My PMG about reading classic lit.

PMG=Piss, Moan & Groan.

It seems I'm less impressed with our level of education in this nation every day.

The wife bought me a few hardcover books for Father's Day. They were "Dracula", "The Time Machine" and "The Invisible Man". I read them all a very long time ago and expressed an interest in doing it again.

Leaving aside the conclusions about Stoker's sexual preferences made by the chick who wrote the foreword of that book, every one of them seems geared to a 7th grade level. The original story is there but every one is loaded with footnotes giving definitions for words used (e.g. "draughty" as meaning breezy. The context alone will lead to that conclusion.

Did the public in general forget what dictionaries are used for? Or did they never learn? Maybe I don't want to know the answer to that one.

FWIW, I remember reading "Paradise Lost", "The Iliad", The Odyssey" and a few others with a dictionary by my chair. It's a wonder what the effort of looking up a word does for your vocabulary. Even a turdchasing, knuckledragging, alcoholic sub sailor will start improving in that regard. I didn't read the damned things except too many of the other books I had referenced a lot of classic literature. Even the writings of Louis L'Amour had that.

Using a dictionary was a skill drilled into me both at home and at Our Lady of Perpetual Payments Elementary School. Did that practice fall into disuse?

Sorry, just venting. I look at things like this and worry about my kids. Happens a lot lately.