Fearing the demise of a long-beloved friend

I'm feeling a little defeated this afternoon, by the one thing that's never let me down before. Reading.

I am a voracious reader. I love it. I can't sit down for breakfast of a morning without something in front of me to read, whether it be the newspaper, a magazine, junk mail, random letters, anything. I deliberately choose certain toilet cubicles based on the knowledge that they have advertising material on the back of the door, or a large amount of graffiti on the walls. I used to go to the library during recess and lunch when I was in primary school. Come to think of it, I did it a fair bit in high school too. My mother had to complain to the principal when the librarian tried to close the primary school library at recess, because I was so distraught. I exhausted my borrowing quota at primary school, and started hiding books strategically behind other books, so that nobody else could borrow them while I was reading them.

I. Love. Reading.

Now I'm teaching at a school that encourages students to read by enforcing a thirty minute "Silent Reading" period at the beginning of every English class. When I first started I thought this was great. But I'm increasingly wondering if it's actually having the reverse effect from that it's intended for. A number of the students, and the number can be quite large on any given day, hate Silent Reading and make it a chore for most of the half hour allotted to it. They complain that all the books in the room are boring, or that they hate reading. Some would rather sit and stare blankly into space for half an hour, than read. This breaks my heart.

But, I'm wondering if MAKING them read, FORCING them to read, is the answer. What if they respond to it in the same way I responded to forced physical education when I was in school, and never go near it again after their schooling is done? Are we doing them a disservice by forcing reading down their throat?

I think we are. But that doesn't mean I don't think we should be making them read - we just have to find a way to make it more meaningful, more accessible, more enjoyable. For one thing, by broadening the range of texts substantially. Their choice is pretty much limited to teen/young adult fiction, mainly novels. What if there were a selection of other texts at their disposal? There are a couple of comics, but what about graphic novels, short stories, poetry, information texts, travel writing, biographies, histories, other non-fiction?

Would the broader choice be enough to lure them back to reading? Or is something more required?