NationStates Jolt Archive

According to a new Ipsos Reid survey, nearly a third of adults (31 per cent) across the country didn't read a single book for pleasure in all of 2007. The discouraging figure puts Canadians four points behind the U.S., where an identical poll last August showed 27 per cent of Americans hadn't picked up a book in the previous 12 months.

The good news is that the 69 per cent of Canadians who were reading in 2007 did so voraciously, with the average person in that group having dug into 20 books over the course of the year. The same number was true for Americans who had read at least one title in the previous 12 months.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=55aa5076-fe5d-409e-b4f3-f901559be698

So what do these people do in their spare time? I can understand people not reading as much as me, or rarely reading but not once in a year? :(

So NSG do what you do best: Judge, brag about what you did read also, do you think that perhapes there is an issue with education that turns people off books, or do you think that statistics like these are inevitable, do you even think that they are worrying?
Personally, I think it is rather depressing and really, it explains a lot. The irony I find is that I have seen a lot of adults making fun of children for reading the Harry Potter/Golden Compass/Eragon fantasy books. When the last HP book came out there those editoral cartoons mocking children who read Harry Potter, I've seen written editorals (same news paper) that, while defended the Golden Compass's right to exist mocked it for being predictable (although she said she hadn't read it). Also, I've recieved snotty comments about books I read (Classics especailly Russian Literature) including a comment from teachers about how I must not have a social life.[/rant]

Anyway, I'm tired and this isn't very coherant or interesting so I'll shut and ask: what do you think?

Anyway, I'm tired and this isn't very coherant or interesting so I'll shut and ask: what do you think?

Eh. I wouldn't read more than half a dozen or so books a year if I didn't work in a library - as it is I probably go through a couple each week. Anyway, I'll agree: books are good, and people should read. Yep. :)

Sadly, this does not surprise me.

Sadly, this does not surprise me.

Yeah, Canadians never seemed like big readers to me. Join the enlightened countries who read slightly more than you do (albeit within the poll's margin of error, I'm guessing), Canada! Hah! :p

Is this poll limited to just books?

I work in retail, I know from firsthand experience that they don't read because they can't. Sure they can make out numbers, the percent sign, the dollar sign, and the word 'off', but that is it.

I work in retail, I know from firsthand experience that they don't read because they can't. Sure they can make out numbers, the percent sign, the dollar sign, and the word 'off', but that is it.

The truth is that Posi gets his mother to read this forum and reply for him so he's hardly one to talk.

Is this poll limited to just books?

"Read a book" implies so...

Yeah, Canadians never seemed like big readers to me. Join the enlightened countries who read slightly more than you do (albeit within the poll's margin of error, I'm guessing), Canada! Hah! :pMethinks it be those cold winters. Where it either go skating with polar bears, and get eaten alive, or talk to your family.:eek:

Maybe because most books suck.

And what do people do in their spare time? Watch TV, play video games, post on NSG...

Maybe because most books suck.

And what do people do in their spare time? Watch TV, play video games, post on NSG...http://newmedia.funnyjunk.com/pictures/superangrykitty.jpg

For you is a heretic.

I'm actually sick of books already. :headbang:

I'm actually sick of books already. :headbang:Do you want a bear's hug?

Do you want a bear's hug?
if it's like this :fluffle: then yes.

"Read a book" implies so...

So it doesn't take into account the stuff that people might read online?

.... I've seen written editorals (same news paper) that, while defended the Golden Compass's right to exist mocked it for being predictable (although she said she hadn't read it). ....


Um.... predicable? i really didn't expect the ending present in the first book.


I would explain what i mean except I don't remember how to do /spoiler text.

Heh I had my youngest son tell me the other day that reading was boring. I said to him that the more he reads the more he'll grow to like it. He ignored that bit of advice and went and played the Jackass game on his PS2 instead. *shrug* kids, huh they don't know when they have it good!

Heh I had my youngest son tell me the other day that reading was boring. I said to him that the more he reads the more he'll grow to like it. He ignored that bit of advice and went and played the Jackass game on his PS2 instead. *shrug* kids, huh they don't know when they have it good!

so true, Peepelonia I just finished my second book this year, time to start another i guess.....

Well. I read about 6 books last year. Although most of the free time I had went to either NationStates, trying to teach myself php (which I am not any closer to comprehending), and painting a house and barn in which we are still in the process of moving into.

But. The books I did read consisted of 4 Star Trek books and 2 Star Wars books. I just got a new book for Christmas that I havn't opened up yet so I may do that on the train ride back home to North Dakota.

so true, Peepelonia I just finished my second book this year, time to start another i guess.....

Heh and by mere coincidence I too am almost on my third book this year.

I feel sorry for those who don't read books. They're missing so much.

I feel sorry for those who don't read books. They're missing so much.

Indeed they are. But why feel sorry for them? I mean do you also feel sorry for anybody who has not gained a PPL, or tried skydiving? Surly nobody can experience every delight the world has to offer.

Indeed they are. But why feel sorry for them? I mean do you also feel sorry for anybody who has not gained a PPL, or tried skydiving? Surly nobody can experience every delight the world has to offer.

It's just thinking about a life without reading for pleasure sounds so miserable to a nerd like me.

It's just thinking about a life without reading for pleasure sounds so miserable to a nerd like me.

As it does to me. Heh I could though well do without the pleasures of bungee jumping!

I hope you guys realize that this 69% includes self help books.

Bleh. I'd like to read FEWER books, thank you very much.

Some of the "thrilling" titles I've read recently:

The Venerable Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People
Bright, Chapters of Early English Church History
Marsh, Dark Age Britain
Kirby, the Making of Early England
Sawyer, From Roman Britain to Norman England
James, Britain in the First Millennium
Campbell, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History

And that's in the last week.
I should've chosen a different subject for uni...

(On the lighter side, last couple of weeks have also included about 4 works of fiction which were rather enjoyable)

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=55aa5076-fe5d-409e-b4f3-f901559be698

So what do these people do in their spare time? I can understand people not reading as much as me, or rarely reading but not once in a year? :(

So NSG do what you do best: Judge, brag about what you did read also, do you think that perhapes there is an issue with education that turns people off books, or do you think that statistics like these are inevitable, do you even think that they are worrying?
Personally, I think it is rather depressing and really, it explains a lot. The irony I find is that I have seen a lot of adults making fun of children for reading the Harry Potter/Golden Compass/Eragon fantasy books. When the last HP book came out there those editoral cartoons mocking children who read Harry Potter, I've seen written editorals (same news paper) that, while defended the Golden Compass's right to exist mocked it for being predictable (although she said she hadn't read it). Also, I've recieved snotty comments about books I read (Classics especailly Russian Literature) including a comment from teachers about how I must not have a social life.[/rant]

Anyway, I'm tired and this isn't very coherant or interesting so I'll shut and ask: what do you think?

Too long, did not read.

.(/joke of course!)

I feel sorry for those who don't read books. They're missing so much.

There's only so many hours in a day, even if we all went without sleeping and were doing something every second of that, we'd still miss out on most things.

do you think that perhapes there is an issue with education that turns people off books, or do you think that statistics like these are inevitable, do you even think that they are worrying?
Personally, I think it is rather depressing and really, it explains a lot.
I think that we are reaping the 'rewards' that mass media (mainly TV) brings. We have a significant slice of the now-adult population who have never read books outside of any that they were required to read at school. They do not care that they are not widely educated since, in many (most?) cases a very narrow education allows them to do whatever job it is that they do to get by.

It depresses me too, a little, since I'm one of those people who does read a lot (whether that be to educate myself about something or just for entertainment) but it's just part and parcel of being an individual - and I recognise that it just doesn't work that way for some others.

The most depressing aspect, though, is the notion that the illiterate incompetents that we are producing en masse out of our schools at the moment are the generation who will be in charge of everything around me when I reach the 'ranting old fool' stage of my life in a few decades time. *shudder*

Too long, did not read.
I know what you said was in jest, but the fact that a widely-understood abrreviation exists in tl;dr kind of illustrates the point nicely, too :p

The most depressing aspect, though, is the notion that the illiterate incompetents that we are producing en masse out of our schools at the moment are the generation who will be in charge of everything around me when I reach the 'ranting old fool' stage of my life in a few decades time. *shudder*

They wont though will they. They will still be the binmen, the street cleaners, the hospital porter, the waiters, and gardeners. While the better educated will be in charge. Nowt change all round then really.

the better educated will be in charge. Nowt change all round then really
You're probably, and hopefully, right.

In my head, though, I just can't help combining various trends that I see in the country. Take voter turnout, for example. As the percentage of uneducated people increases (and I believe that it is increasing, although I don't have any figures to back that up), voter turnout drops. It seems to me that people who are uneducated, whether by circumstance or by choice, simply don't understand or care what is going on in the country (or the world) around them and so they take no part in it. Carry such trends forward a couple of generations and it doesn't look all that healthy (unless you write dystopian novels for a living, I suppose).

I could frame this as a sort of rant against consumerist tendencies to focus only on the here and now, or against the mindset that prefers to know what's been happening on Eastenders rather than what's been happening in Kenya, or any one of a number of other things that I perceive as real issues, but it'd just make me look like some rabid, doomsaying conspiracy nut, and I'm really not like that. Honest :p

You're probably, and hopefully, right.

In my head, though, I just can't help combining various trends that I see in the country. Take voter turnout, for example. As the percentage of uneducated people increases (and I believe that it is increasing, although I don't have any figures to back that up), voter turnout drops. It seems to me that people who are uneducated, whether by circumstance or by choice, simply don't understand or care what is going on in the country (or the world) around them and so they take no part in it. Carry such trends forward a couple of generations and it doesn't look all that healthy (unless you write dystoian novels for a living, I suppose).

I could frame this as a sort of rant against consumerist tendencies to focus only on the here and now, or against the mindset that prefers to know what's been happening on Eastenders rather than what's been happening in Kenya, or any one of a number of other things that I perceive as real issues, but it'd just make me look like some rabid, doomsaying conspiracy nut, and I'm really not like that. Honest :p

Heh ooo-kay I'll believe that you are not. I don't hold to such a negative world view myself. It's all about the circles for me. Yeah things seem pretty bad at the time, and I'll not deny that we may be in for a harsh future.

But then the generations after that will go well fuck this (metaphoricaly) and will make the changes necisacry.

Looking towards history we can see that overall, things have gotten better, why should our own epoch be any different?

In the real world, people have jobs.

In the real world, people have jobs.

I suppose your point is that people don't have time to read books, because they're busy working?

I suppose your point is that people don't have time to read books, because they're busy working?

Indeed I never get a solid two hours a day reading done during my commute!

Looking towards history we can see that overall, things have gotten better, why should our own epoch be any different?
I find the whole "it's been bad in the past, and we managed- we'll get through this too" type of philosophy to be a bit unsatisfying... too much of the old head-in-the-sand style of thing, for my taste. It supposes that the challenges faced in the past can be equated to those facing us in the present, and I just don't accept that to be the case. "(W)hy should our own epoch be any different"? Because the world has changed, in every meaningful way.

the generations after that will go well fuck this (metaphoricaly) and will make the changes necisacry
Well yeah, that's the great hope. I remember when I was younger and first started thinking about how great it would be if everyone in the world could learn about whatever they wanted. I idealistically envisioned a world where all of mankind's knowledge was available to all - reasoning that, in such a world, advances would come more swiftly as a result of having more minds working on all the little problems. As you might imagine, at the dawn of widespread access to the Internet I became quite excited about the whole thing, since I saw it as one way to realise that ideal. I suppose that it might still turn out to be.

