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Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

#61

Post by mercutio2 »

detritus wrote: post #59
mirimir wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a while, in my opinion, he just wrote the ~same novel, again and again. There's always the tough young woman. And the wimpy guy, typically a druggie. And often, the Case equivalent. But I still like them well enough.

I had this sad realisation with the last Iain M Banks book I read - Hydrogen Sonata. It was a good book, but I felt like I'd seen its skeleton at least three or four times before.

I thought the Hydrogen Sonata was probably Banks’s weakest Culture novel.

“Sometimes civilizations decide to Sublime! Other folks take their stuff. One ship takes it upon itself to help a younger race not get boxed out of the spoils, fails, and gets depressed. The end”

Most of his other Culture books had more stuff going combined with characters I cared about.

Re: Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

#62

Post by khalilravanna »

alexhutcheson wrote: post #18
lucidguppy wrote: post #5

I go through periods of intensive reading, then downtimes. These both span for months. Problem is a lot of it is dreck. Some books draw out a story for 1100 pages then stuff all the cool stuff in the last 200 pages. It feels dishonest. A lot of classics aren't. A lot of pulp is captivating and fast paced. I tried reading infinite jest - I had to return it. I finished fear an loathing in las vegas in a day. It's a cra…

The key is to just put it down and move on to another book if you’re not enjoying it. Many people have a completist attitude towards reading - they continue to slog through to the end of a book once they’ve started, even if they don’t like it. They’ll make slow progress, and it blocks them from picking up a new book. Cut your losses early - your total reading throughput will be much higher, and most nonfiction books…

Interesting. I’m actually heartily in favor of the “completionist” mindset. I adopted it from playing videogames. With videogames at times I would end up hopping from game to game to game, never really finishing many of them. And in a weird sense it felt less fun and it definitely felt less worthwhile. I couldn’t have more than surface level conversations about the content and I never felt like my opinions were holistic enough of that content either.

Now I only play one game at a time and I really try to finish it unless it straight up is just not fun for me. I’ve slogged through parts of games where I’ve become bored after X number of hours and ultimately been much happier for it as I witnessed everything the game had to offer (especially with regards to story). Final Fantasy XV comes to mind here. The gameplay had become tired after 30 hours or whatever but getting the whole story arc (for all its flaws) was extremely worth it.

I’ve carried this over to books. Unless I’m really not interested I will stick with the slow parts and generally I’ve been happy with the results. The Stand by Stephen King comes to mind here. It’s like 1,200 pages of tiny font and is pretty slow in the middle but has some stupendous moments and is really an epic tale I’m happy to have under my belt. I do have to pair this with a conscious “required” reading time, e.g. an hour before bed so that I’m always hitting a minimum rate so I don’t slow to a snails-pace and read a book a quarter or something.

Re: Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

#63

Post by darkerside »

Smithalicious wrote: post #42

I used to read a lot, until I entered middle school. You see, in middle school, we had to read 4 books a year from a whitelist and write a report about them and such. This meant I no longer felt motivated to read a book not on that list; after all, if I read a book from that list instead, I'd be killing two birds with one stone. Reading a book not on the list just seemed like a waste of time. Of course, I decided whi…

Not sure how old you are, but at some point you will probably be happier and more successful if you take ownership of your life decisions.

Re: Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

#64

Post by darkerside »

kstenerud wrote: post #35

I used to read a lot and then stopped. There are things that I find more interesting these days, and I've already read the most important books about the subjects I've been interested in. There comes a point where the diminishing returns are too small. There would have to be a tectonic shift in understanding to get me interested in reading another book.

What if the tectonic shift is inside one of those books you'll never read?

Re: Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

#65

Post by darkerside »

Scarblac wrote: post #48
everyone wrote: post #47

If your're reading non-fiction, then you're probably learning something. If your're reading fiction, then it is most likely just entertainment. So, its equivalent to watching a fiction movie or tv show, or whatnot. I find it odd thats its encouraged and considered good to just read , regardless of content. What you're reading is critical. You can read 'Harry Potter' and divert and entertain yourself, or read 'A Brief…

The act of reading is a skill that needs maintenance. It doesn't matter much whether it's fiction or nonfiction. Harry Potter is a bit of an unfair example as it's intended as a children's book, they still need to build up the skill. But more importantly, good fiction (and other art) _teaches about the human condition_. I have learned a lot from Vonnegut and Pratchett even though everything I read by them was fiction…

I bet a lot of people have learned about life and being human from Harry Potter as well

