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Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I hope this comment wasn't too off-topic from the main point of "pleasure" It looks to me far away over there in the "what's my profit in reading" direction I'm afraid.
Fair enough :-) Do you have a theory for why we view reading, even in terms of pleasure, as favorable? I imagine it's because we see some utility in it over other activities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That difference is like comparing taking a piss and having sex. While you use the same body part the experiences are not at all alike.
The thing with analogies, we can make them go either way. It's like having sex after a whole day of sex work. Exhausting.
I read for pleasure; ~100 books a year on average. When I go anywhere, I am reading. My daughter informed me that the mothers of her teammates were outright making fun of me for having my 'nose buried in a book,' before every event. I asked her if they were making fun of everyone else for having their nose buried in their phones; she laughed and said they probably were not. Why is reading for fun something that's wor…
I read for pleasure; ~100 books a year on average. When I go anywhere, I am reading. My daughter informed me that the mothers of her teammates were outright making fun of me for having my 'nose buried in a book,' before every event. I asked her if they were making fun of everyone else for having their nose buried in their phones; she laughed and said they probably were not. Why is reading for fun something that's wor…
Nothing points to that in our abysmal PISA reading results, general educational attainment and outcomes, or anecdotal observation, but hey! At least it might be worth asking them about the surveying methodology.
[1] https://www.cultura.gob.es/ca/actualidad/2026/01/260122-baro...
Recommendations? What are you reading? I recently enjoyed a few books of the "We are Legion, We are Bob" series
Beyond that, I just started Captive's War, written by the people behind The Expanse, which I adore, and it's looking similarly good (similar to The Expanse; not LotR. I think it will be hard for things to match LotR for me).
As a parent of school aged kids today, I know that rubs off on my kids too. I happily read to them and share a joy in a book with them. But I don't set a role model of reading a book causally on my own.
I've wondered if some of this is the home life and some of the frustrations from our own school years running off a bit too.
It's worse than this. I have kids in school. Our school system is one of the top in Connecticut, which is the quintessential "school" state (if any rich kid on TV goes away to school, it's probably to CT). These kids (all of them, not mine) can't really read. Not like when I was young. (I'm not even old! I graduated in the 2000's!) They certainly can't write. They have no stamina to do an essay or a test like when I…
I also wonder how the Montessori schools are doing, since I believe they focus less on rote skill acquisition and more on creativity.
Question: do you think reading is fundamentally worthwhile in terms of practicality, or is there some other medium that would achieve both pleasure and better information retention? I think it's undeniable that a lot of good comes from reading, and many here would probably agree it's better than scrolling Instagram reels or even watching YouTube videos. Still, reading by itself is just one medium that we found useful…
> Question: do you think reading is fundamentally worthwhile in terms of practicality, or is there some other medium that would achieve both pleasure and better information retention? If your quality bar is 'better information retention' then reading is going to be hard to beat. Videos/podcasts don't measure up. 'pleasure' is hard to measure, and gets confounded because reading takes more effort than watching a video…
We generally worry less if we see utility in it, and if we have people to share our hobby with. I think it's reasonable to say there's few hobbies out there without real world utility.