I remember lugging along a copy of The Idiot by Dostoyevsky with me to read on the subway and feeling like it made me an intellectual badass. I still treasure the memory of the classic lit I read but I very rarely get any pleasure reading in now. This trend among youth is worrying but seems part of an accelerated mutation of our culture
Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun
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Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun
#182As the parent of a 16 year old, I find this discussion fascinating. My son used to love reading books, from when we started with the "Bob Books" in Kindergarten, through somewhere around 5th or 6th grade. He still loves reading, but mostly for items of topical interest. He does it for fun, to entertain himself, and to learn new things...but it's not books! He scarfs up online content like it's going out of style. TBH…
It is a good question, but reading 400 pages of content is not the same as reading a book.
Books are (usually) the product of intentional long-form writing along with heavy editing and review. The ideas per unit of a book are usually more polished than the ideas in a similar sized unit of online content.
(not criticizing your kid btw, sounds like he is doing great).
Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun
#183I can only speak to my own personal experience, but I was a voracious reader as a child and then sorta just... stopped. The longer life went on, the more I was instructed to ignore or hide my personal feelings and so I just didn't find the characters in the books for my age group, who were largely written by women, to be relatable. There was as large a stretch between the main characters' behavior and what I was taug…
Even Sanderson's "adult" fiction can read as incredibly immature at times. Every character seems to have a caricature of a mental illness. Every thought and feeling they experience seems to tie back to it, and it derails the story while taking away from the excellent world-building. I loved the Stormlight Archives to start with, but they became more and more "woke" (as much as I despise using that word) as time went on.
If you're interested in returning to fiction but through the lens of an adult - a little grittier - I'd recommend Joe Abercrombie, Pierce Brown, Dmitry Glukhovsky, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Dan Abnett, and Andrzej Sapkowski.
Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun
#184> Indeed, several people I spoke to mentioned that middle-graders’ lack of phones created a marketing problem in an era when no one at any publishing house has any idea how to make a book a bestseller other than to hope it blows up on TikTok. “BookTok is imperfect,” said Karen Jensen, a youth librarian and a blogger for School Library Journal, “but in teen publishing it’s generating huge bestsellers, bringing back th…
> Kids don’t need to see digital advertisements to make a decision. They need access to a library stocked with recently published books that kids will enjoy. At 9 I had no idea how to go into a massive thing like a library and make a selection for myself. "Word of mouth" made a lot of choices for me when I was young.
At 9 (and before) i had bookit; where if you chose one of many of the sponsored books at the school (or public) library you got a personal pan pizza coupon.
An interpretation is book cos have cut physical benefit advertising for cents on the dollar internet advertisements.
Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun
#185Anime is an extremely lucrative market, and Westerners spend an absurd amount of money on it, with Hollywood missing out. It's not because it's Japanese, or its weirder quirks, it's just because Japan is making it and Hollywood isn't, because Hollywood is institutionally incapable of believing people want (a) weird fantasy (b) that takes itself seriously (c) in quantity over quality, or even that adult media can be a…
Hollywood also appears institutionally capable of making movies where the actors enunciate properly, where the effect soundtrack isn't louder than the speech, and where nobody is mumbling.
I've given up on them. Sure, fine, that's not how people talk in real life. Whatever. I want to hear what they have to say, otherwise what's even the point?
Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun
#186> Indeed, several people I spoke to mentioned that middle-graders’ lack of phones created a marketing problem in an era when no one at any publishing house has any idea how to make a book a bestseller other than to hope it blows up on TikTok. “BookTok is imperfect,” said Karen Jensen, a youth librarian and a blogger for School Library Journal, “but in teen publishing it’s generating huge bestsellers, bringing back th…
> This part of the article is very off-putting to me. You don’t need TikTok to find good books for kids. Kids don’t need to see digital advertisements to make a decision. They need access to a library stocked with recently published books that kids will enjoy. > The author mentions later on that libraries are being defunded, and this is likely to be the root cause. Rather than spending so many words on speculation it…
Or sponsor book fairs and bookit programs ... which have higher costs than digital ads.
Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> rediscovered reading Any tips? I didn't, somehow. After leaving high school, then university, my brain went into full on "be productive all the time" mode. My brain somehow doesn't think reading is a good use of my time, so I've settled for audiobooks when falling asleep or on long drives. The last book I was able to devour and actually enjoyed was the Harry Potter series, which ended just before I went to universi…
One key thing is: don't feel like you have to suffer through reading an entire book if you don't like it. If it's a chore to read it, find something else - different author, or different type of book.
Giving up on a shitty book feels the same as cancelling plans that you don’t want to do. Feels great.
Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun
#188There's also an epidemic of kids not listening to the radio, but nobody has questions about why.
Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
That does not say teachers can't keep a library. At most it says that the titles in said library need to be reviewed/approved by the school. The emphasis on "taking away libraries" appears to be partly politically motivated. This isn't about censorship per se since we have a baseline expectation of censorship. We already don't allow teachers to stock racist material or porn in classrooms. This new thing seems to that…
The fact that these laws are applied to all books with LGBT content regardless of what they contain - while non-LGBT books with sexual content remain unbanned and available to minors - is what makes it censorship[0]. [0] https://apnews.com/article/lgbtq-florida-dont-say-gay-books-...
Sure but that was backed off. The law does not, in fact, apply to all books with LGBT content regardless of what they contain. There was a March 2024 legal settlement clarifying many cases that are explicitly not prohibited.
Also, do you think these laws have been important regarding the "decline by 9" of 9-year olds reading for enjoyment?
One possible issue on the contrary side is promotion of kids' books involving racial diversity themes. Often such moralizing books are not very interesting for pure entertainment value. They are there to meet a market trend, some may be better than others but in general have not stood the test of time.
Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun
#190There aren’t any spaces left to take your kid to look at books. Without access to internet the only option is the public library but books there are often not displayed in a way that would draw new readers in