Maybe the books which students are often required to read in U . S . schools are seemingly too boring to foster peoples ' interests in reading books . I remember having to read having to read The Old Man and the Sea in seventh grade reading class . It was a yawn fest . I suspect that if the teacher did not have seemingly endless amounts of coffee then he too would have been yawning with the same frequency the students were yawning at . I was totally put off by books until that same seventh grade teacher made me read a mystery book The Body of Christopher Creed . That was pretty much my first mystery book I had read at that point , and it sparked some interest into me into the mystery genre . Up to that point in time I had been basically conditioned to dislike reading . From the latter sentence in the previous paragraph a though arises . Maybe parents are readingt less to their children ? If I have children at some point , I will likely read the Discworld series to them to hopefully foster their interest in reading . Hard to go wrong with the Discworld series . By typing too boring I do not mean to imply that the books which students are often required read to in middle school and high school are bad books . For example , The Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer can be a bit boring of a read at some points in the stories , but I think the writing possesses many good qualities .