Heh ooo-kay I'll believe that you are not.
Really, I'm not. It's because I'm not that I rarely get involved in this kind of discussion unless I already know the people I'm talking to. In a text-only discussion it's really, really easy to come across the wrong way and for things that you say to be misinterpreted to nobody's benefit, and some of the things that I'd like to say in this thread simply can't be communicated without making me look like one of the "sky is falling" types. Oh well :p

Indeed I never get a solid two hours a day reading done during my commute!

That people apparently have time to watch TV or play poker on the net is the stronger point, but I thought I should check on R2's meaning before making it.

The message seems to be "be ignorant and accept your lot, you are just a slave." But it might be a joke, kinda hard to tell from only seven words.

I mean, shit, how do people function without reading. I must have read at least 25 books over the summer, and and another 6 over winter break. In the remaining time, besides textbooks, I've read at least 10 books.

My reading level tends to vary. When I first discovered Terry Pratchett, I promptly bought every book he had out at that point and read them all in the space of ~2-3 months (It took a while to find some, plus, I'm poor :P). In between, it really depends on whether or not I've found something interesting.

I think the main reason that the majority of the non-readers dont read is the...stigma attached to fiction. I guess thats the best word, but anyway...
It seems like fantasy is for kids and sci-fi is for nerds. I mean, the His Dark Materials series is readable BY teenagers, but most bookstores put it in the kids section.
Reading most good sci-fi is dangerous because at some point a person is going to ask you, "What are you reading?" and you're going to have to explain that its a novel set in the distant future where dolphins and apes can talk and humanity has made enemies with clans of giant preying mantisis and birds.
And, of course, a lot of modern sci-fi writers seem to think that its a requirement to include gratiuitous amounts of sex in their visions of the future.

On a side note, is anybody else annoyed by peoples perceived entitlement to a summary of whatever youre reading on demand? Even while youre reading?
I've tried explaining this to people, but they just seem to get offended.

Books are the clothing of thought. The Da Vinci Code is no better than Chariots of the Gods, the popularity of either was purely a matter of fashion.

The words are free, or nearly so, but when printed (in a newspaper or a printed book) they become valued in monetary terms. To read, for many people, is merely to consume. To read proves that they have both the wealth to buy the book, and the wealth of time to read it ... and serves no purpose beyond distinguishing the reader from those who are lazy in their recreation.

The world has more books than any one of us could read in a lifetime. It is just silly to hold reading to be an unequivocal good, the point is rather: What do you read, and Why?

I might add that I read in a far more fractured manner nowadays than I did in my youth. I find myself very frustrated by hours and hours of a single voice, it feels almost like escapism to read a book right through.

Indeed I never get a solid two hours a day reading done during my commute!

They have audio books now. *nod*

The world has more books than any one of us could read in a lifetime. It is just silly to hold reading to be an unequivocal good, the point is rather: What do you read, and Why?


I'm reading a book on catapult construction. Guess why. :)

Is this poll limited to just books?

They also say 'for pleasure' which means it is only books read for entertainment purposes, so that cuts down the numbers somewhat...

The world has more books than any one of us could read in a lifetime. It is just silly to hold reading to be an unequivocal good, the point is rather: What do you read, and Why?
I do hold reading to be an unequivocal good. Reading, no matter the subject, educates the reader. This education may take the form of an explanation of a completely new (to the reader) idea or it may expand the knowledge or understanding of a subject already known in part by that reader. It might provoke questions in the reader's mind. It might only educate in as much as that the subject matter contradicts the reader's own views on something, or it might educate purely linguistically - by presenting the reader with words or linguistic styles that they have not encountered before. Regardless, it all educates.

I consider education to be a neverending, cumulative thing, where every item of knowledge gained is valuable not only because it fills a small hole in a person's knowledge, but because there is a synergy involved that ensures that the more knowledge an individual has, the more they want to know, and the more they are able to tie all that they know together into a consistent picture of the world around them. This greater understanding of the world at large that comes of such knowledge is unequivocally good, to my eyes.

I'm reading a book on catapult construction. Guess why. :)

You have issues with your neighbour, you have access to rotting pig carcasses, but your friends and family aren't very supportive of your little revenge plan?

You have issues with your neighbour, you have access to rotting pig carcasses, but your friends and family aren't very supportive of your little revenge plan?

An excellent guess, but mostly incorrect. My neighbors have given up on me long ago, I have access to day-past expiration date pies and my wife got me the book for christmas.

She probably hopes that giving me something to keep me busy for the upcoming spring and summer months will be worth the mayhem I will cause later. She has made similar miscalculations before. :)

I love to read. Not only do I enjoy getting information from books, I also enjoy the particular manner of imaginative immersion of losing myself in the fictional world of a book, and I even enjoy the physical act of reading. I'm a natural reader, and it comes easy for me. I read Catch 22 straight through in a single afternoon when I was eight years old, and I never stopped until rather recently.

And then a strange thing happened. See, for about 10 years, I had gone without reading much. I'd pick up books but have trouble getting into them. It would take me over a month to finish a novel, if I ever finished it. I thought it was just that the new books sucked.

Then, about a month ago, I lost both cable and internet service for about a week and a half. Out of the blue, I read three novels in three days -- books that had been lying around the living room, waiting for me to pay attention to them. They turned out to be rather good novels. I remarked to my mother, "Holy crap! Did I used to read like this?" "Yeah," she said, "all the time." "Holy crap!", said I again.

Several years ago, the (now late) novelist Norman Mailer wrote an op-ed piece to the New York Times calling attention to a neurological study that had recently been published. The study indicated that television, video games, and even working on the internet made people dumber, while reading books made people smarter. This had nothing to do with the content of television and the internet, but with the brain functions involved in processing the sensory input from them. Television viewing makes us the dumbest because it allows the brain the most to go passive, showing the least activity in scans. Video games purport to exercise basic functions like hand-eye coordination, but it turns out that such basic functions are also primitive functions -- you don't have to be smart to be able to touch what you see -- so they do not help much more than television viewing. Even working and reading on a computer screen did not exercise the frontal lobes as much as reading printed matter, and the study suggested this was something less obvious that might have to do with how the brain was processing what it saw -- something to do with the visual effect of the screen itself.

The study took children 7-10 years old (I think), and had them watch tv and play on the internet for 10 days, then read for 10 days, and other times do both for 10 days. Brain function was tested before, during and after these periods. It was found that children who read for 10 days scored high on brain function tests. Those same children lost brain function after 10 days of tv/internet usage. If those same children were taken off the tv/internet and put back on reading, they would have a hard time reading at first, but gradually regain function, and in some cases even exceed their original scores. Children who did both activities equally showed no loss of brain function as a result of the brain-passive tv/internet usage, IF they alternated large segments of time -- i.e. several days of reading and no screen stuff, not reading and tv/internet in the same day (i.e. the amount of continuous time spent reading matters).

The neurologists theorized that the reason for this was that reading is a highly complex brain activity involving several higher functions working together. It is a better workout for the brain. Neurology has known for a long time that the brain is a use-it-or-lose-it organ. The more neurons you fire, the more neurons you grow. The less you use them, the fewer you'll grow. The study indicated that this effect is especially severe in children whose brains are still growing. Lack of brain exercise in childhood can lead to significant stunting of physical brain growth.

As a result, the study recommended that children should read books at least as much as they watch tv, play video games and use the internet (combined). It would be best if they read more than that. It also suggested that children should have extended periods off tv/internet, in which reading is their primary non-physical entertainment.

So what I figured was that my tv and internet usage, which had been increasing for various reasons over the 10 years (especially internet) had been making it harder for me to maintain the mental focus for reading. When I stopped using them, I got my reading "muscles" back after just a few days.

I suggest that the reason 31% of adults don't read is that they find it hard to do because they have spent their entire lives staring at screens.

And I suggest that this is a bad thing because the lack of brain activity and growth associated with it affects math, logic, critical judgment, and other functions necessary to running a life, let alone a society. It also increases the likelihood of contracting Alzheimer's, and at younger ages.

And for those who think, oh, well, not everyone needs to be educated or smart, as long as the lumpen can keep working for the intelligent elites...um...I consider that a bad thing, too.

I would have thought that you were going to catapult yourself into the air and personally deliver your ripe pies.

And, of course, a lot of modern sci-fi writers seem to think that its a requirement to include gratiuitous amounts of sex in their visions of the future.
This is one of my pet peeves. Why is it that I can't read a book written for adults without it having lots of cussing, drug use, alcohol, sex, and violence? Even if I can think of a way to get the same message across without all that stuff? Likewise, why do all films that aren't made expressly for children carry an R rating?

Similarly, why is there so little classical music written after, oh, 1940 that doesn't try to sound original at the expense of beauty, or impress a sense of the profound and otherworldly upon me, or even stoop to old-fashioned things like rhythm and melody? In popular music, why does every other song have to send some kind of message, or talk about how awful the protagonist's life is (doesn't anybody write music anymore?) And don't get me started on abstract art.....


anyway.

On a side note, is anybody else annoyed by peoples perceived entitlement to a summary of whatever youre reading on demand? Even while youre reading?
I've tried explaining this to people, but they just seem to get offended.
There's another pet peeve. "What are you reading?" "I'm reading [name of book.]" "Oh. What's it about?" "There's another copy on the table. Look at the back cover." [Other person then starts reading the back cover aloud.]

Well, to answer the original question, I do read quite a lot, or used to. Nowadays I spend more time looking for worthwhile books than I spend reading them. I still read about fifteen or twenty books for pleasure in '07, and nothing yet this year, but I'll take recommendations. (As long as it isn't one of those books which after you finish them you spend a couple of hours staring at a wall.)

I do hold reading to be an unequivocal good. Reading, no matter the subject, educates the reader. This education may take the form of an explanation of a completely new (to the reader) idea or it may expand the knowledge or understanding of a subject already known in part by that reader. It might provoke questions in the reader's mind. It might only educate in as much as that the subject matter contradicts the reader's own views on something, or it might educate purely linguistically - by presenting the reader with words or linguistic styles that they have not encountered before. Regardless, it all educates.

I consider education to be a neverending, cumulative thing, where every item of knowledge gained is valuable not only because it fills a small hole in a person's knowledge, but because there is a synergy involved that ensures that the more knowledge an individual has, the more they want to know, and the more they are able to tie all that they know together into a consistent picture of the world around them. This greater understanding of the world at large that comes of such knowledge is unequivocally good, to my eyes.

I hold reading right up there with sex, sleep, and good food on the list of physical pleasures. I love every part of the doing of it: the settling down into a comfy chair by a sunny window, or a chaise under a tree, or on a beach; warm or cold beverage and a snack at hand; turning off the phone; holding the book in my hands (I love books as objects; a large body of my artwork is devoted to them); letting myself relax into the writer's voice, letting this artist show me what he or she can do, how their words can reshape my reality, what I am aware of and how I am aware of it, manipulating my feelings and thoughts to go along with what they are trying to tell me; judging whether they succeed or not. It's a great way to spend a day.

I have a special collection of books that have had extra-amazing effects on me, sometimes a few copies of them (some annotated with comments; others annotated to show the writer's tricks (how they pulled off those effects); at least one kept pure). I also have a collection of non-fiction books, also marked up or with notes inserted, cross-referencing with other books, or declaiming the author's bias or ignorance. ;)

Regardless of why one reads, if neurological studies are correct (and I see no reason to think otherwise), reading is its own reward because of the beneficial effect it has on brain growth and function. I agree with you that education and reading are unequivocal good things. Reading is not only a medium through which to gain education, it is also a means by which to make oneself better capable of being educated, of acquiring and processing information from any kind of source.

