Even with books on tape or on CD, I fear some people are reading less. I got hooked on them from getting them out of the library system, where they for the most part carry the books unabridged. But if you go to retail stores, video stores (yes, some carry them, but seldom unabridged or look in the used bins) or used bookstores, the abridgements outnumber the full versions, and have writing sanctioning the abridgement by the author him/herself and on occaision even feature the author reading the shorter version.

That gets me thinking that maybe the author should have written it abridged in the first place, but luckily this is usually not the case. I realize there's a need for authors to be able to milk as much money from their writings as possible as well as the need for people to brag of having actually read half of the NY Times Bestseller List at all times, but you're usually cheated badly by your short cuts.

I only tried it twice and felt burned each time. Once was with a mystery from a writer that a sister had greatly praised and a week later seeing that author praised for her sense of the setting and flavor of her area in an article on regional mysteries. Well that sense of area was what they'd edited out, as I found out by reading whole books later. The other was an instance where I wanted to finish a book lent to me but later repossesed when the visitor left. the library only had the taped abridgenent in rather than the book, so I got to hear how badly they gutted the part I'd previously read.

This is nothing new, of course, as the Reader's Digress hooked a lot of our parents on the same concept. But as anyone who's ever put a condensed book in water and stirred had found out--NOTHING HAPPENS!

There ARE, of course lots of bad writers out there and writers who could USE judicious editing (Where was Reader's Digress for James Fennimore Cooper? Thank God we had Mark Twain instead, but here I, myself, digress.....Feel free to edit this part yourselves....)and there actually HAVE been movies that improved on the books even with their changes. But it seems many Americans are reading less even when they're reading more often.