What if we're reading less and less today for the same reason we no longer have town criers or pictograms?
Why can’t we read anymore?
161–170 of 198 posts
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. If there is one thing that is effectively endless is books to read. If you read one book per week for you entire life you would barely scratch the surface. This means that there is an incredible variety of books ranging from the fun entertaining page-turners those books that you "need a degree" to understand. The thing is, just because a book has a higher entry barrier (and a higher payoff) doesn't mean t…
We shall have to agree to disagree then. Literary analysis doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. The enjoyable part of the reading experience for me is engaging with the picture it paints, with the world it posits and the characters it places within it. I certainly enjoy reading books with more depth that The DaVinci Code, but I can think of little that would interrupt my enjoyment of reading more than stepping back…
You make valid and understandable points, I think, but I'd still like to expose my point of view, as I read mostly "classics", interrupted by the occasional piece of non-fic.
I'm not really into stopping my reading to take notes and analyze sentence structures either. However, I deeply enjoy it when the author uses fiction to express complex ideas about society, philosophy and human life in general. I enjoy that I can feel these themes happen through the character development, and the author's thesis come though as the plot advances.
For some especially heavy reads though, this might not happen so organically and that's when it stops feeling like enjoying a good read, and feels more like trying to understand Kant, sentence by sentence. I don't think at this point in my life I'd enjoy Joyce much, either (though I've heard Portrait is somewhat more accessible).
However I do find that the more I read, the more enjoyable I find reading novels with complex themes and such. Practice, I guess, and I find it very rewarding. Just start with something that's not too hard and go from there.
I just can't remember where, but a couple weeks ago I read an editorial in a paper that was about how, historically, fiction has been so much better at expressing "subversive" ideas and bringing them out in the culture. Just think about the thinkers of the French Revolution.
That's why I enjoy good fiction :)
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
came here looking for that comment, was expecting it to be top-post ..
And you know, it's interesting to think about why that is, and how that helps anybody. Have you ever gone onto a blogpost about procrastination and found the "I'll read this later" comment, and the "I'm here reading this instead of working" comment? Are those comments ever valuable? It makes sense to downvote them to the bottom, so that people who go looking for them can find them, but the discussion is kept as fresh…
we are getting meta but I think these type of comments are of a different breed. These do not provide any meaningful (or value) to the conversation nor are related to the subject, on the other hand the "tl;dr" was totally related to the context of the article, and a nice pun intended for the sense of humor.
Also it was how this whole conversation started, although really tangential to the OP; which encouraged a conversation.
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#164Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sizes varied but most of them were fiction. One day I read seven in an evening. It's not that special. It was the result of a highly insular life spent not doing much other than read.
Seven books in one evening? I cannot fathom such a thing. Were these "books" of the comic variety perchance?
Nope, I believe they were teen mystery books probably about 100-200 pages long. I read pretty fast.
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. If there is one thing that is effectively endless is books to read. If you read one book per week for you entire life you would barely scratch the surface. This means that there is an incredible variety of books ranging from the fun entertaining page-turners those books that you "need a degree" to understand. The thing is, just because a book has a higher entry barrier (and a higher payoff) doesn't mean t…
We shall have to agree to disagree then. Literary analysis doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. The enjoyable part of the reading experience for me is engaging with the picture it paints, with the world it posits and the characters it places within it. I certainly enjoy reading books with more depth that The DaVinci Code, but I can think of little that would interrupt my enjoyment of reading more than stepping back…
Complexity is not synonym with intentional or unnecessary obfuscation. The latter is just a silly way to create needless barriers to the understanding of the work.
I'd like to say that I can't speak much for books. Like I said I don't read heavy classics nor do I spend dozens of hours analysing a text, but I sometimes do with music. Part of the pleasure I get from listening to classical music is from the aesthetic beauty and pleasantness of the sound, but a larger part is perhaps from re-listening to it and analysing it and discovering new things and meaning in the music. I have pieces that I have listened probably over 50 times, and still I can find new intricacies, or read an analysis that calls my attention to details I have missed, or simply just marvel at the ingenuity of some passage, etc.
For me, analysis isn't a boring procedure that sucks the fun out of art. Much to the contrary, it enhances and deepens my experience beyond what I would have by reading the book/listening to the piece and then putting it aside forever.
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#167The author makes no considerations about writing for the web. He would hate to hear that, of course, but there's no way I am going to read that. Well, maybe if I feed it into a summarization app, maybe. ;)
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#168I've memorized a relevant XKCD just for this occasion, because it comes up so much: http://xkcd.com/1227/ > "Intellectual laziness and the hurry of the age have produced a craving for literary nips. The torbid brain... has grown too weak for sustained thought." – Israel Zangwill, The Bachelor's Club, 1891 I highly, highly recommend everybody read "The Information: How The Internet Gets Inside Us" by Adam Gopnik: http…
While it does appear that the perspective you're talking about has been repeated over and over, it's important to recognise that it's a perspective which applies to whatever time in which it was held. Therefore, it's relative. Maybe the past _was_ amazing and wonderful, and perhaps _that_ past's past was even _more_ amazing and wonderful. It's possible things _are_ getting worse and worse all the time, only society h…
Except most of the activities that are cited as "dying" in the late 1800s are still alive and well. Long walks? Check, still here and valued. Letter writing? Not as prevalent, but still done. Conversation? Still existent, despite naysayers in the 1800s and people claiming text is the death of conversation.
I think the difference people are noticing is that as some things begin to have an alternative, the minority (or majority) that would prefer said alternative can now express that desire where it was not possible before. Take the quote about sitting down and enjoying long meals. Maybe that's not everybody's cup of tea, but now it's a lot easier to get a quick meal on the go and some people prefer it.
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#169Part of the problem is articles like this. There were perhaps five interesting sentences of content in that entire piece, and several hundred entirely redundant words and personal examples used only to set the tone. If modern writers have such disrespect for their audience, is it any wonder some of that audience hasn't the attention span to stick with it? Older, serious, and timeless literature requires deep concentr…
I am not a huge fan of Medium.com, it has way too less content displayed per screen, way too huge font and one has to scroll all the way down to read anything, it is annoying , not to mention the huge images everwhere, which gives the images more importance than the content.
Agreed. Are there any websites that you really like the presentation?
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#170Part of the problem is articles like this. There were perhaps five interesting sentences of content in that entire piece, and several hundred entirely redundant words and personal examples used only to set the tone. If modern writers have such disrespect for their audience, is it any wonder some of that audience hasn't the attention span to stick with it? Older, serious, and timeless literature requires deep concentr…
> If modern writers have such disrespect for their audience As opposed to whom, paid-by-the-word Dickens and his amazing menagerie of circumlocutions? ;-)
Perhaps, but the further back you go, the starker the shift in reading habits becomes. I skimmed this article in 5 minutes and probably won't remember it tomorrow. Compare two centuries ago, when the only books most people had were the Bible and Milton, and they memorized every word. Or three centuries before that, when the people who could read might have to travel across Europe to read a particular book, and might commit each page to a memory palace.