So it does not matter whether you read all the most important text books on the most weighty subjects, or you never read anything but science fiction romances -- just keep reading.

Well, to answer the original question, I do read quite a lot, or used to. Nowadays I spend more time looking for worthwhile books than I spend reading them. I still read about fifteen or twenty books for pleasure in '07, and nothing yet this year, but I'll take recommendations.
Well, I'm not put off by a little sex and violence, so I'm not sure you would enjoy my recommendations. The three books I read while cut off from the digital world were:

Shutter Island, Dennis Lahane
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
The Italian Secretary, Caleb Carr

I would recommend anything by all three writers. However, you might want to try Caleb Carr, if you're not already familiar with him. He writes period stories and new Sherlock Holmes stories, so not much gratuitous sex and violence.

I would also recommend that you read the classics, if the moderns don't do it for you (beware of Shakespeare, though). ;)

(As long as it isn't one of those books which after you finish them you spend a couple of hours staring at a wall.)
Which books are those? I've never had that happen to me.

EDIT: Oh, and in reference to the rudeness of people asking you to tell them what you're reading so they won't have to read it themselves, when strangers pipe up and ask me "What are you reading?", I answer, "A book.", and then I walk away.

(As long as it isn't one of those books which after you finish them you spend a couple of hours staring at a wall.)Which books are those? I've never had that happen to me.
Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach had that effect on me the first time I finished it, although I was a little stoned at the time, so that probably explains it.

Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach had that effect on me the first time I finished it, although I was a little stoned at the time, so that probably explains it.
Haha. I'm still trying to finish that one. Too much math. I'm as bad at math as I am good at reading.

Sorry, I cant read what your saying.:rolleyes:

I used to read lots, but now i only like books that give me information or make me laugh. And the Harry Potter books are too long I may add.

I do hold reading to be an unequivocal good. Reading, no matter the subject, educates the reader. This education may take the form of an explanation of a completely new (to the reader) idea or it may expand the knowledge or understanding of a subject already known in part by that reader. It might provoke questions in the reader's mind. It might only educate in as much as that the subject matter contradicts the reader's own views on something, or it might educate purely linguistically - by presenting the reader with words or linguistic styles that they have not encountered before. Regardless, it all educates.

Ah. There is one assumption in all of this: that what one reads is unfamiliar.

Easy assumption to make, but even on this forum where people are relatively literate we see people who cannot read what contradicts their beliefs. They simply misunderstand if they try at all to read.

Literacy is funny that way (not laughing funny tho.) Below a certain level of literacy, for any given text, the mental effort of parsing the text takes all of the reader's available attention. They simply don't have enough attention left over to think through what they read. In many cases (I admit to this myself), they read along steadily but only the occasional passage conveys anything to their imagination or their critical faculty.

Now, the best (only?) way to increase one's literacy is to read more. So to some extent I agree, reading whatever pleases one gives practice in reading, making more difficult texts not just readable but meaningful. But I am troubled by the escapism aspect of reading: we are essentially being told a story. Between the writer and the reader is a one-to-one relationship: one speaks to the other, the reader must think the writer's words to get the meaning. It's like a conversation, but entirely one-way, like a bed-time story.

So, I think reading is not always a good. Perhaps this almost maternal relationship, the reader thinking the writer's thoughts, educates the reader in the process, alerts them to the persuasive power of words ... but sometimes the reader doesn't realize this, they adopt the words as their own thoughts. They parrot them. They are not educated by the written word, but indoctrinated.

I needn't name the books which are wred to children, which are beaten into them, which they do not dare contradict. The words which, by repetition usually, haunt their minds and drive out their own thoughts ... need I?

I consider education to be a neverending, cumulative thing, where every item of knowledge gained is valuable not only because it fills a small hole in a person's knowledge, but because there is a synergy involved that ensures that the more knowledge an individual has, the more they want to know, and the more they are able to tie all that they know together into a consistent picture of the world around them.

Not all books serve this purpose, and books are not the only source of education. But to education itself, I utterly agree. Teachers (including we to each other) are vital, they serve to correct the imbalance when a student holds one text, one thought, to be utterly true and beyond question, and starts to reread it again and again, or even see this one thought in all texts.

This does not just apply to non-fiction. I have myself the experience of re-reading novels or poetry, and finding myself transported back to earlier times. In a sense, I read the book as I was then ... I don't read it with fresh eyes, I am almost blinded to the book by the stronger experience of the first reading. All Hermann Hesse is like that to me now, despite how plain the writing is ... I cannot escape feeling the way it made me feel twenty years ago.

Only a book can tell a person the same thing, in the same words, over and over. Not even video can do that, there are always tiny details which come to the viewer's attention, which were not intended by the author. Music even less so, the experience constantly changes.
And a teacher, a real person who sees the learning of the student, reviles such stuckness -- as an educator, they seek progress, not completion.

This greater understanding of the world at large that comes of such knowledge is unequivocally good, to my eyes.

To me, the great virtue of books is the verbal form of thought. Precision of thought (not necessarily correctness, but recognition of limitations, and scrutibility of detail) is best served by thinking in words, thinking in whole sentences, and thinking which is separated into passages when necessary to address complex passages of thought.

Mmm, I think I mean text. Those are the virtues of text.

The virtue of a book is the single authorship. Speaking (including writing) is extremely intimate. How many books have we all wred, quite disliking the authors 'style' for the first few pages, before we begin to "get" them, become comfortable or even quite gratified by how they "speak" to us?

Personally, I enjoy books as you do, as a challenge and an educating experience no matter their subject. There is no better way to find how others think, than to read their words without the option (or the obligation! if one strongly disagrees) of disputing or interrupting. It is excellent exercise for the mind, to form one's thoughts to the thoughts of another by following their verbal form.

But it doesn't work that way for everyone. To some people, the words of an author simply drown their own thoughts out, and confuse them. As with physical yoga, it can harm the mind to do such exercises wrongly.

I would have thought that you were going to catapult yourself into the air and personally deliver your ripe pies.

Don't think the thought of a human catapult attempt hasn't crossed my mind. :p

I find the whole "it's been bad in the past, and we managed- we'll get through this too" type of philosophy to be a bit unsatisfying... too much of the old head-in-the-sand style of thing, for my taste. It supposes that the challenges faced in the past can be equated to those facing us in the present, and I just don't accept that to be the case. "(W)hy should our own epoch be any different"? Because the world has changed, in every meaningful way.

Ohh I get what you mean, I don't agree but I understand your POV. More of a learn the lessons of history type thing coupled with a faith in humanity. Yes of course the world has changed, but then again, so had it from the neolithic to the middle ages, and even then more so from the middle ages to the present.


Times change, history changes, and technology certainly does, humanity though. How much has the modern homo sapien changed since, well since we have been homo sapian? Only I would suggest our understanding of certain things, or would you say that we have actually evolved to be a different thing than we where say 4000 years ago?


Well yeah, that's the great hope. I remember when I was younger and first started thinking about how great it would be if everyone in the world could learn about whatever they wanted. I idealistically envisioned a world where all of mankind's knowledge was available to all - reasoning that, in such a world, advances would come more swiftly as a result of having more minds working on all the little problems. As you might imagine, at the dawn of widespread access to the Internet I became quite excited about the whole thing, since I saw it as one way to realise that ideal. I suppose that it might still turn out to be.

More than a hope, an educated guess, a certain belief.


Really, I'm not. It's because I'm not that I rarely get involved in this kind of discussion unless I already know the people I'm talking to. In a text-only discussion it's really, really easy to come across the wrong way and for things that you say to be misinterpreted to nobody's benefit, and some of the things that I'd like to say in this thread simply can't be communicated without making me look like one of the "sky is falling" types. Oh well :p

Heh no honestly I believe you.

Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach had that effect on me the first time I finished it, although I was a little stoned at the time, so that probably explains it.

To a large extent, books have stopped working on me. I get stuff, I forget it, then I start skipping chapters.

The essentially infinite reference library of the internet is to blame. Also, my eyes are too weak to read by candle-light any more. ;)

Don't think the thought of a human catapult attempt hasn't crossed my mind. :p

Don't forget parachutes, too.

I'm sure you'd make a nice splat, but we'd miss you!

My reading level tends to vary. When I first discovered Terry Pratchett, I promptly bought every book he had out at that point and read them all in the space of ~2-3 months (It took a while to find some, plus, I'm poor :P). In between, it really depends on whether or not I've found something interesting.

I think the main reason that the majority of the non-readers dont read is the...stigma attached to fiction. I guess thats the best word, but anyway...
It seems like fantasy is for kids and sci-fi is for nerds. I mean, the His Dark Materials series is readable BY teenagers, but most bookstores put it in the kids section.
Reading most good sci-fi is dangerous because at some point a person is going to ask you, "What are you reading?" and you're going to have to explain that its a novel set in the distant future where dolphins and apes can talk and humanity has made enemies with clans of giant preying mantisis and birds.
And, of course, a lot of modern sci-fi writers seem to think that its a requirement to include gratiuitous amounts of sex in their visions of the future.

On a side note, is anybody else annoyed by peoples perceived entitlement to a summary of whatever youre reading on demand? Even while youre reading?
I've tried explaining this to people, but they just seem to get offended.

Heh I wouldn't worry about that sorta stuff. Just read what you want innit. I have met people who turn their nose up when asking what I am reading show them the cover of a Stephen King novel. By the same token I was bookless last month and took down, at random, a book form my son's bookshelf, yep a book for children, it wasn't great, but easy to read and the story was sorta captivating so.

Don't forget parachutes, too.

I'm sure you'd make a nice splat, but we'd miss you!

Well, the idea is to find something relatively soft and yielding to land in. I can't imagine what though... *nod* ;)

Well, I'm not put off by a little sex and violence, so I'm not sure you would enjoy my recommendations. The three books I read while cut off from the digital world were:
For clarification, it doesn't put me off if it's necessary or useful to the plot, or if sex or violence is a plot theme, or even if it simply creates atmosphere. It's only when it's included in situations where it's really not necessary -- i.e. where the point could be gotten across without it -- that it becomes a problem.

I would also recommend that you read the classics, if the moderns don't do it for you (beware of Shakespeare, though). ;)
:P Yeah, already doing, although some of them are just as bad. (The Bible is a good example.)

Which books are those? I've never had that happen to me.


Mostly, any book that causes me to think of death and emptiness, although staring matches with the wall may occur with any book in which I become emotionally invested in the problem -- especially difficult philosophical or scientific questions.
EDIT: Oh, and in reference to the rudeness of people asking you to tell them what you're reading so they won't have to read it themselves, when strangers pipe up and ask me "What are you reading?", I answer, "A book.", and then I walk away.
I try that sometimes, but while I'm walking away I invariably get the answer "What book?" or "What's it called?" and if I ignore that, the further answer of the person pretending to mutter to themselves, but actually yelling so I and everyone else in range can hear it, "Some people are so rude." Nonetheless, the annoying person subsequently goes away and I can sit and continue to read in peace, so I suppose it is worth it.

Books are the clothing of thought. The Da Vinci Code is no better than Chariots of the Gods, the popularity of either was purely a matter of fashion.

