N.Y. Times blog to Steve Jobs: Nyah, nyah, nyah

Timothy Egan takes issue with Steve Jobs’s assertion that “people don’t read anymore.” Egan offers another take: Book Lust.

Last year, a survey for the Associated Press found that a much smaller number — 27 percent — had not read a book lately, which means nearly three-in-four have read a book. Steve Jobs may be many things – maestro, visionary, demi-god – but he apparently isn’t a careful reader of certain market reports.

The more compelling statistic was rarely mentioned in news accounts of the A.P. story: the survey found that another 27 percent of Americans had read 15 or more books a year. That report documents a national celebration.

Yep. Celebrate that. Yahoo, no pun or commercial endorsement intended.

Egan’s argument that books are more involving than Jobs’s inventions - mere passive “stuff” in his eyes - is either facile or facetious, as is his assertion that industry sales figures (400 million books sold last year vs. 3.7 million iPhones) show that Apple is “piddling” in comparison to the book industry. But he understands exactly what reading is, and it’s more than “just product, dude.”

Reading is something else, an engagement of the imagination with life experience. It’s fad-resistant, precisely because human beings are hard-wired for story, and intrinsically curious. Reading is not about product.

You bet.

Now I’m going to open iTunes, stick the buds in my ears, and use a Mac to engage my imagination in creating a new story.