(I haven't read it)

Re: Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

#66

Post by gjm11 »

Filligree wrote: post #46
cgriswald wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a crapshoot. I’m fortunate in that my mother is a prolific reader. I am too, but she makes me look illiterate. She consumes a ridiculous number of books a year. Lots of it is crap. Some isn’t, and she’s always recommended those ones to me, keeping in mind my own interests. Over the years I’ve met a few others who I trust to recommend books. But most people, even professional reviewers, just don’t work for me. T…

You should try Greg Egan's books, if you like SF at all. I think a good introduction would be Schild's Ladder or Axiomatic, but my personal favorite is the Clockwork Rocket trilogy and Dichromatic. The latter two are conceptually related. If you know about metric signatures, you'll be able to tell how. If not, well, you will.

Correction: Dichronauts, not Dichromatic. (DuckDuckGo is smart enough to find the right book; Google kinda-sorta is -- it's the first image search result but doesn't otherwise appear in the first page of results, at least for me; Amazon's search isn't.)

Re: Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

#67

Post by navbaker »

logicprog wrote: post #17

I absolutely love reading. I can't make it through four seasons of TV (my most recent failure is Battlestar Galactica '04) and I can't seem to get myself to suffer through repeated failure at video gaming for more then thirty minutes at a time, but I absolutely love books. My trio of hobbies are coding, writing, and reading and it's a really happy and productive combination! I prefer fiction, generally hard science f…

Just finished Shogun myself! I went through stages of “I am done with this book” every few hundred pages, but then would realize I was actually interested and would pick it up again. I think I repeated that cycle three or four times before finishing it! Definitely glad I did and will be for sure picking up the other books in the series.

Re: Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

#68

Post by 1_player »

khalilravanna wrote: post #62
alexhutcheson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key is to just put it down and move on to another book if you’re not enjoying it. Many people have a completist attitude towards reading - they continue to slog through to the end of a book once they’ve started, even if they don’t like it. They’ll make slow progress, and it blocks them from picking up a new book. Cut your losses early - your total reading throughput will be much higher, and most nonfiction books…

Interesting. I’m actually heartily in favor of the “completionist” mindset. I adopted it from playing videogames. With videogames at times I would end up hopping from game to game to game, never really finishing many of them. And in a weird sense it felt less fun and it definitely felt less worthwhile. I couldn’t have more than surface level conversations about the content and I never felt like my opinions were holis…

Probably because for you just the act of completing something is _fun_.

Personally I'm reading or playing a video game because of the entertainment it provides. If it's not interesting or doesn't hold my attention, it's not worth slogging through it. Life's too short.

That's one big plus of digital entertainment: I can refund what I don't like in a single click, I don't feel like I _have_ to finish it nor I have to justify my reasons to anybody.

Though I have to admit I've bought for the second time some video games or books I had previously refunded, because I finally understood what's the correct mindset to have to enjoy them fully.

Re: Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

#69

Post by AgentME »

Filligree wrote: post #46
cgriswald wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a crapshoot. I’m fortunate in that my mother is a prolific reader. I am too, but she makes me look illiterate. She consumes a ridiculous number of books a year. Lots of it is crap. Some isn’t, and she’s always recommended those ones to me, keeping in mind my own interests. Over the years I’ve met a few others who I trust to recommend books. But most people, even professional reviewers, just don’t work for me. T…

You should try Greg Egan's books, if you like SF at all. I think a good introduction would be Schild's Ladder or Axiomatic, but my personal favorite is the Clockwork Rocket trilogy and Dichromatic. The latter two are conceptually related. If you know about metric signatures, you'll be able to tell how. If not, well, you will.

Seconding Greg Egan. I'd highly recommend Permutation City and Diaspora by him. The books explore mind uploading from lots of interesting angles.

Re: Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

#70

Post by lone_haxx0r »

dgacmu wrote: post #14
lone_haxx0r wrote: post #4

> They can be identified by their independent-bookstore tote bags, their “Book Lover” mugs, or—most reliably—by the bound, printed stacks of paper they flip through on their lap. They are, for lack of a more specific term, readers. Is there some hidden irony in the pointlessness of this paragraph?

Humor from the unexpected juxtaposition of an expository style usually used to describe something rare and unfamiliar with the commonness of the thing being described (plus the implication that reading is becoming unfortunately less common today - or at least acknowledging the fear that it may be so). I found it cute. :)

Thanks. I sometimes miss those cues and don't know if I should take things at face value.
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