The words are free, or nearly so, but when printed (in a newspaper or a printed book) they become valued in monetary terms. To read, for many people, is merely to consume. To read proves that they have both the wealth to buy the book, and the wealth of time to read it ... and serves no purpose beyond distinguishing the reader from those who are lazy in their recreation.

The world has more books than any one of us could read in a lifetime. It is just silly to hold reading to be an unequivocal good, the point is rather: What do you read, and Why?


I agree on lost of what you said here apart from the last statement. Reading is unequivcaly good. Read anything, anything at al, what ever interests you.

That way you not only learn about what interests you, but ultimately other subjects close to your interests. Reading begets interest, begets knowledge.

Start anywhere, but just read damnit!

Times change, history changes, and technology certainly does, humanity though. How much has the modern homo sapien changed since, well since we have been homo sapian? Only I would suggest our understanding of certain things, or would you say that we have actually evolved to be a different thing than we where say 4000 years ago?
I think that people have changed, yes. Well, perhaps not people individually, but societies. I do not believe that contemporary society can be fairly compared to those that existed during the transitions between the neolithic and middle ages, for example. But that's a debate for another thread, another day...I don't really want to drag the thread off topic again, since it's developing quite nicely :)

I was bookless last month and took down, at random, a book form my son's bookshelf, yep a book for children, it wasn't great, but easy to read and the story was sorta captivating so
Heh... I've been reading The Hobbit to my nephew over the last few weeks. It's been fun :D

Well, the idea is to find something relatively soft and yielding to land in. I can't imagine what though... *nod* ;)

You don't have to draw me a picture.
Soft, yielding, warm, sweet and slightly sticky ...

Keep studying those catapults. I volunteer!

Mostly, any book that causes me to think of death and emptiness, although staring matches with the wall may occur with any book in which I become emotionally invested in the problem -- especially difficult philosophical or scientific questions.

Ohh you mean Kafka? Bloody hell he always makes me want to rip my eyeballs out.

Ah. There is one assumption in all of this: that what one reads is unfamiliar.

<snip>
I disagree with you, NH, on certain fundamental details.

1) Yes, it's true that "a little learning is a dangerous thing" (Alexander Pope, a poet who is very difficult to read for those who do not enjoy reading for its own sake ;)), but I disagree that this effect is greater with books than with other media. I also disagree that this effect is necessarily lessened by the intervention of a teacher.

Books are primary sources of information. Good teachers can train students in the intellectual skills necessary to process, analyze and judge that information. However, bad teachers can stunt those skills, discourage their use, indoctrinate into a prescribed interpretation, and turn students off reading and acquiring information on their own. A good teacher can facilitate self-education by helping a child learn to think for themselves. A bad teacher can facilitate the expansion of ignorance by training a child never to think for themselves but always wait for an authority to tell them what to think about what they see around them.

Therefore, teachers, in and of themselves, are not the factor that makes books useful or not useful in education. If you are properly educated, you will not need a teacher to tell you what to think about what you have just read, or seen on television, or heard in the news.

2) I disagree that books always tell you the same thing over and over, without changes or nuances with repeated readings. That is just not true. I read Catch 22 when I was 8 years old (it was raining that Saturday, and I had read all my kids' books). When my mother saw me reading it, she recommended that I not read it because, "it will depress you." I kept on reading it, and it did not depress me. Rather, it amazed me, engaged me, made me aware of what good writing was and how poor the books I was asked to read in school were by comparison.

I read Catch 22 again when I was 25. And it depressed me. Why? I figured it was because I knew more about WW2 at 25 than I did at 8. Also, I had experienced more of life and was equipped with a different set of emotional memory-responses than when I was 8.

The content of the book had not changed, but I had, and so I came away from Catch 22 with a very different experience the second time I read it.

I would also point out that the content of movies and recorded music don't change either, from one viewing/listening to another, no matter how many different nuances you may notice. So obviously, it is you who are changing how you experience them. Why should you assume it is different with books?

3) As for the books children are made to read in school, I can't speak for your experience, but from mine, we were made to read "classics," and I found that for the most part, they were either substandard or too difficult for our reading levels. For instance, to this day I have a prejudice against the great author John Steinbeck because of that godawful tripe The Red Pony, which I was made to read in five different classes. I mean, they couldn't have picked one of his good stories?

Also, it took me decades to overcome my aversion to Dickens. They tried to make us read Great Expectations in 3rd grade!!! I mean, my god, why not make us run the moon mission while they were at it! Do you have any idea how difficult that book is -- both conceptually and grammatically? Just because a book is about a kid, doesn't mean it's a kid's book. Remember, this is from the 8-year-old Heller fan. It wasn't until I was almost 30, that I dipped into Bleak House and was blown away by the gorgeousness of the opening chapter and was finally able to grasp what Dickens was really about, entertainment-wise.

Whether books for children are too hard to too dumb, I think, is a result of adults who do not know how to read, who do not know how to judge the relative skills required for this or that book, or how to train young readers to develop those skills.

But, again, the faults of teachers are not the faults of books.

You don't have to draw me a picture.
Soft, yielding, warm, sweet and slightly sticky ...

Keep studying those catapults. I volunteer!

Just make sure that LG doesn't decide to go into Sweeny Todd mode, otherwise he might volunteer you for a different part of the plan...

Then again an overly ripe large pie (Long Pig brand!) would be both an effective landing system and weapon.

Ohh you mean Kafka? Bloody hell he always makes me want to rip my eyeballs out.
Heheh, you know the funny part -- few people realize that, a lot of the time, Kafka was kidding. ;) I mean, that cockroach story? Come on, that was hilarious. You know, in an evil way. Go spend two weeks alone in Prague, unable to speak the language, and trust me, you'll get the joke.

EDIT: Now, Camus -- there's a guy who makes me want to dig up his bones and give them a good shake while shouting, "Lighten up already, ye gods, oy, geez!"

MORE EDIT AS I THINK OF THINGS: Oh, and beware of Ambrose Bierce's Civil War stories, and any story by a guy named Gerald Kersh. Both brilliant but so depressing, well, let's just say there are certain people under certain diagnoses who should be allowed to read them.

Ohh you mean Kafka? Bloody hell he always makes me want to rip my eyeballs out.

Funny thing is, I actually like some of the works of Kafka, and Gogol, and Samuel Beckett, and the other satirists of that age, because I like to think I understand them better than most literary theorists do. By depressing literature I mean Dostoyevski and such-like.

Ottawa Citizen... what a trashy newspaper... everything is about the Sens or the government. And for once, they do something different and they still manage to botch it.

I'll wait to read about this in the Toronto Star.

However, I do read plenty. I read the news online, and as for fiction, I'm reading The Golden Compass right now. Once I'm done it, I have a new hard cover book I'm going to read, No Time for Goodbye (Linwood Barclay).

I used to be a real book devourer, then came college and the onslaught of mandatory reading and excess of assignments. Once I have a comfy sofa and a lamp, I'll be reading more. Right now, I need an end table with a lamp... *sighs* I can't read with dim lighting.

Funny thing is, I actually like some of the works of Kafka, and Gogol, and Samuel Beckett, and the other satirists of that age, because I like to think I understand them better than most literary theorists do. By depressing literature I mean Dostoyevski and such-like.
I think sometimes, one has to let oneself get into the mindset of the writer. For the Slavs, for instance, depressing stories aren't depressing. They just love to suffer. If you let yourself wallow in it, the way they do, it's not such a downer, which seems counter-intuitive but actually works.

Now, I personally find it depressing to spend a lot of time with existentialists, so maybe that's why Camus drag me down so much.

Then the stories by Bierce and Kersh I mentioned are depressing because they are deliberately about depressing things or depression itself, and the writers manage to evoke that emotion with great skill. I admire it, but it's not pleasant to experience.

Over the holidays I received quite a few books, I am currently reading four of them, have just finished one, have one on the way, and still have a gift card from Borders. Hmm... To those who don't read, I pity you.

Oh, And I work some 60 hours a week, and still have time to read.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=55aa5076-fe5d-409e-b4f3-f901559be698

So what do these people do in their spare time? I can understand people not reading as much as me, or rarely reading but not once in a year? :(

So NSG do what you do best: Judge, brag about what you did read also, do you think that perhapes there is an issue with education that turns people off books, or do you think that statistics like these are inevitable, do you even think that they are worrying?
Personally, I think it is rather depressing and really, it explains a lot. The irony I find is that I have seen a lot of adults making fun of children for reading the Harry Potter/Golden Compass/Eragon fantasy books. When the last HP book came out there those editoral cartoons mocking children who read Harry Potter, I've seen written editorals (same news paper) that, while defended the Golden Compass's right to exist mocked it for being predictable (although she said she hadn't read it). Also, I've recieved snotty comments about books I read (Classics especailly Russian Literature) including a comment from teachers about how I must not have a social life.[/rant]

Anyway, I'm tired and this isn't very coherant or interesting so I'll shut and ask: what do you think?
Perhaps you should use a dictionary to help you with your spelling whilst reading? Also it appears that your grammar requires a major overhaul. :D

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=55aa5076-fe5d-409e-b4f3-f901559be698

So what do these people do in their spare time? I can understand people not reading as much as me, or rarely reading but not once in a year? :(

So NSG do what you do best: Judge, brag about what you did read also, do you think that perhapes there is an issue with education that turns people off books, or do you think that statistics like these are inevitable, do you even think that they are worrying?
Personally, I think it is rather depressing and really, it explains a lot. The irony I find is that I have seen a lot of adults making fun of children for reading the Harry Potter/Golden Compass/Eragon fantasy books. When the last HP book came out there those editoral cartoons mocking children who read Harry Potter, I've seen written editorals (same news paper) that, while defended the Golden Compass's right to exist mocked it for being predictable (although she said she hadn't read it). Also, I've recieved snotty comments about books I read (Classics especailly Russian Literature) including a comment from teachers about how I must not have a social life.[/rant]

Anyway, I'm tired and this isn't very coherant or interesting so I'll shut and ask: what do you think?

...So?

I'm sure most of these people can read, and maybe they just don't find interest in reading books?

Does that mean there is something wrong with them? That they're somehow less intelligent or something?

Maybe some people just don't like to read. Maybe these people enjoy watching movies, or excersising, or something like that.

Why is it that there is something wrong with them just because they don't enjoy things that you enjoy?

Truth be told I don't read THAT much. By the time I go to bed I'm typically tired enough that I can't stay awake much to read. I'll probably read one book every few weeks to a month or so.

Mostly with the free time I have I chat online, play games, and generally do other stuff.

I disagree with you, NH, on certain fundamental details.

But you agree on enough of them to read me through. Thanks for that.

1) Yes, it's true that "a little learning is a dangerous thing" (Alexander Pope, a poet who is very difficult to read for those who do not enjoy reading for its own sake ;)), but I disagree that this effect is greater with books than with other media. I also disagree that this effect is necessarily lessened by the intervention of a teacher.

I did not compare books with other media. Or at least (it's late) I don't think I did. In my mind, I imagined the barely-vocal agricultural labourer, and the effect that books might have on them.

Books are primary sources of information.

Books are primary sources of knowledge. Knowledge is based on information.

Books as we are talking of them here (not almanacs, not ships' logs, not the Domesday Book) are records of the thoughts of people, or stories told by people, or earnest attempts at describing truth as it appears to people. Or more specifically, an author.

To the Historian, books are primary sources (though not the only ones, they also have physical evidence from archaeology, and nowdays genetic evidence.)

To scientists in general, books are expressions of theory. They have no quality of truth by being printed, by being old, nor by being wred. If one is familiar with the concepts in a book, one need not even have wred it!

