I tried reading 451 once, since it seemed up my alley. I got about a chapter in, put it down and never picked it up again. It wasn't that I didn't like the book (I don't remember if I did), but I just happened to get really busy right after that and just forgot that I ever started reading.
Maybe if I had read it I would understand the importance of having an attention long enough to finish the book. Thing is if I had that attention span the lesson would be lost on me since I'm already reading the book.
In other words, a book teaching the importance of reading books is teaching a pointless lesson.
Good point. I enjoyed it, but never picked up on the attention-span lesson at all; I read it thinking it was about censorship. I know now that the author's intent was to write a story about attention-span. I now take it to be a social commentary. Side-note: after reading the book, I rented the movie on DVD. The DVD had a scratch on it -- a scene faded out, the player hit the scratch and skipped ahead... it landed on a fade in scene. I didn't even notice. The movie I watched was only about 20 minutes and I thought "man, they left out a lot of stuff".
Maybe if I had read it I would understand the importance of having an attention long enough to finish the book. Thing is if I had that attention span the lesson would be lost on me since I'm already reading the book.
In other words, a book teaching the importance of reading books is teaching a pointless lesson.