[neverending]

I know a lot of people here read a lot, but I'm wondering how common a practice it is today.

When I was in high school there were no dvd players, no personal computers, no internet, not even VCrs.

Besides listening to music, getting stoned and going to midnight movies and live concerts, one of the main activities my crowd was into was reading. There was a whole library of literature that everyone was expected to read, and we traded books frequently. Our list of shared literature included:

Vonnegut
Tom Robbins
Tolkein
Harlan Ellison
Robert Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)
Anthony Burgess
Steal This Book
Alan Watts
Richard Brautigan
Ray Bradbury
The Whole Earth Catalog
Underground Comics
Ken Kesey

When we got together after school to hang out, conversations frequently could have been mistaken for book discussion groups.

I have a feeling that with the internet, DVDs, video games and such, shared literary experience is not so common. Would anyone like to comment on this, or share your experience of sharing literature as you grew up- or were my friends and I a bunch of nerdy freaks?