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It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

theatlantic.com

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Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#311

Post by HelloMcFly »

chowells wrote: post #264
eudamoniac wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's also important to realize that it is "doing it bad" if you are hoping to run a 4 minute mile but your only training is slowly walking around the block forever. At some point you have to seek out more substantial books. You can't just continually read pulp fiction and think you're going to improve at anything; you have to progress.

Improve at what? Pretentiousness? Book people really hate to hear it, but literary fiction follows Sturgeon's law just as much as Sturgeon's own genre. 90% of it isn't worth reading, and that includes 90% of what's fashionable at any given time. You're better off reading books you enjoy than suffering through garbage that you're told you're a bad person if you don't read. (Literary fiction isn't bad. But for the love…

> But for the love of reading, skip anything new and fashionable until enough decades go by for the influnce of fashion to fade

You could stick to the old stuff, but I think it's also enjoyable to read things written by people that exist in the context I exist in. I don't know what "fashionable" means to you - likely best seller lists of awards? - but I don't find it all that difficult or burdensome (in fact, I find it fun!) to look for newer books dealing with topics and themes I'm interested in. Sure, not all of them are great, but a few are, and many are good. It's a little less fun TO ME to ONLY read consensus lists arounds "top books of the 70s" or whatever.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#312

Post by gosub100 »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #42
gosub100 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave up on reading because the authors want to spend a considerable number of pages telling me the color of the buttons on an imaginary character's outfit. They have no such right to waste my time with (or even worse, charge me money for) that.

Books have a built in fast-forward feature.

My English teachers told me to get to the point, don't start sentences with "and", and every sentence should support the central theme. Apparently authors think they can make their book thicker and more authoritative by wasting time describing the color of something I wouldn't even look at in real life. But I notice and don't fall for it. Sorry you don't value your time.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#313

Post by DeluluDon »

surgical_fire wrote: post #125
lp4v4n wrote: post #23

It's been my impression that classic literature is going the same way as painting and other forms of high art. It was certainly a great display of human intellectual prowess and artistic capacity in bygone times when the world moved at a much slower pace, but who has the time and the energy to read a long novel today? Even cinema is dying and nobody seems to care that much.

> Even cinema is dying and nobody seems to care that much. Ever since cinema got reduced to the next Marvel superhero movie, I stopped caring about it.

That's exactly why I'm no longer interested in cinema. When year after year it was some Marvel chuckleknuckle fantasy after the writer's strike it was obvious Hollywood was struggling and had zero imagination anymore.

Even the word 'nerd' got reduced to Trekkie and Star Wars fandom when it used to mean tech enthusiast.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#314

Post by lapcat »

jjk166 wrote: post #299
lapcat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reading an entire book takes much more time than placing an online bet. Yes, but do you only do things for pleasure if they're done quickly? Is your sex always over in a minute? Also, I was responding to this: > Likewise, reading for pleasure "on any given day" is a totally different measure than "placed a bet last year". Yes, reading for pleasure "on any given day" is a different measure than "placed a bet last ye…

> Yes, but do you only do things for pleasure if they're done quickly? Is your sex always over in a minute? You do things for pleasure more often if they're done quickly. When was the last time you had a lovemaking session so long you could have read a book in the time?

I don't think I've read a book from cover to cover in one sitting since I was a kid. But I nonetheless read most days, sometimes just a chapter at a time. You don't need to read a book in one day, or even one week.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#315

Post by coolThingsFirst »

4er_transform wrote: post #172

Who cares about reading? Take a step back - humans don’t exist to read, reading is a tool, a means to an end. It’s to transmit information from one to another. If we can do that with more information-dense, less lossy methods, all the better. Lamenting the end of reading is like lamenting the end of manual farm work: the goal isn’t to work in fields, it’s to harvest. We found ways to harvest more than ever for less e…

What an imbecillic thing to say and shamelessly glossed with some autistic idea of maximizing info throughout.

Prose is an art form, reading 100 years of solitude is not the same as reading the news.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#316

Post by jjk166 »

lapcat wrote: post #314
jjk166 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but do you only do things for pleasure if they're done quickly? Is your sex always over in a minute? You do things for pleasure more often if they're done quickly. When was the last time you had a lovemaking session so long you could have read a book in the time?

I don't think I've read a book from cover to cover in one sitting since I was a kid. But I nonetheless read most days, sometimes just a chapter at a time. You don't need to read a book in one day, or even one week.

When was the last time you broke up a single instance of sex into a dozen or so blocks over the course of a week? It doesn't matter that they don't need to be consecutive hours, it still takes hours, which means it can't be done nearly as frequently as something that takes seconds.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#317

Post by senordevnyc »

tolerance wrote: post #292
senordevnyc wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an incredibly off-putting and pretentious way to view what probably constitutes the majority of your fellow humans.

Try reading the entire thing.

Based on this snippet, I’ll pass.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#318

Post by breezybottom »

tsunamifury wrote: post #301
breezybottom wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Revenue is price times quantity. One can offset the other, in fact, you just explained how.

By your rather … interesting… logic. Opera is most popular now than in the 1800s. (It’s not).

Popularity was never part of the conversation.

Re: It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history

#319

Post by lapcat »

jjk166 wrote: post #316
lapcat wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I've read a book from cover to cover in one sitting since I was a kid. But I nonetheless read most days, sometimes just a chapter at a time. You don't need to read a book in one day, or even one week.

When was the last time you broke up a single instance of sex into a dozen or so blocks over the course of a week? It doesn't matter that they don't need to be consecutive hours, it still takes hours, which means it can't be done nearly as frequently as something that takes seconds.

I think you're missing the point here. By any measure, whether a year—"fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022"—or a day—"the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023"—there is time to read books.

The relative amount of time it takes to read a book compared to the time it takes to place a bet is largely irrelevant, because reading books is worth doing, and there is time for it. If you want, you can read and bet, on the same day!

It's not necessarily true, however, that gambling can be done more frequently than reading, because gambling requires money, and if you keep gambling a lot, you'll likely run out of money.

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