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On pretending to have read books

thecritic.co.uk

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Re: On pretending to have read books

#71

Post by mos_basik »

sneak wrote: post #30
tapanjk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last one is when you read the book, then think about it, then read it again, then read about it, then keep reading it over and over for the rest of your life. Agree. Would love to see examples from people of books that fall in this category. I assume it is a short list for most people.

Mine (predictably): 1984 Stranger In A Strange Land The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress Time Enough For Love Friday The Crying Of Lot 49 Seveneves Neuromancer I’ve read all of these at least 4 times, with reading-about-them in between. I usually pick one up to re-read just a part of it, then I get sucked in and before I know it I’ve re-read the whole thing.

I see your Seveneves! For me it's Anathem. Though the fact that it's the only Stephenson book I have a hard copy of probably helps with serendipitous rereads of the kind you describe.

I read Seveneves once from the library and wouldn't mind reading it again though.

I've read The Sprawl books (trilogy?), but accidentally did it out of order and separated by years, so it took me an embarrassingly long time to make some connections. I should read them again in order this time!

Re: On pretending to have read books

#73

Post by bcbrown »

tapanjk wrote: post #9
karaterobot wrote: post #3

I thought for sure this essay would reference Pierre Bayard's really fun How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read . Oh well! Anyway, I think there are at least three kinds of reading. The one where you skim some reviews and read twenty pages is one of them. You can do this in order to just be able to say you've read something without putting in the "work", but you can also do this as part of a serious study of some s…

> The last one is when you read the book, then think about it, then read it again, then read about it, then keep reading it over and over for the rest of your life. Agree. Would love to see examples from people of books that fall in this category. I assume it is a short list for most people.

Language in Thought and Action has deeply affected how I think about thinking. I've read it three times now, and there's one or two dozen other books from the same school of thought that I've read since reading it the first time.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 triggered in me an abiding fascination with the operation of the political process.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#74

Post by mlambie »

lysergia wrote: post #7
karaterobot wrote: post #3

I thought for sure this essay would reference Pierre Bayard's really fun How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read . Oh well! Anyway, I think there are at least three kinds of reading. The one where you skim some reviews and read twenty pages is one of them. You can do this in order to just be able to say you've read something without putting in the "work", but you can also do this as part of a serious study of some s…

It’s worth having some form of takeaway from a book, even if it’s just one profound paragraph that resonated with you, and the rest can be filtered out. I mostly read self help, and have managed to boil some books down to a little kernel of truth that I use daily to help me navigate life. Holding a whole book in your head can be done.

This is why I find, especially for self help books, reading a distilled summary may suffice. Often the Wikipedia page for the book has enough depth for me.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#75

Post by Macha »

lysergia wrote: post #7
karaterobot wrote: post #3

I thought for sure this essay would reference Pierre Bayard's really fun How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read . Oh well! Anyway, I think there are at least three kinds of reading. The one where you skim some reviews and read twenty pages is one of them. You can do this in order to just be able to say you've read something without putting in the "work", but you can also do this as part of a serious study of some s…

It’s worth having some form of takeaway from a book, even if it’s just one profound paragraph that resonated with you, and the rest can be filtered out. I mostly read self help, and have managed to boil some books down to a little kernel of truth that I use daily to help me navigate life. Holding a whole book in your head can be done.

Alternatively, books can be entertainment, and that's fine. This I think is a difference in the types of books read. I generally don't read self help books, my experiences in the past with many of them leaving me uninterested in the genre, and instead tend to mostly read novels, especially sci-fi/fantasy.

It would rather negate the entertainment value, and would feel more like work, if I had to take notes for a book club style experience, though as evidenced by the popularity of book clubs, there's plenty of people who feel different.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#76

Post by Macha »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #51
1sembiyan wrote: post #25

A 15 year old niece told me this week that she can’t be bothered to read because she gets bored by the time she gets to the end of the first page. “Why do that when I have TikTok and YouTube?” It seems like there’s going to be a generation of people who don’t have to pretend to read - they simply don’t care to, and it doesn’t confer the same status TikTok fame does.

It was the same in the previous generation. Not reading school assigned books isn't new to gen Z. People were considered way more odd if they did read the books. Even more so if they said they enjoyed it.

Having had the experience of having read on my own time as a younger teen a book that was on the school curriculum in my later teens, I will say there is something about dissecting a book so you can write essays on it that is pretty effective at removing the enjoyment.

I wouldn't take the unpopularity of school-assigned reading to indicate much about how people would actually feel about reading, but of course there were plenty of classmates who only read the books assigned in school where it would have coloured their opinions on reading as a whole

Re: On pretending to have read books

#77

Post by jkmcf »

quesera wrote: post #34
tapanjk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last one is when you read the book, then think about it, then read it again, then read about it, then keep reading it over and over for the rest of your life. Agree. Would love to see examples from people of books that fall in this category. I assume it is a short list for most people.

I'd also love to see a list of the most common books people claim to have read, but have not. There's some obvious stuff: - Proust - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky - Joyce (although to be fair, how can you tell?) - Probably David Foster Wallace - Knuth :)

I’ve always heard Umberto Eco was at the top during his heyday.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#78

Post by chihan »

Clubber wrote: post #22

>The sad truth is that we are becoming an illiterate society. I guess this is the shame hook of the article. I don't think we're illiterate, probably the opposite. The amount of knowledge I gain by reading things other than books far surpasses the amount of knowledge I've gained reading books, and I've read a lot of them. What's the point of reading books? Gaining knowledge. What's the point of riding a horse? Travel…

I don't mean to offend, but you almost proven the article correct.

He is stating we are becoming a non-reading society. Literacy is about being able to read or write, not the ability to learn new things. You may be correct we are learning a lot more about the world, but we aren't doing it so through the medium of books. I would suggest audio or visual mediums are the new deliverers of information, with context given by Wikipedia.

The value he is presenting, from my point of view, is not pure knowledge gaining, but communal knowledge. At the beginning, he is giving his perspective of a time when everyone read at least a certain set of books, but the island is vast and so has the wondrous coastline to a negative impact.

Also, I could read a Wikipedia article and retain nothing and read a 500 page book and think about it weekly. Interest in the topic is important to retention so is the quality of the book.

I say these things as I watch three hours of YouTube a day... smh.

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