Anime 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…
I'd revise (c) to just "in quantity." They're able to throw a lot out to see what sticks, and while a lot of it doesn't, some of it really 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…
> 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…
My reading dropped off for years until I got a kindle. The kindle made reading way more convenient and portable. Totally changed my life.
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?
One thing I definitely noticed with COVID (not specific to libraries and book fairs): a lot of older volunteers stopped volunteering for good - basically "retired" now rather than later. Alone that would imply the situation fixes itself as new volunteers age in, but that's also the loss of a lot of institutional knowledge ...
Unrelated to COVID, our local library was recently taken over by a young new librarian who seemed to make it a goal to actively drive away literally all the old library community.
There was also a proposal to build a new library with a builtin homeless shelter or something ... which is exactly the opposite of helping, since the predominance of "homeless people" is a major reason patrons avoid the library already.
I'm 40 but I think I know, from personal experience, why kids stop reading. A video game in the 90s was 10x more exciting and immersive than most books, to me. Today it's at insane levels of over-stimulation. A 30 second tiktok clip can give you the same type of knowledge that a 300 page book can, but it cuts to the chase, and doesn't bury the lead. Not only life-lessons or hacks either, teenagers are producing entir…
No, a 30 second tiktok clip cannot give you the same type of knowledge that a 300 page book can. That is such a silly thing to say, that I can only imagine you heard it on tiktok.
To play devil's advocate, it has become common to simply read a plot synopsis on something like Wikipedia rather than engage with the book/movie/show/etc. be it for lack of time or interest. This brings one up to speed with the content of the media and is often interesting enough to be worth doing while also taking 1/1000th of the investment. Such a synopsis could be reasonably condensed into a thirty second video. Obviously this is not an equivalent experience to engaging with a 300 page book, but the information conveyed is undeniably the same type of information. Having such information packed so densely, if imperfectly, was unheard of even twenty years ago.
Why wouldn't it be phones? I could read right now, but instead I'm on my nth round of the Hacker News front page. Reading competes against instant gratification, and it doesn't win as often as I'd like it to. Reading requires discipline when scrolling is an option.
Isn't HN mainly text? Aren't you reading?
Reading, writing, discovering, voting, and convincing myself that in just one more minute I will return to my day.
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…
I think a lot of it is what goes on at home (surprise, this is basically for all education). I know I did reading as part of my schoolwork and homework. The reading I most remember was during the summer. A few were summer work related and needed reports, but the book choice was open ended. Many were not school related but encouraged by my parents.
When I was that age my teacher had a thing where reading something like 3 books got you out of a lot of homework and your parent had to sign a paper listing what you read and you turned it in. As a kid who already hated school, and used reading as an escape from a pretty shit childhood, I was clocking in 5 books a week. The teacher first accused my parents of lying that I read that many books, because it quickly got…
> The teacher first accused my parents of lying that I read that many books, because it quickly got to double digits, but I was able to summarize all of them off the top of my head, so instead I was just forbidden from doing it altogether. > Not sure what the lesson is there, lol. Lessons learned: a) Incentives matter (economy 101) b) If a market offers possibilities for arbitrage, market participants will attempt to…
Oh I mean what was the intended lesson from the teacher. Read less?
If it's painful to you, you're doing it wrong. At 8 you should get him to the library and let him chose himself what books he wants to read. Also, you don't have to like the books he choses. You despising his book choice is irrelevant.
If I just let him do what he wants he just plays on iPads or computers in the library (iPads have bunch of games installed, computers do not have games but you can obviously play Web-based stuff etc). He doesn't care much about books unfortunately. It's my job as a parent to make sure he does read something (I'm trying to find something he likes and something that's more of a long form as opposed to a comic). I do re…
I won't stand for Pilkey slander. I have worked in education. His books are certainly silly, but they are indeed a very functional gateway to get kids to enjoy reading on their own. Yes, they are immature, they are for kids. No, they won't make your kids into delinquents, especially not if they get your kids to read a lot more than they would have. I think it's important to show kids that reading doesn't have to be all textbooks and dry academics, it can be fun and enjoyable, because why would they ever read of their own volition if by their perception it isn't fun at all?
There's no good reason to think it's not phones. 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 ho…
Why wouldn't it be phones? I could read right now, but instead I'm on my nth round of the Hacker News front page. Reading competes against instant gratification, and it doesn't win as often as I'd like it to. Reading requires discipline when scrolling is an option.
If this fact began in the last decade, I'd agree with you, but the linked Scholastic report shows this phenomenon pre-dates phones. Interest in reading at different ages has held steady dating back to at least 2010. 2010 is before most kids had their own smartphone. It also isn't like all kids suddenly get a smartphone at age 9.
> 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.
Weird. At 9 I randomly picked whatever looked interesting. If I liked it, I proceeded to read every single other thing by that author. There was no "word of mouth" because I was the only kid in my class who read for pleasure.
Same - except many of my friends were reading for fun. Oh this has a skeleton on the cover? Guess I’ll read everything this guy/gal ever wrote.
All the libraries I’ve been to recently are very well set up for discoverability. Especially the kids section. There are hundreds of books on display with some indication of what it’s like and themed sections and all kinds of stuff