And to the Philosopher, books are the very enemy (yes, it's a joke here) ... the written word is an affront to real knowledge.

Good teachers can train students in the intellectual skills necessary to process, analyze and judge that information. However, bad teachers can stunt those skills, discourage their use, indoctrinate into a prescribed interpretation, and turn students off reading and acquiring information on their own. A good teacher can facilitate self-education by helping a child learn to think for themselves. A bad teacher can facilitate the expansion of ignorance by training a child never to think for themselves but always wait for an authority to tell them what to think about what they see around them.

Ah! It is my earnest hope that we are good teachers to each other. In a forum, where not one of us has power over each other, we are free to choose our teachers.

Now read me again. I did not say "a teacher is preferable to a book." A good book is a teacher, it aims for growth not completion. I spoke of teachers as a moderating influence, a person who can correct a bad learning practice which is fortifying itself in a limited part of the truth ... but I did use my own definition of "teacher" which comes from an adult perspective, and moreover a post-academic perspective. Bus drivers teach me, colleagues teach me, strangers on the internet teach me, the very fledglings in my garden teach me, because I define "teacher" so broadly.

I'm an adult. I am lucky not to have a bully or a parent standing over me, correcting my mistakes and giving me a mark on my learning. I choose my teachers, according to how they teach me.

Therefore, teachers, in and of themselves, are not the factor that makes books useful or not useful in education. If you are properly educated, you will not need a teacher to tell you what to think about what you have just read, or seen on television, or heard in the news.

I doubt you could define what point of education, what breadth of varied learning, would immunize an individual from being mislead by carefully constructed lies.

2) I disagree that books always tell you the same thing over and over, without changes or nuances with repeated readings. That is just not true. I read Catch 22 when I was 8 years old (it was raining that Saturday, and I had read all my kids' books). When my mother saw me reading it, she recommended that I not read it because, "it will depress you." I kept on reading it, and it did not depress me. Rather, it amazed me, engaged me, made me aware of what good writing was and how poor the books I was asked to read in school were by comparison.

I read Catch 22 again when I was 25. And it depressed me. Why? I figured it was because I knew more about WW2 at 25 than I did at 8. Also, I had experienced more of life and was equipped with a different set of emotional memory-responses than when I was 8.

The content of the book had not changed, but I had, and so I came away from Catch 22 with a very different experience the second time I read it.

I would also point out that the content of movies and recorded music don't change either, from one viewing/listening to another, no matter how many different nuances you may notice. So obviously, it is you who are changing how you experience them. Why should you assume it is different with books?

Explicit meaning. Perhaps it is a writer's vanity, but I assume that when every word was chosen by a writer, when the spoke the words over in their mind (and don't confuse the issue, you know what I mean by "spoke over," it is the internal voice in which we read) and wrote the words to express their meaning there was a single meaning, that of the author.

Yes, we read it differently depending on who we are. Is that the writer's fault? Quite the opposite, a good writer expresses themselves as plainly as possible. With nuance, yes, but explicitly within their understanding of the language. Let us not speak of bad writers, those who write the editorials which are irrelevant months later, those who tell bad jokes for the first time, and those who write defensively. Let us speak of good writers, who speak as plainly as they can to everyone they can imagine reading.

Thus, we despise all editors. Thus, we despise all censors. Thus, we despise all relatives who don't want a character named after them. These kibbutzers come between the author and the reader. They try to claim a share of what is not theirs to give, and they claim to speak for us (the reader.)

Now consider video. If I model clay and, shot by shot, remodel it ... and I voice the soundtrack myself, and I do all this in my studio without advice from anyone else ... I'm getting close to the intimacy of writing.

Very few films rise to that level. One human face, no matter how talented the actor whose face it is, introduces factors the writer or director cannot control.

3) As for the books children are made to read in school, I can't speak for your experience, but from mine, we were made to read "classics," and I found that for the most part, they were either substandard or too difficult for our reading levels. For instance, to this day I have a prejudice against the great author John Steinbeck because of that godawful tripe The Red Pony, which I was made to read in five different classes. I mean, they couldn't have picked one of his good stories?

Meh. We wred Catch 22. One of the other classes wred The Catcher in the Rye. But that was in year 10!

Also, it took me decades to overcome my aversion to Dickens. They tried to make us read Great Expectations in 3rd grade!!! I mean, my god, why not make us run the moon mission while they were at it! Do you have any idea how difficult that book is -- both conceptually and grammatically?

I wred it in High School, again it was a set text. We didn't even go into what it might mean, which when I think about it now fills me with suspicion. A thousand-word thesis about privilege shouldn't be cast into a boy's eyes, and if it is, not written out so long that almost no reader realizes what is being laid down.

I think readers back in Dickens' time had a lot more time and a lot fewer distractions. I doubt it was a children's book ... perhaps the 'moral' was obvious to them but 3rd grade is way too young. I think I wred "the Railway Children" in school about then ...

Just because a book is about a kid, doesn't mean it's a kid's book. Remember, this is from the 8-year-old Heller fan. It wasn't until I was almost 30, that I dipped into Bleak House and was blown away by the gorgeousness of the opening chapter and was finally able to grasp what Dickens was really about, entertainment-wise.

Whether books for children are too hard to too dumb, I think, is a result of adults who do not know how to read, who do not know how to judge the relative skills required for this or that book, or how to train young readers to develop those skills.

But, again, the faults of teachers are not the faults of books.

Your parents taught you to read. They were, by my definition, teachers.
Parents or early childhood carers are the most important teachers, to my mind. The promise of "free universal education" is just an attempt to level the playing-field in the fourth quarter, after those first five years of a child's life.

We should not burn books. But some books require interpretation ... particularly if they present themselves as non-fiction, directly threaten the reader with retribution for not believing them, and claim to be the word of God.

Why is it that there is something wrong with them just because they don't enjoy things that you enjoy?

Based on the contents of multiple topics on religion here I daresay that reading some books would be good for people. There are actually posters here that do not know that mixing fact and fiction in the same book is quite common. That is worrying.

But you agree on enough of them to read me through. Thanks for that.



I did not compare books with other media. Or at least (it's late) I don't think I did. In my mind, I imagined the barely-vocal agricultural labourer, and the effect that books might have on them.



Books are primary sources of knowledge. Knowledge is based on information.

Books as we are talking of them here (not almanacs, not ships' logs, not the Domesday Book) are records of the thoughts of people, or stories told by people, or earnest attempts at describing truth as it appears to people. Or more specifically, an author.

To the Historian, books are primary sources (though not the only ones, they also have physical evidence from archaeology, and nowdays genetic evidence.)

To scientists in general, books are expressions of theory. They have no quality of truth by being printed, by being old, nor by being wred. If one is familiar with the concepts in a book, one need not even have wred it!

And to the Philosopher, books are the very enemy (yes, it's a joke here) ... the written word is an affront to real knowledge.



Ah! It is my earnest hope that we are good teachers to each other. In a forum, where not one of us has power over each other, we are free to choose our teachers.

Now read me again. I did not say "a teacher is preferable to a book." A good book is a teacher, it aims for growth not completion. I spoke of teachers as a moderating influence, a person who can correct a bad learning practice which is fortifying itself in a limited part of the truth ... but I did use my own definition of "teacher" which comes from an adult perspective, and moreover a post-academic perspective. Bus drivers teach me, colleagues teach me, strangers on the internet teach me, the very fledglings in my garden teach me, because I define "teacher" so broadly.

I'm an adult. I am lucky not to have a bully or a parent standing over me, correcting my mistakes and giving me a mark on my learning. I choose my teachers, according to how they teach me.



I doubt you could define what point of education, what breadth of varied learning, would immunize an individual from being mislead by carefully constructed lies.



Explicit meaning. Perhaps it is a writer's vanity, but I assume that when every word was chosen by a writer, when the spoke the words over in their mind (and don't confuse the issue, you know what I mean by "spoke over," it is the internal voice in which we read) and wrote the words to express their meaning there was a single meaning, that of the author.

Yes, we read it differently depending on who we are. Is that the writer's fault? Quite the opposite, a good writer expresses themselves as plainly as possible. With nuance, yes, but explicitly within their understanding of the language. Let us not speak of bad writers, those who write the editorials which are irrelevant months later, those who tell bad jokes for the first time, and those who write defensively. Let us speak of good writers, who speak as plainly as they can to everyone they can imagine reading.

Thus, we despise all editors. Thus, we despise all censors. Thus, we despise all relatives who don't want a character named after them. These kibbutzers come between the author and the reader. They try to claim a share of what is not theirs to give, and they claim to speak for us (the reader.)

Now consider video. If I model clay and, shot by shot, remodel it ... and I voice the soundtrack myself, and I do all this in my studio without advice from anyone else ... I'm getting close to the intimacy of writing.

Very few films rise to that level. One human face, no matter how talented the actor whose face it is, introduces factors the writer or director cannot control.



Meh. We wred Catch 22. One of the other classes wred The Catcher in the Rye. But that was in year 10!



I wred it in High School, again it was a set text. We didn't even go into what it might mean, which when I think about it now fills me with suspicion. A thousand-word thesis about privilege shouldn't be cast into a boy's eyes, and if it is, not written out so long that almost no reader realizes what is being laid down.

I think readers back in Dickens' time had a lot more time and a lot fewer distractions. I doubt it was a children's book ... perhaps the 'moral' was obvious to them but 3rd grade is way too young. I think I wred "the Railway Children" in school about then ...



Your parents taught you to read. They were, by my definition, teachers.
Parents or early childhood carers are the most important teachers, to my mind. The promise of "free universal education" is just an attempt to level the playing-field in the fourth quarter, after those first five years of a child's life.

We should not burn books. But some books require interpretation ... particularly if they present themselves as non-fiction, directly threaten the reader with retribution for not believing them, and claim to be the word of God.
Perhaps you should have chosen other teachers. The past tense of "to read" is "read" (pronounced "red"), not "wred," which is not an English word at all. This is why we should try not to despise all editors (says the person who worked as an editor for ten years). ;)

Look, I get what you're trying to say, but I disagree with it. I disagree with your take on the finality of a writer's words. I think you contradict yourself by saying a writer's words have a final and precise meaning and then later saying that some books require interpretation. Also, I disagree that books are primary sources of knowledge, not information. First, I do not draw such a bright and immovable line between knowledge and information. Second, if the subject of the course is the works of Dickens, then the novels of Dickens are the primary source of information for that course.

Also, all of this ignores the fact that the simple act of reading printed matter has beneficial physical effects on the brain that boost a person's inherent intelligence (however smart they may be as individuals) overall, not just in certain areas of academic study. That, alone, is a counter to your assertion that there is no unequivocal good in reading. There is, and it does not matter what is read to get to that unequivocal good. EDIT: You could read nothing but the Daily Racing Form and end up with a more agile mind that a person who only watches the races on television.

So it doesn't take into account the stuff that people might read online?

or newspapers and magazines for that matter

I read four books between Christmas morning and Boxing Day evening. :/
One of them was very short, however.

Twenty books per year is "voracious" reading? Yeesh. I read twenty books in a month. I know I read faster than most people, but, geez, that's rather depressing.

Twenty books per year is "voracious" reading? Yeesh. I read twenty books in a month. I know I read faster than most people, but, geez, that's rather depressing.

Agreed. Reading 100 pages/hour really is not that hard people. And quite a useful skill to have - so practice !

So it doesn't take into account the stuff that people might read online?

