New books aren't worth reading?

You know who viewed the writing of history as political entertainment? Ancient Romans!

In SPQR, Mary Beard elaborates that much of what we "know" about ancient Rome was recorded by men with political projects. Sometimes it was to glorify the empire or republic; sometimes it was to grind an axe against their personal enemies (looking at you, Cicero). Then their records were often interpreted once again by scholars in the early-modern-to-pre-contemporary era where they became accepted history. (1)

So yes, Beard never conquered Asia minor and thinks women should be full citizens (unlike the Romans), but her scholarship is both informative and IMO entertaining. Perhaps moreso than ancient writers.

(1) Drawing the line at WWII when using Roman history as an example is a peculiar choice because the study and glorification of Rome was _very_ popular in certain European countries in the preceding century.

Well-written books, especially the wealth of contemporary works now available in translation, affects me, and presumably many others alike, more deeply than almost anything else. I eagerly await my few hours of nightly isolation to explore new writing from around the world. There's lots to explore, trust me.

> The only people who still read books for entertainment are women who prefer their porn to have DIY visuals. The stats back me up on this. If you’re tempted to disagree, go walk the aisles of Barnes & Noble.

I found this interesting. I have a young child who is a voracious reader. I thus often find myself at Barnes and Noble or the UK equivalent, Waterstones. These places are often quite busy and have rows and rows of books. It blows my mind that in the days of TikTok, YouTube and The Algorithm these places are solvent let alone successful? Are people today actually reading?

That’s certainly an opinion. I’m not convinced that it's a good one, but it’s an interesting one.

I think it’s probably important to remember two things: 1) the novel is a relatively modern invention — Don Quixote is often thought of as the first novel, and it was written in 1605, but 2) fiction clearly is not. The Iliad, for instance. In fact, what we think of as “history”, a recounting of events strongly tied to facts, is also a relatively new invention. It is my understanding that ancient authors were more interested in telling you what was true, in a spitirual, philosophical, or moral sense than in telling you strictly what happened. Obviously this is more clear when reading e.g. religious texts like the Bible, but my understanding is that it’s also true of more “straight” histories — Roman historians were not above inventing entire speeches for which there were not extant records and placing them in the mount of a Julius Caesar or whoever. So strictly speaking if you’re reading sources as old as the OP suggests, there’s no getting away from what we would call fiction.

My wife and I have an ongoing conflict of taste in matters of literature. She prefers what I consider to be absolutely depressing high literature. One of her favorites is The House of Mirth, wherein the protagonist starts out wealthy, slowly goes into debt, ends up impoverished and addicted to morphine, and ends the book by committing suicide. She says she likes these stories because they’re “more realistic”. I claim that no, they aren’t, and even if they were I read specifically because I get enough realism by waking up in the morning, thank you very much, and although I’m not averse to deep thoughts in my literature I usually prefer it with a side of likeable characters.

Anyway, my point is: to pick an example, LOTR is a book of fiction written after WWII, and although Tolkien was an expert on and was drawing from a deep pool of literary traditions that predate written language, he was also addressing modern concerns, and that’s what makes the book more interesting than Beowulf. It’s don’t care that it’s labeled “fiction”; the concepts it explores are as true, in the ancient sense, as straight Greek philosophy, and maybe even as applicable. And if you want to read for information, you’re almost certainly going to get better information by reading a modern history of Rome than by reading Polybius.

The author did not strike me as someone who actually goes to Barnes & Noble or the library very often.

60% of American adults say they read at least one book last year: https://today.yougov.com/entertainment/articles/53804-most-a...

That's more than 260 million people, and it doesn't include kids. I imagine a lot of the people in Barnes & Noble are kids or are shopping for their kids. I do also find it a bit surprising to find bookstores busy - I read a lot but it's nearly all ebooks or audiobooks, but if even a small percentage of readers like the feel of a physical book, that's enough to keep the stores full.