Reading is Fun!

Or so vintage ads like the charming one above would have us believe.

Thanks to my new favorite web site, the nearly always interesting Brain Pickings, you too can contemplate why even lions who live in circus cages like to read, and you can do lots of other cool things too—like browse vintage PSA posters from the WPA days, or read Ted Hughes' letter to his son, or listen to David Foster Wallace's famous Kenyon College graduation speech.

Neat, huh?

Of course some of the old-time-y endorsements of reading are a tad ambiguous:

Uh... I really don't know. Sorta depends on what they've been reading...

Still, you gotta admire the plucky spirit of some of these ads... even if you also can't help but wonder just how effective they were.