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Just Read the Book Already

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Re: Just Read the Book Already

#71

Post by coldtea »

>Wolf resolved to allot a set period every day to reread a novel she had loved as a young woman, Hermann Hesse’s Magister Ludi. It was exactly the sort of demanding text she’d once reveled in. But now she discovered to her dismay that she could not bear it. “I hated the book,” she writes. “I hated the whole so-called experiment.” She had to force herself to wrangle the novel’s “unnecessarily difficult words and sentences whose snakelike constructions obfuscated, rather than illuminated, meaning for me.”

"Demanding text"? "unnecessarily difficult words and sentences"? "snakelike constructions"?

Who described the book as such, Beavis and Butthead? Herman Hesse is at the young adult fiction level of difficulty (and in Europe has been traditionally read by adolescents).

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#72

Post by cossatot »

emodendroket wrote: post #41
sampl wrote: post #32

Short plug: your local library has thousands of books, all free to borrow. Many libraries let you listen to unlimited free audiobooks using the Libby app (honestly a life-changer for me).

I doubt the cost is the barrier for most of us here. Reading books isn't a very expensive hobby even if you buy them all.

It depends on the books and your rate of reading. I spend about $100/month on books which is often only 2 or 3. I can't always justify spending more. I would agree with you in the case of fiction, as the books are cheaper and better represented at libraries. But non-fiction is expensive, and I read a lot of technical and niche nonfiction.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#73

Post by bowlich »

emodendroket wrote: post #65
bowlich wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiction has suffered the same bloat. Used to be that letting an author ramble for 200,000+ words was considered indulgent. Dune told it's entire story in around 180,000 words, I can hardly say anything more intriguing is going on in Song of Ice & Fire at 1.7 million words.

I'm not very interested in fantasy, but the idea that writing is more long-winded than it used to be doesn't really survive even the most cursory survey of literature from the 1800s. Or if that's not your speed check ancient literature and see if you find it more to-the-point. You're the second person I see in this thread complaining that texts have become too bloated and using this exact example. Perhaps the guy is…

I picked Dune/Song of Ice and Fire because they're thematically similar.

In terms of bloat, excluding the Tale of Genji or the Story of the Stone, I can hardly think of anything in the 1800s that pushes into the 1M+ word mark in order to tell a complete story. I mean, people used to joke about War & Peace being long and it's hovering around 1/2 a million words -- and at least when I read it, Tolstoy seemed to be using every last one of them.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#74

Post by zeveb »

0xffff2 wrote: post #55
zeveb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock This is an excellent ad-blocker, available for Firefox, Chrome, Edge & macOS Safari. It's well worth using; the only time I see clickbait is when I use someone else's computer.

Not available on iOS AFAIK.

Pity — it works great on Firefox on Android.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#75

Post by samirm »

Raidion wrote: post #23

Problem I have with books is that it's much harder to justify the "time" to get lost in books. When I was a kid, I was near the top of the school's reading program and devoured books. But now, when I do have time on vacation or sick, I'd almost much rather read something that's educational-ish. It's hard to justify the X hours falling into a fantasy world, though it's still almost as fun as it used to be. Practically…

Apparently you think there's not much to be gained from reading fiction. Maybe there's your problem.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#76

Post by emodendroket »

cossatot wrote: post #72
emodendroket wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the cost is the barrier for most of us here. Reading books isn't a very expensive hobby even if you buy them all.

It depends on the books and your rate of reading. I spend about $100/month on books which is often only 2 or 3. I can't always justify spending more. I would agree with you in the case of fiction, as the books are cheaper and better represented at libraries. But non-fiction is expensive, and I read a lot of technical and niche nonfiction.

I see. I mostly read history and fiction. I read a lot of technical books when I was trying to become a programmer but now it's often the last thing I feel like reading.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#77

Post by gmueckl »

emodendroket wrote: post #45
hrktb wrote: post #13

> The narrative action struck her as intolerably slow. > She had, she concluded, “changed in ways I would never have predicted. I now read on the surface and very quickly; in fact, I read too fast to comprehend deeper levels Here she lays the blame solely on her, but I would think that it's also a writer's skill to hook the reader. It takes two to tango, and if she felt the narrative was so slow she started to skim t…

I don't think the world needs to consist solely of page-turning books that "hook the reader."

I'd say that in order to stay with a book, it needs a hook that the reader can grab on to. But readers have different tastes, so while you might enjoy slow moving brooding works (just guessing), someone else enjoys some fast paced, packed, dense writing. But in either case, if the book fails to meet expectations, chances are that you'll put it aside before you finish.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#79

Post by samirm »

I disagree with most of what she says. I know I spend too much time online, but at the same time I don't have any problems getting lost in books. Just last week I devoured Name of the Wind (600+ pages) in a matter of days, even though I ultimately didn't particularly like it.

It seems like she has trained herself to read a certain way and then blames the world around her for her own actions. Spending time online doesn't have to affect your reading behaviour, especially if you practice self awareness.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#80

Post by tralarpa »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #48

Wow, do I feel this pain. As both an author[1] and a book-lover, I've been on both sides of this divide. People just don't consume books the same way they used to. As a reader, I find I have to slowly re-introduce deep reading -- even if I've just been away for a week or two. I usually do this by getting a physical book and a physical distraction device, usually my phone. I go to a place where there's nothing else in…

> What I'd like to know is whether I'm some weird outlier or whether many other readers are going through this same process.

Been there, done that. I blame several things:

(a) the Internet, of course.

(b) I am much pickier about what I read. In the past I would have simply said "the language is poor, but the story is good" etc. Now, such things really bother me and I don't want to continue.

(c) I somehow lost my ability to read without subvocalization (actually, I know why, but it's really hard to get it back). Extremely annoying!

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