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Can I ask a question here?
Every June or so the media is inundated by articles like this. One gets the impression that every summer our beaches are filled with people (mostly women) who spend hours under an umbrella reading.
I have never seen this.
Am I going to the wrong beaches or something? We're in the New York metropolitan area, and the beaches we go to are either Orchard Beach in the Bronx, or Jones Beach or Robert Moses State Park on Long Island. Last year out of curiosity I looked around and all summer, out of thousands of beachgoers, I counted exactly eight people reading books. Most of the people reading were looking at magazines. But the great majority were either watching the kids run around, chatting, watching the ocean, or lying down soaking up rays.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed the disconnect between what seems like a media fixation on reading on beaches and the reality of what actually happens there.
