This post will contain some naughty words.
Wabbit: thank you, kind sir, for coming to my aid. I'll remember you in my prayers, though I will make fun of you in future for failing to recognize someone's sex. (Yes, even if it's only online.)
Motokid: You said that you had read that "by the age of 5 your entire personality has been formed", and I happened to disagree. Later you said that "there are plenty of examples to back up the notion that your basic personality is formed by a very early age", which I think is a more accurate statement, one I can agree with.
But, as you must know, people tend to disagree rather a lot in discussions. I'm sorry if my choice of words offended you, but I feel rather silly going through life saying "I believe that statement is incorrect." I prefer a more casual tone, really. And yes, my vocabulary might be a bit more limited than that of your ordinary Englishmen, so if I happen to think of a word that fits the context, I jump on it. I'd be more than happy to have this discussion in Dutch, as translation sometimes seems to sabotage your words, but as this is an English forum, I have to abide by the rules.
Now, let me explain my earlier post.
The way I see it, there are different stages in a reader's life. There's the toddler that loves listening to stories, there's the child that loves reading children's books, there's the young adult that devours teen novels and there's the adult reader.
I don't think all these stages are necessarily linked. A toddler will not always make the leap from listening to reading, a young adult will not always make the transfer from young adult to adult reading. (My brother is a good example in this context; as an early teen he developed an interest in opening up computers and he pretty much gave up on reading fiction.) I've known a lot of people that, at some point in their lives, just stopped reading, while they were book worms at first. (In fact, I myself fit this description up to a certain point. Where I used to read up to fifteen books a month during high school, I now find myself seriously lacking in the time department, and I consider myself lucky if I get around to finishing one book a month these days.)
The opposite can be true also. If you look at some of the introductory posts on the Book Forum, you will see that some people (both teens and adults) come here asking for advice on which books to read next. Since they've never really been fiction buffs, they don't know where to look first.
And as far as encouraging children to read goes... The moment you try to force something on them, you know you're going about it the wrong way. Let them decide for themselves, don't push them into something they don't want to be pushed into. It'll just put them off things forever. If you bring home books for them and they can't wait to open them and read, by all means, go ahead and get them more stuff. However, if the books are just lying around there and you have to draw their attention to it days after you gave it to them, don't bother. They'll either grow into it all by themselves later on, or they won't. That's up to them.
