recorders, the popularity of audio books also grew. They were made more readily available for people to get. In the year 1970 the Books on Tape program started to rent audio books to people. This started a craze of audio books and by the mid 1980's there were many audio book publishers. The business grew huge and now there are awards for audio books and a very big ceremony for it.With the invention of CDs and MP3s the popularity of audio books has once again risen. People can download audio books off the internet for a few dollars and put it on their iPods and mp3 players. This enables them to listen to the audio books at any time it is convenient for them. Audio books are no longer only for the blind of the world.Audio books not only come in the traditional books but also there are many top best sellers of the day. Self help tapes and CDs are also a very popular branch of the audio book world. People will listen to these items while on a long commute to and from work to help pass the time and make the most of their precious little time. With all of the things that people must do each day from cook dinner to walking the dog and everything in between it is no wonder that the popularity of audio books has grown. We have become a society of people on the go. What better way for someone to read a book then to listen to it being read or told to them while they are going for a peaceful jog or a while waiting for the little ones practice to be over and on the way home.Audio books are an industry that has seriously grown over the years. From people that are very young who cannot read yet to people who are elderly and have trouble seeing, audio books can be a blessing to them and that is why they are so popular. Whether you are someone who once loved to read many books and because of failing eye sight you can no longer read a book without seriously straining your eyes or maybe not even being able to see the words at all or someone who has not learned to read yet an audio book will be helpful to you.Audio books have many different types of people who use them and for many different reasons. Although they started out to help blind people read books and to this day are still used for the same reason, they also allow other people with needs to read books.