To be fair, reading online is kind of pointless; the radiation from the computer screen befuddles your brain and makes your eyes weary, and that's without all of the internet's weird and garish colours (orange text on blue background, WTF?). And not much non-technical literature is published online; it's mostly forms, instruction booklets, manuals, and fanfic, and the Gutenberg Project I suppose. Unless I'm missing something.

I read whatever catches my fancy.

I myself find it hard to read anymore. What with all the high definition games out there that actually let you become part of the story line, and reading and posting in different forums. The technology of today is allowing people to exercise their imagination more than any book can anymore.

Agreed. Reading 100 pages/hour really is not that hard people. And quite a useful skill to have - so practice !

An averege reader can read about 1 page a minute so it shouldnt be that hard to up the speed. I agree.

To be fair, reading online is kind of pointless; the radiation from the computer screen befuddles your brain and makes your eyes weary, and that's without all of the internet's weird and garish colours (orange text on blue background, WTF?). And not much non-technical literature is published online; it's mostly forms, instruction booklets, manuals, and fanfic, and the Gutenberg Project I suppose. Unless I'm missing something.

What about cruising Wikipedia? I know I've passed a few informative hours skipping from article to article.
You can learn some interesting things there, ya know. Fer'instance, I wouldnt know about a lovely little fish named the canderu (AKA: The penis fish) without Wikipedia.
I'm never going to go swimming in any South American bodies of water. Ever.

An averege reader can read about 1 page a minute so it shouldnt be that hard to up the speed. I agree.

Why would you want to? Could I read 100 pages an hour? Maybe; I know I can speed-read fairly quickly but I've never "clocked" it. Do I enjoy doing that? No, of course not. When reading for leisure (key word here), I fall right around the average for reading speed. I read each individual word and actually enjoy the images and notions being brought to mind by phrases, sentences and paragraphs. I never understood people who pride themselves and reading insanely quickly. Yes, it's a useful skill, but you also lose a lot.

An averege reader can read about 1 page a minute so it shouldnt be that hard to up the speed. I agree.What size page?
And, I suppose, what kind of material?

Hmm, im not sure as this was just a class expirement. But we tested it on different types of paperbacks, all aoround the same page length, Im not sure how many words per page there is but they all seemed pretty equal. I did it on Odd Brother and I avereged around 1.5 pages per minute. But its pretty accurate.

I guess it would differ on informative materials like textbooks, but thats not is thread is about, although it would be interesting...

Test it on your own, and see what you get. It should be pretty close, as we tested about 400 teenagers from the age of 17-18.

I disagree with Longhaul when he said, "Reading, no matter the subject, educates the reader." A person can very well read through an entire book and not even think about what it means once. And what about those horrid fluffy romance novels like the Undomesticated Goddess? What is educational about them? I worry less about how much people read than how much they think. The purpose of education, in my mind, is to teach people how to think. But people can think without an education. They might not have the complex words to voice something, but they could still think about complex things. Some people in this discussion mention "the uneducated masses" as if they were lower forms of humanity. I do not believe this is true. I believe that a person is not truly educated unless they can think for themselves and have an opinion. If they just reguritate everything their teachers have taught them, they're not really thinking.
What is most alarming to me is how little people think. I know so many people who openly admit that they never take the time to consider why we're here, how we got here, etc. We have such amazing thinking capabilities but we barely use them. What is sadder than that?

What is sadder than that?A kitten about to be flattened by a tank, watching as if expecting it to be its friend.

Why would you want to? Could I read 100 pages an hour? Maybe; I know I can speed-read fairly quickly but I've never "clocked" it. Do I enjoy doing that? No, of course not. When reading for leisure (key word here), I fall right around the average for reading speed. I read each individual word and actually enjoy the images and notions being brought to mind by phrases, sentences and paragraphs. I never understood people who pride themselves and reading insanely quickly. Yes, it's a useful skill, but you also lose a lot.

To be fair, there's a difference between speed-reading and simply reading quickly. I don't speed-read or skim, but I read a great deal faster than the average person. I never tried to learn to do so - I've just always read much more quickly than my peers, and I certainly don't lose anything by it.

How odd. I've always read, since I was but a wee young 'un. Different strokes I guess.

To be fair, there's a difference between speed-reading and simply reading quickly. I don't speed-read or skim, but I read a great deal faster than the average person. I never tried to learn to do so - I've just always read much more quickly than my peers, and I certainly don't lose anything by it.

Same with me. If anything, I actually lose less than people who read slower, since I have less time to forget.

I disagree with your take on the finality of a writer's words.

Speaking as a writer, I can say that a writer's words are definitely not final. Hell, there're probably times when the reader actually knows what the writer's saying more than the writer does. Granted, this is coming from someone who has actually lied to the audience about what's happening (It's a bitch to pull off, since the reader can't see inside your mind to know what actually happened, non-fiction and some cases of historical fiction aside.), so I might not be the best person to talk about this.

I remember reading Midnight Summer in Korean for school when I was in 4th grade in South Korea, now I'm reading it again now...


I read like 11 books per year, all of them are rereading cause ou know :rolleyes:

I read a ton, but only historical non-fiction or political books. I may be uttering blasphemy, but the classics honestly bore the shit out of me.

I suspect the figure is higher than that.

Really interesting New Yorker article here (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/12/24/071224crat_atlarge_crain?currentPage=all) about the effects of a society that doesn't read.
Ironically, it's long enough that the people it describes will never know about it until the film version is made.

Whether books for children are too hard to too dumb, I think, is a result of adults who do not know how to read, who do not know how to judge the relative skills required for this or that book, or how to train young readers to develop those skills.
I agree. It's like when I played soccer with kids who were much older than me. I previously played with those my own age, and liked it, but after a few games with my elders I never played soccer again. That's too bad, because soccer is a very popular sport, and I can't imagine it is really as bad I remember it.

Same with reading. In one of his columns, Russell Baker mentioned a school that stopped teaching Huckleberry Finn because it used the N-word. Baker agreed with the school's decision, but for a much different reason: fourteen-year-olds can't understand Huckleberry Finn. Forcing them to read it is a waste of time. There are plenty of books, many "classics," which a high-schooler can understand, some like The Catcher in the Rye are probably even more relevant to high-schoolers than they are to adults. But it's ridiculous to assume knowing the plot and style of Great Expectations when you're nine will make you smarter, or even a better reader, just as playing soccer with kids three years older than me didn't make me a better soccer player.

I hate polls like this; last year I read maybe 2 books, but I read them very fast, something like 2-3 days for Stranger in a Strangeland (uncut original); which is why I don't read many books any more. It's had to justify spending money on something that will only last a few days.

Perhaps you should have chosen other teachers. The past tense of "to read" is "read" (pronounced "red"), not "wred," which is not an English word at all. This is why we should try not to despise all editors (says the person who worked as an editor for ten years).
Dude, I make up words all the time when I write sci-fi or fantasy if I don't have a word that fits right.

I call the process snarglehoffing. The outcome, if the word created is successful, I call gurbledong. If not successful, yorxnaw.

Languages change. If it's on the internet, all that matters is that you understand the post. Now, if you're writing for something formal, that's a different matter completely.

It's had to justify spending money on something that will only last a few days.

That's what libraries and friends are for, to mooch off of.

I myself find it hard to read anymore. What with all the high definition games out there that actually let you become part of the story line, and reading and posting in different forums. The technology of today is allowing people to exercise their imagination more than any book can anymore.
I wonder what percentage of people don't read the threads they post in. :p

I've mentioned several times that neurological studies indicate that reading exercises the brain in a way that makes our brains healthier and smarter while televisions/games/internet let the brain be more passive, making them less healthy and dumber (i.e. not exercising our imaginations more than books).

Yet nobody has responded to that, even to dispute it. :)

Dude, I make up words all the time when I write sci-fi or fantasy if I don't have a word that fits right.

I call the process snarglehoffing. The outcome, if the word created is successful, I call gurbledong. If not successful, yorxnaw.

Languages change. If it's on the internet, all that matters is that you understand the post. Now, if you're writing for something formal, that's a different matter completely.

Hahaha, yeah, uh, no. The past tense of "to read" is "read" (pronounced "red"). :p

I wonder what percentage of people don't read the threads they post in. :p

I've mentioned several times that neurological studies indicate that reading exercises the brain in a way that makes our brains healthier and smarter while televisions/games/internet let the brain be more passive, making them less healthy and dumber (i.e. not exercising our imaginations more than books).

Yet nobody has responded to that, even to dispute it. :)

I'll respond, although only to agree. As elitist as it may sound, literate people are just smarter, and more capable of thinking in a way that helps them in the modern world.

Speaking as a writer, I can say that a writer's words are definitely not final. Hell, there're probably times when the reader actually knows what the writer's saying more than the writer does. Granted, this is coming from someone who has actually lied to the audience about what's happening (It's a bitch to pull off, since the reader can't see inside your mind to know what actually happened, non-fiction and some cases of historical fiction aside.), so I might not be the best person to talk about this.
Same here. As both a writer and an artist, my goal is to get inside my audience's head and screw with it. My stuff is full of symbols and references, all layered over each other, and open to interpretation. I often refuse to tell readers what the characters are thinking or feeling. Whether it is final or not, my meaning is less important than the meanings the readers bring to the story, imo.

Perhaps you should have chosen other teachers. The past tense of "to read" is "read" (pronounced "red"), not "wred," which is not an English word at all. This is why we should try not to despise all editors (says the person who worked as an editor for ten years). ;)

Then, I'm glad it annoys you! I'm hardly used to it myself, but I reserve for myself the right to misspell this one word of the entire language, because there is a particularly pressing need for a past participle of "to read."

"I READ YOUR POST." How can you be satisfied with that? How can you defend such ambiguity in the word which expresses one vital half of Being on a forum? You write to the forum, you wrote to the forum, you are writing to the forum ... but you don't see a need for a word which expresses the tense of the corresponding act?

My word "wred" is ugly, it grates on the eyes. "Readed" is no better, nor is "red." I'm going to continue using "wred" where I mean "did read" whether you like it or not, because to me reading-now and remembering-what-I-wred are vitally different things, my word expresses one not the other, and I need suffer no editor.

Look, I get what you're trying to say, but I disagree with it. I disagree with your take on the finality of a writer's words. I think you contradict yourself by saying a writer's words have a final and precise meaning and then later saying that some books require interpretation. Also, I disagree that books are primary sources of knowledge, not information. First, I do not draw such a bright and immovable line between knowledge and information. Second, if the subject of the course is the works of Dickens, then the novels of Dickens are the primary source of information for that course.

What a confected example!

I think the distinction between knowledge and information is still worth consideration. Of course I am not saying "writing is not a source of information" or "writing is propaganda." The point I was trying to make is that knowledge conveyed by writing is structured by writing, it is structured into sentences. Information, on the other hand, has some existence independent of being presented in words.

Is intelligence purely an ability to communicate? I think it is not, and perhaps this is really where we disagree.

And there's no contradiction there. Readers are imperfect, and can misunderstand even the plainest text.

Also, all of this ignores the fact that the simple act of reading printed matter has beneficial physical effects on the brain that boost a person's inherent intelligence (however smart they may be as individuals) overall, not just in certain areas of academic study. That, alone, is a counter to your assertion that there is no unequivocal good in reading.

Is it? Certainly if we compare eclectic and challenging reading with repetetive indulgence in television, we will see a person's mind benefit from reading.

But "is an unequivocal good" is a catagorical claim, it must stand up to any conceivable scenario, however confected.

