A most dangerous habit

So, what do you have to say about those who read books? Those who, that is, love reading them, are always found with them and have gathered a reputation as 'voracious readers'?

There is the regretful voice of teachers and mothers who think that internet and sms have brought doom and gloom to the future of their children who simply don't want to pick up a book. You hear conservationists campaigning for keeping the reading habit alive. If you listen to this group, you must think that reading must be a blessed preoccupation indeed. And we have read those numerous poems from Englishmen encased in nobility who have sung to the glory of books.

But think of witty women, headstrong women, women with opinions like Lizzy Bennett. Women who think, who dare to knock at the doors of universities like Virginia Woolf. Women who like to read about women like them, women who read and agree with the opinions of women and men like them -- no, I am not talking about the 'feminists' alone, though they may certainly be part of this group.

To be found with a book suddenly becomes the opposite of cooking, wiving (no, that's not the right word, is? It should be 'husbanding' -- now 'husbanding' has a pretty domestic air about it), mothering and all those cultivated, feminine things that a woman must do. If she reads in spite of them, some kind of little novel or poetry book as deemed fit for the fairer sex since the eighteenth century, reading is again a good habit, ain't it?

For the most part, however, women would like to keep their intellect and their habits intact, methinks. Women who read, like women who think and women who study and women who assert their rights are dangerous creatures.

So, would you encourage your girl child to read?