Alcoholics Anonymous: Twelve Steps or Six

Alcoholics Anonymous: Twelve Steps or Six? Dick B. © 2009 Anonymous. All rights reserved.
Where did the Twelve Steps Themselves Come From?
The answer is that the Twelve Steps, and the "Big Book" which suggested how to take them, came from a large number of sources--probably sixteen and counting. Those sources included the Bible, YMCA; the Salvation Army; the Gospel Rescue Missions; Worldwide Christian Endeavor Society; Oxford Group; Rev. Sam Shoemaker; Dr. Bob's wife Anne Ripley Smith; the necessity for conversion to Christ; Quiet Time; the Christian literature and devotionals early AAs read; New Thought writings; William D. Silkworth, M.D.; Professor William James of Harvard; renowned psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung; lay therapist Richard Peabody; and still others.
My books examine the various sources for each of the Steps. See By the Power of God, Twelve Steps for You, The Good Book and The Big Book, The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous, New Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam Shoemaker, and A.A., Turning Point: A History of Early A.A. Spiritual Roots and Successes; The Books Early AAs Read for Spiritual Growth; Anne Smith's Journal 1933-1939; Good Morning!: Quiet Time, Morning Watch, Meditation, and Alcoholics Anonymous; The James Club and The Original A.A. Program's Absolute Essentials. See the title pages of my main website (http://www.dickb.com/titles.shtml).
Recently, critics of A.A. and of our history have endeavored to bind and fetter the Twelve Steps to the Oxford Group, to "heresy," to "spirituality," to "spiritualism," to idolatry, to "not-god," to abysmal failures in recovery, to absurd names for God, to half-baked prayers, to self-made religion, to automatic writing, to New Thought, and even to "nothing at al."--as the latest A.A. General Service Conference-approved literature now suggests.
A.A.'s Big Book and the Joe and Charlie Big Book Seminars have made clear that an almost complete set of the Twelve Step ideas were tendered to Bill Wilson by his friend Ebby Thacher at Towns Hospital in 1934. The ultimate source of the Big Book and Twelve Step ideas was the writing of William Griffith Wilson (Bill W.) during the period beginning in early 1938 and ending in the spring of 1939. The Printer's Manuscript--soon to be published--shows the hundreds of changes made in the Multi lith copy of the Big Book just prior to sending the manuscript to the Printer. Moreover, 400 pages of Christian and Biblical material was tossed out in the editing process, as A.A.'s Pass It On and Bill's secretary Ruth Hock have confirmed. We now know from Wilson's own remarks that the Twelve Steps came largely from the teachings of Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr., that Bill actually asked Shoemaker to write the Twelve Steps; that Shoemaker declined; and that Bill nonetheless dubbed Rev. Sam a "Co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous." Thus the answer as to where the Twelve Steps came from and how they were written Bill Wilson lies in the documented facts themselves, and not in the unsupported reconstructions, characterizations, or opinions of critics and revisionists..
Were there Six Steps in the Original A.A. Program?
Answer: No! There exists a lot of confusion concerning the gross differences between the Original Christian Fellowship program founded in Akron on June 10, 1935, developed thereafter by November, 1937 and continuing through 1938. Here is what A.A. Cofounder Dr. Bob said in his last major address to AAs in Detroit in 1948--ten years after this formative period.
"At that point [in "early A.A. days"] our stories didn't amount to anything to speak of. When we started in on Bill D., we had no Twelve Steps either; we had no Traditions.
"But we were convinced that the answer to our problems was in the Good Book. To some of us older ones, the parts that we found absolutely essential were the Sermon on the Mount, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, and the Book of James. . . .
"It wasn't until 1938 that the teachings and efforts and studies that had been going on were crystallized in the form of the Twelve Steps. I didn't write the Twelve Steps. I had nothing to do with the writing of them. . . . We already had the basic ideas, though not in terse and tangible form. We got them, as I said, as a result of our study of the Good Book."
What were the Elements of the Original A.A. Program?
In November, 1937, Bill Wilson visited a week with Dr. Bob in Akron, Ohio. The two men "counted noses" and found that there were forty alcoholics who had stayed bone dry, 50% permanently cured, 25% cured after a relapse, and the remainder showing improvement. And then Bill went to New York seeking money from Rockefeller. Rockefeller dispatched his agent Frank Amos (later a trustee-to-be of the Alcoholic Foundation) to investigate and report on the program. We have copies of both the first and second Amos reports. The first came from the Rockefeller Archives; the second from my trip twenty years ago to the Stepping Stones archives. Both were displayed at our Nationwide Recovery Conference with Dick B. in Irvine, California on May 15 and 16, 2009. Part of Amos' report is set forth in A.A. General Service Conference-approved book, DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers.
The Seven Original Program Ingredients Summarized in the Frank Amos Report
The Frank Amos report to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., dated February 23, 1938, described the Akron "Program" founded in 1935. Amos said it was being carried out faithfully by the Akron group. The men in the group, he said, all looked to Dr. Bob for leadership. And these were the specifics Amos set forth about the "Program" [DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers (New York, N.Y.: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980), 131]:
• An alcoholic must realize that he is an alcoholic, incurable from a medical viewpoint, and that he must never drink anything with alcohol in it.
• He must surrender himself absolutely to God, realizing that in himself there is no hope.
• Not only must he want to stop drinking permanently, he must remove from his life other sins such as hatred, adultery, and others which frequently accompany alcoholism. Unless he will do this absolutely, Smith and his associates refuse to work with him.
• He must have devotions every morning-a "quiet time" of prayer and some reading from the Bible and other religious literature. Unless this is faithfully followed, there is grave danger of backsliding.
• He must be willing to help other alcoholics get straightened out. This throws up a protective barrier and strengthens his own willpower and convictions.
• It is important, but not vital, that he meet frequently with other reformed alcoholics and form both a social and a religious comradeship.
• Important, but not vital, that he attend some religious service at least once weekly.
What About the Six "Word of Mouth" Ideas Bill Wilson Mentioned?
First of all, it was Bill Wilson--not Dr. Bob--who spoke of these six word-of-mouth ideas. Bill called them "word of mouth." He said they varied from place to place and person to person. And I have actually located several different versions of these six ideas--one version written in Bill's own hand many years after the 1930's and given to me by his secretary Nell Wing. For the varieties of these so-called six ideas, see:
The first set, recorded in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 160.
The second set, recorded in The Language of the Heart, 200.
The third set, recorded in Lois Remembers, 92.
A purported fourth set--allegedly used by Dr. Bob--but actually not recorded in any literature commissioned by Dr. Bob, not recorded in the First Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, attributed to Earl Treat and the founding of A.A. in Chicago, added in a later edition of the basic text as a story titled "He Sold Himself Short," and containing language that neither resembles Wilson's six ideas nor language used by Dr. Bob. The lengthy recital of what Dr. Bob allegedly did with Earl Treat at least two years after the founding of A.A. does not controvert Dr. Bob's statement that there were no Steps or Traditions at the beginning; that he didn't write the steps or have anything to do with writing them; and that the original program came from the Bible.
There are other versions also of the six Bill Wilson ideas. Further, as Bill himself stated specifically, the ideas for Bill's Twelve Steps came largely from the language and teachings of his friend Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr., rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York. There were no Steps in 1935. The Oxford Group had no Steps, and Bill expanded the six ideas to Twelve Steps as he wrote the Twelve Steps in late 1938.

About the Author
Writer, historian, retired attorney, Bible student, active and recovered member of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous; author of 34 titles on the history and sources of early A.A.