[Shushan]

I was surrounded with books from a young age. My mother taught me how to read and read classics like The Hobbit and Alice in Wonderland to me when I was small. Later, I dug into her piles of classics and mysteries with her blessing. We didn't have a TV in the house at all until I was 5? 6? We didn't watch it all that much even then. You see there there weren't many channels. Back then most TV shows couldn't compete with the better scifi, mysteries, fantasies, histories found in book form. (Today some are excellent, but most of the time the books are still far superior) Imagine your best choice is between reading Isaac Asimov or watching Buck Rogers on TV. How about a choice between reading Jane Austen versus watching the Love Boat? :P

Non-fiction was the news and the occasional documentary on PBS (1-3 a week that might be of interest). Not hard to see why reading would win out, right?

This was also before the age of cable tv, personal computers, public internet, or inexpensive home video games, so there was little else to compete with books for excellent entertainment and information.

"When I was your age, television was called books" ;-)