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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

#241

Post by godelski »

gwbas1c wrote: post #88

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…

> And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my homework?

Not to mention that we're reading right now...

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#242

Post by feoren »

renewiltord wrote: post #116
janalsncm wrote: post #56

> 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…

It's interesting that all problems in America are due to "funding". It's actually quite curious because funding was a problem for electric vehicles, funding was a problem for space, funding was a problem for literally everything. But then sometimes people come up and succeed at things that others have described as a funding problem for ages. I think I can conclude reasonably from this is that the lowest efficiency le…

> Schools with the highest funding have the worst performance.

Spills with the most paper towels are the messiest. Why does everyone think they need paper towels to clean up spills!?

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#243

Post by imzadi »

fullwaza wrote: post #199
imzadi wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my favorite. I've listened to all the books 6+ times.

The Bobiverse series ("We are Legion (We Are Bob)") is also very good and kind of along the same style.

Oh yeah, I've listened to all of this and some of Dennis E. Taylor's other stuff, as well. I've also listened to all of ExFor and everything Andy Weir, almost everything narrated by Travis Baldree, too.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#244

Post by emseetech »

iknowSFR wrote: post #129
bluerooibos wrote: post #99

Earlier 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…

Try Brandon Sanderson novels. General change to my habits has been that if I’m not feeling a story, it’s okay to put it down. The amount of reading I have trudged through because I was afraid of quitting…

I suggest Stephen King as a reintroduction for general audiences (since a lot of people have a hard time vibing with high fantasy, I know I do).

He's not the greatest writer of all time, but he's enjoyable while not feeling like you're reading YA or something age inappropriate. And his classics are classics for a reason.

Can't go wrong with Carrie, The Stand, Misery, The Shining or Salem's Lot.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#245

Post by janalsncm »

renewiltord wrote: post #116
janalsncm wrote: post #56

> 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…

It's interesting that all problems in America are due to "funding". It's actually quite curious because funding was a problem for electric vehicles, funding was a problem for space, funding was a problem for literally everything. But then sometimes people come up and succeed at things that others have described as a funding problem for ages. I think I can conclude reasonably from this is that the lowest efficiency le…

The billionaires who look for every tax loophole possible certainly know the value of “funding”. They are currently funding their yachts to take them to their superyachts. Private equity controlled health care companies are extracting billions of dollars in profits (read: overcharging people who want to live) leading to “efficiencies” like understaffing and under training which cause thousands of excess deaths every year.

Elon Musk received plenty of government funding for his companies as well. And guess what? BYD sells more cars than Tesla now (a few years ago Elon said he wasn’t worried about them and now they’re suddenly a problem) because of what? Government funding. Governments have also funded the majority of fundamental research which made present day technologies possible. Even today NIST, DARPA, NHS, NSF etc continue to fund science and technology research.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#246

Post by emseetech »

bluerooibos wrote: post #99
gwbas1c wrote: post #88

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?

Here's a trick that helped me after a ten+ year hiatus and having my attention fried by social media:

A lot of people who have lost their attention span to technology will find themselves reading but not absorbing, their mind wandering, until they realize they'd "read" 3 pages and don't remember what happened.

So read slow and with purpose, but most importantly at the end of each page, ask yourself what you just read and have a conversation with yourself about it. This helped rebuild my comprehension and focus. This is similar to how English classes will read a book as a class: Reading then discussion, reading then discussion. But instead of as a group, do it as an internal dialogue.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#247

Post by janalsncm »

feoren wrote: post #242
renewiltord wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that all problems in America are due to "funding". It's actually quite curious because funding was a problem for electric vehicles, funding was a problem for space, funding was a problem for literally everything. But then sometimes people come up and succeed at things that others have described as a funding problem for ages. I think I can conclude reasonably from this is that the lowest efficiency le…

> Schools with the highest funding have the worst performance. Spills with the most paper towels are the messiest. Why does everyone think they need paper towels to clean up spills!?

Hospitals have higher mortality rates than grocery stores. If I have a heart attack you’ll find me in the deli.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#248

Post by akira2501 »

janalsncm wrote: post #204
akira2501 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That’s ok, part of the joy of going to a library is finding out about new things you’ve never even heard of. And we also already have human recommendation systems, they’re called librarians!

I ended up in the government section. Reading reports about arms and equipment transfers from the US Government to the Middle East made in the 1980s. It was definitely fascinating, especially because the Middle East was in the news at that time, but I really was only there because I had _no idea_ what to actually do.

I'm not saying the library doesn't have exceptional value, or that 9 year olds shouldn't be in it, but maybe for younger patrons a "concierge" type service or "first timer group experience" being available would help a lot.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#249

Post by ethanholt1 »

Whenever I was about 9-10, I used to love reading books, and I read about 1-3 full novels a month. Whenever I graduated elementary school and went into middle school, the required reading that was assigned left me to have no more time reading what I found interesting, which eventually led to me just losing my interest in books.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#250

Post by bennettnate5 »

I remember Scholastic would put on a big book fair twice a school year in our school's library. There would be tons of new/upcoming book series marketed that kids could buy (with their parent's money), along with the obligatory custom bookmarks and kid-oriented stationary. It targeted 8 to 12 year olds--maybe that was the practice pre-covid and booksellers have moved away from that sort of thing?
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