61–70 of 504 posts
I think the big problem with reading is that it's much slower compared to other media. Add in the fact that you can also only read for so long before your eyes get tired and then people just naturally veer away from it.
I'd say you need some eye correction then. Ever since I got glasses, getting tired by reading means it's time for a visit to the optometrist to update my lenses.
I don't particularly buy any of the explanations given in the article, or ITT for that matter. I had tons of screen time as a child, that didn't stop me from reading a ton then or now. Schools (and I) were just as test-focused back then. I wasn't getting book recs from my peers so that doesn't make sense to me either. Maybe I'm an anomaly here but I never found the books targeted at children/teens especially interest…
Do you have kids? "Give your kids books they'd be interested in" is kind of classic meaningless advice. Like, sure, of course that's what you want to do -- except, if you have a kid who doesn't have an existing strong reading habit, how do you find books they'd be interested in? Like, that's the goal! You can't just assume the solution. I have a nine-year-old daughter who definitely does read, but isn't a voracious r…
If you haven't yet, push out beyond fiction. In my experience, libraries have a really divergent collection of large, illustrated volumes.
When I was 5-10 I read comic strip books - but also encyclopedias. Specifically World Book; Britannica was too dry.
note: I've no complaint with graphic novels. Sons 1, 2 & 5 were big into them. One is writing fiction. Two was into physics and anime, is now into psychology and early Japanese film making. Five performs+crafts his own music videos.
Also, society has changed so much.
I grew up in a time when there was no such thing as "children's books". My first reading was some pulp fiction, then some bestsellers, then Dracula. I got to Wuthering Heights when I was n. I found it gripping, but I understood almost nothing. Luckily - crazy luckily - I have a friend, a n-year-old girl, who also read Wuthering and introduced me to it. So I read it again.
> Yet I can’t help but be worried that the kinds of books that changed my life between ages 8 and 12 are falling by the wayside. Is there room for the thoughtful, serious, beautiful young-person’s novel in 2024? Can you publish Bridge to Terabithia in the age of Captain Underpants? ...Uh, come the 90s, Bridge to Terabithia was a required reading book that I don't think anyone my age cared about. The popular series I…
> Yet I can’t help but be worried that the kinds of books that changed my life between ages 8 and 12 are falling by the wayside. Is there room for the thoughtful, serious, beautiful young-person’s novel in 2024? Can you publish Bridge to Terabithia in the age of Captain Underpants? ...Uh, come the 90s, Bridge to Terabithia was a required reading book that I don't think anyone my age cared about. The popular series I…
> I think it's much simpler, adults don't know what kids are interested in
Pretty much everyone I know (including myself) who read a lot as a kid but doesn't read much anymore identifies being forced to read things in school as the reason they don't. Being forced to read stuff we didn't find interesting isn't the whole issue though because I think there are things I might have actually enjoyed reading in another context. In my experience, the larger issue is what happened in the classroom alongside the reading. Most if not all teachers I had would give quizzes designed to ensure we kept up with the reading that essentially would pick out tiny random details from the assigned chapters ask us about them, and that took the focus away from actually absorbing the higher-level themes and insights that I'd normally make when reading on my own. Even worse, when discussing things afterwards in the classroom, there was usually a certain analysis or viewpoint that was deemed "correct" that we were supposed to figure out and be able to reproduce when we were tested on the entirety of the book after we finished it. Making me read a book to memorize random details and _not_ have any thoughts of my own on what things meant because I would just get told what to think later ruined any enjoyment I used to have of reading; they might as well have just given me a page of bullet points to memorize than give me an entire book full of pages and pages of stuff to distract from what they actually were trying to make me learn.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have kids? "Give your kids books they'd be interested in" is kind of classic meaningless advice. Like, sure, of course that's what you want to do -- except, if you have a kid who doesn't have an existing strong reading habit, how do you find books they'd be interested in? Like, that's the goal! You can't just assume the solution. I have a nine-year-old daughter who definitely does read, but isn't a voracious r…
You've probably already seen these, but just in case: https://www.mangaclassics.com
I'm not saying they are not worthy of consumption or anything like that, but A: I doubt very many teachers would accept a "book report" written about a graphic novel and B: consuming graphic novels, by their nature, is not purely reading. Your brain/imagination has far less work to do, as you don't have to mentally picture the scenes/people/actions, they are right there for you to look at.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel the opposite way, at least from the point of view of absorbing information. I often have a hard time with podcasts and often youtube videos because I feel I could have read the info there in a few minutes vs watching/listening to something for much longer
I agree but think that's different. That's probably a 10min-read kind of article versus a couple-hour-long book. I agree with the parent comment that reading is just slower. All of the blabbering people do in podcasts and in youtube videos to draw out the length feels like it ends up in books too but it's harder to skip because you don't really know when the important stuff happens. I just turn youtube videos and pod…
It ends up just being the same thing over and over again. The author explaining minute details about the day they interviewed someone, what the weather was like, extreme details of the interviewee's facial expressions. The author somehow managing to fit the Stanford Prison Experiment in the book. The author going into excruciating detail about the scientific method. The author giving an unnecessary history of the topic back to when humans were hunter gatherers.
It has been a very long time since I came across a non-fiction book that didn't feel like it could've been 50 pages long. I end up giving up a few chapters in.
I think the big problem with reading is that it's much slower compared to other media. Add in the fact that you can also only read for so long before your eyes get tired and then people just naturally veer away from it.
Personal experience: when I was a kid, I instinctively knew when a book tried to "teach" me something or instill some world view and I immediately know the intention and found that boring. The really exciting books were those that either didn't try to teach anything or those that didn't make it so obvious. Might it be that the contemporary literature for children is constantly trying to push an educational agenda and…
Entertainment with a message is fucking boring no matter the form. Movies are no better in this respect.
Unless they're done by a genius but then you won't even notice the message.