51–60 of 334 posts
One widely discussed study, for instance, judges students on their ability to parse the muddy and semantically tortuous opening of “Bleak House”; this is a little like assessing swimmers on their ability to cross fifty yards of molasses. WTF. Asking university English students to read a book is not asking swimmers to go through molasses.
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That’s the preface, the study in question dealt with the opening of Chapter 1
I like it “London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizz…
Unsurprising that readers must be encouraged to improve their attention spans. ("Git gud at readin'")
Haha. Liars. Less than one percent, tops.
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It's moderately dense literature, as muddy and gloomy as the portrayal of london, but I would expect the majority of people to be able to read this?
I for one absolutely agree that reading this : reading books intended for transmitting information = swimming through molasses : swimming through water
New modalities of presentation will make media more accessible to a wider audience, so they can benefit and learn from it, even if some of the magic is lost in translation. Consider how many more people got to experience Lord of the Rings thanks to the Peter Jackson movies, who otherwise would've never picked up the books.
To a certain extent, translations which play with the presentation and complexity of the text have already been around for hundreds of years. Just compare all the translations of the Bible.
Some modernized retellings of classic stories are quite delightful, like Stephen Fry's series of classic Greek mythology.
Personally, I can't wait to generate an anime based on Penrose's The Road To Reality.
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It's moderately dense literature, as muddy and gloomy as the portrayal of london, but I would expect the majority of people to be able to read this?
I suspect a majority of the population has no idea what "Michaelmas term" is. And there's some other phrases in there that require some familiarity with things commonplace in the 19th century that aren't so in the 21st century.
Freuqntly after reading books like "Ray Dalio Principles" and "The hard thing about Hard things" and "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck", they are so long that I forget the point of the book and just never put it into my own words so I forget everything unless its been repeated throughout the book 6 times. there's no knowledge check at the end of most books. So like the article says I just subscribe to blinkist now…
Actual academic monographs and good novels are usually book length because their arguments and stories (and characters) require that book length to reach their full potential.
One widely discussed study, for instance, judges students on their ability to parse the muddy and semantically tortuous opening of “Bleak House”; this is a little like assessing swimmers on their ability to cross fifty yards of molasses. WTF. Asking university English students to read a book is not asking swimmers to go through molasses.
It really is, students were asked to read a passage in what could be reasonably called a dialect of English that they don't read, write, or speak; that makes reference and uses turns of phrase that would be well-understood by readers at the time but are archaic to a modern reader. If you did that same exact passage but had someone transliterate it into modern English like "foot-passengers" -> "pedestrians" I bet the…
They were asked to read the opening chapter of Bleak House. It's pretty much standard English.
> LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln�s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes � gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.
The only word I see there that isn't used the same way in bog standard American English is "wonderful." I will grant you that "Michaelmas" is obscure to an American, but "Michaelmas Term [] over" is clear enough: it's a specific span of time that has elapsed. You don't need to know exactly what "Lincoln's Inn Hall" is any more than if you read
> I went to Carnegie Deli
and didn't know what Carnigie Deli is. It's obviously a deli.
Well, when I was a kid in the 80s in communist Romania, life was a lot similar to 19th century than what someone in Western countries was experiencing. No TV (obviously no computers), so most significant form of entertainment came from reading primarily. I never read "classics" or the books that were on school's compulsory list but I did read anything I could get my hands on and looked entertaining. I recall seeing t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect a majority of the population has no idea what "Michaelmas term" is. And there's some other phrases in there that require some familiarity with things commonplace in the 19th century that aren't so in the 21st century.
Count me among those who have no idea when Michaelmas is, but does it really matter? The next sentence tells you it is sometime around November. The whole passage is laden with overlapping context clues.