161–170 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.
Speed is subjective. I read way faster than consuming the same thing with audio or video. Reading also gives me opportunity to wander at a pace I'm comfortable with.
Now there is something to care about: whether your kid reading or not is good for publishers.
People reading old second-hand books, even if voraciously, is also bad for publishers.
Two things to bear in mind: my wife & I also love reading and we have a house full of books. We've also prioritized reading to, and around, our children from the time they were infants. Even today I frequently wake my kids by reading aloud to them.
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…
Of course it is hard to do - at least, harder to do than saying "I have a 5 year old, and this book says it is for 5 year olds, so I will have them read it".
Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have. I went to a private "college prep" high school, and the amount of assigned, mandatory reading was insane. I spent so much time reading assigned novels that I just didn't have time to read for pleasure. (And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my home…
> 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…
> Any tips?
> The last book I was able to devour and actually enjoyed was the Harry Potter series
Actually, it was Harry Potter that got me back into reading. I read the first 5 books over the course of 2 weeks the summer after I graduated college.
In some cases I'd see an interview on late night television and read the book the guest was promoting. More recently I read a book that was discussed on the radio during my commute.
In other cases, there was a subject I wanted to learn about, so I'd read books about the subject, or biographies on people who were known in the subject matter.
Sometimes I'll see a movie / TV show based on the book, and like it enough to read the book.
And: J. K. Rowling's new series about Coroman Strike (written under a pseudonym) is excellent. Read it slowly, though. I'm also slowly re-reading Harry Potter to my kids and it's a lot more enjoyable in bits instead of as a binge.
The article kind of rejects this out of hand but I think it's mostly because that doesn't make for an article that touches on all the other topics the author wanted to write about.
>It might be screens, but it’s not only screens. It’s not like kids are suddenly getting their own phones at age 9; recent survey data from Common Sense Media reveals that phone ownership holds steady, at around 30 percent, among kids aged 8 and 9. (It isn’t until they reach 11 or 12 that the majority of American kids have their own phone.) 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.
So there's an uptick in reading for fun when the majority of 12 year olds have phones, allowing publishers to learn how to market to them? I really doubt it. Couldn't find anything supporting that in the Scholastic report where "decline by 9" comes from: https://www.scholastic.com/readingreport/navigate-the-world....
I think they're misinterpreting the Common Sense Media info they cite: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/researc...
Age 8 is as far back as that data goes. If phone ownership started shooting up by 8, for example, it would make sense that it would take about a year for the reading habit to die off as much as it does.
Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have. I went to a private "college prep" high school, and the amount of assigned, mandatory reading was insane. I spent so much time reading assigned novels that I just didn't have time to read for pleasure. (And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my home…
Idk about anyone else but my school had a program called Accelerated Reader where you could read a book and take a test about it to score points. Harder books were worth more points, at the time I think Anna Karenina was the "hardest" book on the list. Anyway the drive to win was what initially got me reading a lot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The defunding thing sounds like a bit of obligatory politics. "In some states, teachers can’t even keep a classroom library because they have to protect themselves from book bans" Yeah this sounds false.
What sounds false about it? A (very straightforward) search surfaced this article https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmq54/florida-teachers-are-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What sounds false about it? A (very straightforward) search surfaced this article https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmq54/florida-teachers-are-...
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…
[0]https://apnews.com/article/lgbtq-florida-dont-say-gay-books-...