I ask you to imagine a person who has only one book, let's make it a simple book. Now allow that this person reads the same book over and over again ... and they continue reading it over, as a sort of meditation on emptiness, long after they can recite the entire thing from memory. What positive rewiring of the brain could be happening here?

Even if you do not allow that in the case of some writing, or in the case of mind-numbing repetition, reading could actually decrease a person's clarity of thought, would you claim that the time it takes them to read could not be better spent? Is there nothing to be said against a person who leaves their child to starve while they read a book?

There is, and it does not matter what is read to get to that unequivocal good. EDIT: You could read nothing but the Daily Racing Form and end up with a more agile mind that a person who only watches the races on television.

How do you feel about the banning of books? The Jolly Roger cookbook, for instance. I think we might agree on that at least ...

I agree. It's like when I played soccer with kids who were much older than me. I previously played with those my own age, and liked it, but after a few games with my elders I never played soccer again. That's too bad, because soccer is a very popular sport, and I can't imagine it is really as bad I remember it.

Same with reading. In one of his columns, Russell Baker mentioned a school that stopped teaching Huckleberry Finn because it used the N-word. Baker agreed with the school's decision, but for a much different reason: fourteen-year-olds can't understand Huckleberry Finn. Forcing them to read it is a waste of time. There are plenty of books, many "classics," which a high-schooler can understand, some like The Catcher in the Rye are probably even more relevant to high-schoolers than they are to adults. But it's ridiculous to assume knowing the plot and style of Great Expectations when you're nine will make you smarter, or even a better reader, just as playing soccer with kids three years older than me didn't make me a better soccer player.
Forget knowing the plot and style. At nine years old, Dickens is so difficult that kids spend all their efforts just trying to navigate his sentences. All but the most gifted miss all the benefits of the content, style and meanings. Even if they could understand them, they can't access them because a person just has to be able to read with a certain level of ease to be able to read Dickens. Just like playing soccer with kids so much bigger, stronger, and more experienced will make it impossible for a child to get into the game, let alone work on his skills in it.

Forget knowing the plot and style. At nine years old, Dickens is so difficult that kids spend all their efforts just trying to navigate his sentences.
Agreed. Historians believe that Dickens may have single-handedly cause the Comma Famine of 1845.

Whether it is final or not, my meaning is less important than the meanings the readers bring to the story, imo.

Don't you want (at least some of) your work to be a statement?

I am sure this has been hashed over but did they include internet reading?

As for me I only pick up a fiction book when I am relaxing on vacation. I run a very busy life and it is not conducive to sitting down and reading a good book or two. Only time I get really is when I am kicking back somewhere.

I'll respond, although only to agree. As elitist as it may sound, literate people are just smarter, and more capable of thinking in a way that helps them in the modern world.

I'd like it if people would go back and read what I wrote, though. According to studies, it is not that smart people are literate, but that literate people are smart. Reading makes you smarter because of the way it exercises the brain.

Yes, different individuals will have varying degrees of intelligence. Some people are naturally smarter, some people not so much. But according to neurological research, reading will make ALL people score measurably higher on brain function tests, measured from their own individual baseline standards.

I wonder what percentage of people don't read the threads they post in. :p

I've mentioned several times that neurological studies indicate that reading exercises the brain in a way that makes our brains healthier and smarter while televisions/games/internet let the brain be more passive, making them less healthy and dumber (i.e. not exercising our imaginations more than books).

Yet nobody has responded to that, even to dispute it. :)

OK, I will. Respond, that is. Intelligence has a huge component of language in it, and of course exercising that part of the brain improves our ability to "think in full sentences." It improves our concentration, precisely for the reason I failed to articulate properly before: the text sits there and waits patiently for the reader's understanding. When the text is difficult, the reader can slow down or reread. Comprehension, without which reading would be futile, can be bought at the expense of speed of thought, which is rather overvalued in the time-bound media like film, or in real-world speech.

However, it has almost no bearing on our ability to play chess, a form of abstract thinking which has also been shown to be good for the brain. The player whose mind is distracted by little internal conversations like "but if I haven't moved the bishop before then, I won't be able to get that rook to the back row" gets quite soundly beaten by the player who thinks in a multi-dimensional picture. There are aspects of intelligence other than the ability to think "articulately." You should perhaps not dismiss 'games' so easily.

Surely I don't need to mention emotional or physical intelligence to make this point.

I broadly agree that reading books (whole books, not just articles or the snatches of text from different authors which are forum posts) is good for the mind. If anyone is prepared to take the position that reading is generally harmful, it certainly isn't me. And I certainly agree about television (even when they show movies, the thought-provoking qualities of such are decimated by advertising.)

I find it curious that although you spoke of your own writing, you still feel a need for debate, for adversarial thinking, and don't seem troubled by dismissing that as part of "the internet" and therefore inferior to reading. Even while you're doing it.

Then, I'm glad it annoys you! I'm hardly used to it myself, but I reserve for myself the right to misspell this one word of the entire language, because there is a particularly pressing need for a past participle of "to read."

"I READ YOUR POST." How can you be satisfied with that? How can you defend such ambiguity in the word which expresses one vital half of Being on a forum? You write to the forum, you wrote to the forum, you are writing to the forum ... but you don't see a need for a word which expresses the tense of the corresponding act?

My word "wred" is ugly, it grates on the eyes. "Readed" is no better, nor is "red." I'm going to continue using "wred" where I mean "did read" whether you like it or not, because to me reading-now and remembering-what-I-wred are vitally different things, my word expresses one not the other, and I need suffer no editor.
If it is your pleasure in life to be deliberately and obviously wrong so that you will have opportunities to give this little manifesto of yours, I will not try to argue you out of it. But you are wrong, and I will not respect your choice just because you enjoy it. Having the right to be wrong, doesn't make you right. (How's that for an ambiguously unambiguous sentence?)


What a confected example!

I think the distinction between knowledge and information is still worth consideration. Of course I am not saying "writing is not a source of information" or "writing is propaganda." The point I was trying to make is that knowledge conveyed by writing is structured by writing, it is structured into sentences. Information, on the other hand, has some existence independent of being presented in words.
I'm sorry, but I can't accept that either because it strikes me as nonsense. Like your justification for misspelling "read," you can do it if you like, but it will not make anything you say make sense to anyone but you.

Is intelligence purely an ability to communicate? I think it is not, and perhaps this is really where we disagree.
I do not believe I said it was.

And there's no contradiction there. Readers are imperfect, and can misunderstand even the plainest text.
Then the supposed finality of the writer's meaning may as well not exist since (a) readers will alter it according to their own understandings, and (b) so will the teachers who help them learn how to "interpret" the books that need it, since all are imperfect readers.

Is it? Certainly if we compare eclectic and challenging reading with repetetive indulgence in television, we will see a person's mind benefit from reading.

But "is an unequivocal good" is a catagorical claim, it must stand up to any conceivable scenario, however confected.
"Confected." Does that mean "sugar-coated" or "rendered sugary or sweet"?

I ask you to imagine a person who has only one book, let's make it a simple book. Now allow that this person reads the same book over and over again ... and they continue reading it over, as a sort of meditation on emptiness, long after they can recite the entire thing from memory. What positive rewiring of the brain could be happening here?
If you had bothered to read what I wrote, you'd know it is (a) not positive rewiring, but positive exercise of the brain's normal higher functions, and (b) that the mere act of reading accomplishes this. As for meditations upon emptiness, they have their own beneficial effects, according to physiologists.

Even if you do not allow that in the case of some writing, or in the case of mind-numbing repetition, reading could actually decrease a person's clarity of thought, would you claim that the time it takes them to read could not be better spent? Is there nothing to be said against a person who leaves their child to starve while they read a book?
A ridiculous example. What is that -- a strawman, or a false dichotomy, or some other debate-speak for BS? If I say a person should put down a book long enough to feed their child, will you claim a victory for your assertion that reading is a waste of a person's time? Nonsense. I refuse to play that dishonest game. The fact that you present it, indicates there is little merit to your argument.

How do you feel about the banning of books? The Jolly Roger cookbook, for instance. I think we might agree on that at least ...
I oppose book banning, and I wonder what the subject has to do with the topic.

I normally go through about 6+ a month with how busy I have been normaly in the neighborhood of 10

Don't you want (at least some of) your work to be a statement?
The existence of my work is my statement - or all the statement I need to make. The way I write/make it is my statement. Whatever I may think my work means, all that it needs for me think it is successful is for it to mean something to someone else, no matter what that is. For me, failure is when people are totally indifferent to my work, not when they come up with a meaning for it that is different from what it means to me.

lulz

I read tons of books.

I'm left wondering how many of those people don't read because they can't. I've always remembered my High School teacher for English in Grade 12 telling our class that up to a third of our graduating class might not be able to read or write proficiently, or even functionally.

It sounds crazy, but my family's done work in literacy for many years, and this statistic is hardly surprising. I hope we can bring the number down a bit for 2008, though.

OK, I will. Respond, that is. Intelligence has a huge component of language in it, and of course exercising that part of the brain improves our ability to "think in full sentences." It improves our concentration, precisely for the reason I failed to articulate properly before: the text sits there and waits patiently for the reader's understanding. When the text is difficult, the reader can slow down or reread. Comprehension, without which reading would be futile, can be bought at the expense of speed of thought, which is rather overvalued in the time-bound media like film, or in real-world speech.

However, it has almost no bearing on our ability to play chess, a form of abstract thinking which has also been shown to be good for the brain. The player whose mind is distracted by little internal conversations like "but if I haven't moved the bishop before then, I won't be able to get that rook to the back row" gets quite soundly beaten by the player who thinks in a multi-dimensional picture. There are aspects of intelligence other than the ability to think "articulately." You should perhaps not dismiss 'games' so easily.

Surely I don't need to mention emotional or physical intelligence to make this point.

I broadly agree that reading books (whole books, not just articles or the snatches of text from different authors which are forum posts) is good for the mind. If anyone is prepared to take the position that reading is generally harmful, it certainly isn't me. And I certainly agree about television (even when they show movies, the thought-provoking qualities of such are decimated by advertising.)
I agree with all your points here EXCEPT the part about it not affecting other kinds of intelligence and brain functions (like chess, athletics, and empathy). I assert that, while those functions are more directly exercised by other activities than reading, the kind of higher level brain functions exercised by reading do, in fact, affect those other parts of life as well.

I find it curious that although you spoke of your own writing, you still feel a need for debate, for adversarial thinking, and don't seem troubled by dismissing that as part of "the internet" and therefore inferior to reading. Even while you're doing it.
I also enjoy eating hummus sandwiches, taking showers, and buying shoes, none of which involve reading and writing. Your point?

And as for this disconnect you seem to think exists between me not wanting to impose my meanings upon the readers of my writing, and my hobby of debating here at NSG, I would remind you that one is an artistic exercise that is formed by a certain set of self-imposed rules, and the other is a social and intellectual exercise that is formed by a different set of rules. So what?

The existence of my work is my statement - or all the statement I need to make. The way I write/make it is my statement. Whatever I may think my work means, all that it needs for me think it is successful is for it to mean something to someone else, no matter what that is. For me, failure is when people are totally indifferent to my work, not when they come up with a meaning for it that is different from what it means to me.

But surely there is to writing a piece of art than stirring up emotions or perspectives? Surely you've got to stir up the right emotions or whathaveyou?

I oppose book banning, and I wonder what the subject has to do with the topic.

Well, I oppose book banning too. I'm just trying to find one thing on which we unmistakably agree, since at no point have I been trying to "destroy" your argument or make any of the ridiculous anti-book positions you seem to be reading into my posts.

If even you cannot understand what my posts are about, or see anything but nonsense in them, I guess I really am wasting my time here. I really do have too thin a skin, and have no desire to turn into a leather-clad thug.

But surely there is to writing a piece of art than stirring up emotions or perspectives? Surely you've got to stir up the right emotions or whathaveyou?
Well that is covered by the "getting inside people's heads and screwing with them" part.

lulz

I read tons of books.

Indirect tree murderer.
<.<

>.>

*phones druids*

Well, I oppose book banning too. I'm just trying to find one thing on which we unmistakably agree, since at no point have I been trying to "destroy" your argument or make any of the ridiculous anti-book positions you seem to be reading into my posts.

If even you cannot understand what my posts are about, or see anything but nonsense in them, I guess I really am wasting my time here. I really do have too thin a skin, and have no desire to turn into a leather-clad thug.

I don't want you to turn into a leather-clad thug, either. :)

EDIT: Unless you look good in leather.

Well that is covered by the "getting inside people's heads and screwing with them" part.

Not when you wrote "all that it needs for me think it is successful is for it to mean something to someone else, no matter what that is"

Indirect tree murderer.
<.<

>.>

*phones druids*

'ey!

I let other people read 'em too!

'ey!

I let other people read 'em too!

I'm sure they will be glad when they find out you've made them all accessories to murder.

Not when you wrote "all that it needs for me think it is successful is for it to mean something to someone else, no matter what that is"
OK, I'll explain:

In my artwork, I build collages and objects out of other images and objects specifically chosen because they have some kind of cultural or psychological meaning, preferably a lot different meanings. Things like skeletons, cars, tall buildings, storms, guns, animals, certain colors, textures, individual words, etc, etc, etc, etc. I then mix and match these things in compositions that are recognizable and have certain expectations of meaning attached to them (classical compositions). Sometimes I leave these images incomplete, with some expected element missing. Other times, I use things that, outside the context of the artwork in which they are combined, would not normally be combined in the imagination. When I am designing these works, I do have a thought in mind, something that guides my design. But I never, never reveal what that is in any obvious way. The result is that, when a piece is successful, people who view it will respond with strong emotions -- often wildly varying emotions. I have seen the same piece engender laughs, tears, fear, anger, philosophizing, and arguments. Also, people will impose their own meanings onto the works, spinning often elaborate fictions to explain what it is they are seeing. I emphasize, what they are seeing. Not what I told them to see, because I refuse to tell them what they are seeing.

Now to the writing: I like to write horror fiction, so naturally, my goal is to create chills and frights. And I write nice, normal stories about people doing things, so they do have recognizable content in them. However, what I do not do is try to guide the reader to understand the story the same way I do. I deliberately try to make heroes and villains who are not easily recognizable -- villains for whose suffering we might weep, or whose excuses make sense to us; heroes who we cannot bring ourselves to trust because of the terrible things they do, and so on. I will never say this is what this story is about, this is what it is supposed to mean to you, this is the hero and this is the villain, and that is the way you should root. It is my goal to have stories about which readers will argue who was the villain and who was the hero, whether the outcome of the plot was good or bad for the characters, etc.

So, yes, I have a clear idea of my own about all my characters, and plot events, and what the story means, but I don't care if my readers come up with an entirely different understanding of those things -- just as long as they don't say "Meh," and have no reaction at all. If they say "Meh," then I failed.

So, yes, I have a clear idea of my own about all my characters, and plot events, and what the story means, but I don't care if my readers come up with an entirely different understanding of those things -- just as long as they don't say "Meh," and have no reaction at all. If they say "Meh," then I failed.

What if just some of your readers were to say "meh"? Fifty? Two? One?

And if you'd written A View from the Bridge and someone came up to you and said "I loved how Marco killing Eddie was symbolic in terms of the immigration debate", you'd be happy be happy that you'd caused a reaction?

Hahaha, yeah, uh, no. The past tense of "to read" is "read" (pronounced "red").
Don't be such a snurlyvat. Snarglehoffing is a completely legitimate way to barglejarg, it's just not grammatically or dictionarically (not a word, either! I just snarglehoffed that) correct. It is still an effective way to barglejarg, and therefore I get my point across.


So, yes, I have a clear idea of my own about all my characters, and plot events, and what the story means, but I don't care if my readers come up with an entirely different understanding of those things -- just as long as they don't say "Meh," and have no reaction at all. If they say "Meh," then I failed.
So pretty much you want to rabbeldorpal, despite the boppledopple?

Sorry, you don't like it when I snarghoff.

So pretty much you want to affect people, whatever the outcome?

So it doesn't take into account the stuff that people might read online?
No, although this is a valid criticism of the study so few people read actual books online that I don't think it matters.
Um.... predicable? i really didn't expect the ending present in the first book.
That was the point that I was trying to make. Someone who hasn't read a book feels superior about it and gets their article published in a newspaper instead of someone who has read it and probably has a better understanding of it! I don't understand how that works.
Ottawa Citizen... what a trashy newspaper... everything is about the Sens or the government. And for once, they do something different and they still manage to botch it.

I'll wait to read about this in the Toronto Star.

I read it in a different newspaper and then looked it up online to post.
Perhaps you should use a dictionary to help you with your spelling whilst reading? Also it appears that your grammar requires a major overhaul. :D
Oh, I know I am horrible at spelling, I read a lot but it never sticks. Although concerning grammar I'm not that bad usually, but I was wicked tired and having trouble keeping my eyes open. When I'm in that state my grammar dies. But, honestly I'm not as stupid as I sound in that OP, sorry.
...So?

I'm sure most of these people can read, and maybe they just don't find interest in reading books?

Does that mean there is something wrong with them? That they're somehow less intelligent or something?

Maybe some people just don't like to read. Maybe these people enjoy watching movies, or excersising, or something like that.

Why is it that there is something wrong with them just because they don't enjoy things that you enjoy?
Well, now I can just point to Muravyets post and tell you that you show read more. :)


Same with reading. In one of his columns, Russell Baker mentioned a school that stopped teaching Huckleberry Finn because it used the N-word. Baker agreed with the school's decision, but for a much different reason: fourteen-year-olds can't understand Huckleberry Finn. Forcing them to read it is a waste of time. There are plenty of books, many "classics," which a high-schooler can understand, some like The Catcher in the Rye are probably even more relevant to high-schoolers than they are to adults. But it's ridiculous to assume knowing the plot and style of Great Expectations when you're nine will make you smarter, or even a better reader, just as playing soccer with kids three years older than me didn't make me a better soccer player.
I agree, this is one huge problem I had in English class. It is so difficult to judge what someone can handle emotional (I just couldn't deal with Night), what they can understand and relate to, their ability to analyse character, motivation, sentence structure or even just understand formates and vocabulary. Obviously for any class some people will be at different places than others but for English, perhaps it just happens more often but I don't think that English should be required all the way through High School (it is here, I don't know about elsewhere). Although, my writing/typing might make a good case for requiring a course on grammar/spelling.

Snarglehoffing

....I keep reading this as some sort of bizarre portmanteau word meaning "to snarl and gargle in the manner of David Hasselhoff"....which is really rather a strange and disturbing mental image, I must say.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=55aa5076-fe5d-409e-b4f3-f901559be698

So what do these people do in their spare time? I can understand people not reading as much as me, or rarely reading but not once in a year? :(

So NSG do what you do best: Judge, brag about what you did read also, do you think that perhapes there is an issue with education that turns people off books, or do you think that statistics like these are inevitable, do you even think that they are worrying?
Personally, I think it is rather depressing and really, it explains a lot. The irony I find is that I have seen a lot of adults making fun of children for reading the Harry Potter/Golden Compass/Eragon fantasy books. When the last HP book came out there those editoral cartoons mocking children who read Harry Potter, I've seen written editorals (same news paper) that, while defended the Golden Compass's right to exist mocked it for being predictable (although she said she hadn't read it). Also, I've recieved snotty comments about books I read (Classics especailly Russian Literature) including a comment from teachers about how I must not have a social life.[/rant]

Anyway, I'm tired and this isn't very coherant or interesting so I'll shut and ask: what do you think?

We don't read because we're too busy getting gay married and letting terrorists through our southern border.

What if just some of your readers were to say "meh"? Fifty? Two? One?
Each individual who says "meh" is a failure for me. I don't need to care about each one of them, but they don't make me happy. The more people say "meh," the more I would say my effort with the whole story failed, since my goal is not just to tell a story but to evoke an interested reaction (of any kind).

And if you'd written A View from the Bridge and someone came up to you and said "I loved how Marco killing Eddie was symbolic in terms of the immigration debate", you'd be happy be happy that you'd caused a reaction?
Yes. I might not be interested in their understanding/interpretation, but I'd be very happy that the story meant something to them, and that the meaning was so personal to them. It would mean that I had created a fictional reality immersive enough that they got into it, examined it, found meaning in it, or applied meaning to it. It made sense to them = I succeeded.

Don't be such a snurlyvat. Snarglehoffing is a completely legitimate way to barglejarg, it's just not grammatically or dictionarically (not a word, either! I just snarglehoffed that) correct. It is still an effective way to barglejarg, and therefore I get my point across.
You have a point? :p


So pretty much you want to rabbeldorpal, despite the boppledopple?

Sorry, you don't like it when I snarghoff.

So pretty much you want to affect people, whatever the outcome?
Yeah, pretty much.

Why would you want to? Could I read 100 pages an hour? Maybe; I know I can speed-read fairly quickly but I've never "clocked" it. Do I enjoy doing that? No, of course not. When reading for leisure (key word here), I fall right around the average for reading speed. I read each individual word and actually enjoy the images and notions being brought to mind by phrases, sentences and paragraphs. I never understood people who pride themselves and reading insanely quickly. Yes, it's a useful skill, but you also lose a lot.

I do the same thing as you and still read well over 100 pages/hour. Speedreading about doubles that.
It is just a matter of reading often.

Each individual who says "meh" is a failure for me. I don't need to care about each one of them, but they don't make me happy. The more people say "meh," the more I would say my effort with the whole story failed, since my goal is not just to tell a story but to evoke an interested reaction (of any kind).


Yes. I might not be interested in their understanding/interpretation, but I'd be very happy that the story meant something to them, and that the meaning was so personal to them. It would mean that I had created a fictional reality immersive enough that they got into it, examined it, found meaning in it, or applied meaning to it. It made sense to them = I succeeded.

See, this is where you lose me. I think it's important to say "Those people aren't laughing. That's a good thing. I didn't want them to laugh". Otherwise you're not saying anything, you're not doing anything different from a guy running around on a hot day throwing water over people and drawing delight, anger, fear, sorrow from those he has drenched. If A View from the Bridge isn't about something in particular then the reactions it draws are no more important than the reactions to an episode of Hope & Faith.

You have a point?
Yes, that it's perfectly gooblekop to snarglehoff.

I read the complete works of Tom Clancy over the past two years. I feel like I've learned enough about sonar to get a degree in it.

Children aren't learning to read early enough in life, so it's always like a second language to them. If reading is effortless, it can't be boring because it ceases to be a thing you do - it just happens when text is available. The book might be boring (and some are - anything by Toni Morrison, for example), but the act of reading can't be.

People who find reading a chore don't do it much. That's not a surprise.

Dude, I make up words all the time when I write sci-fi or fantasy if I don't have a word that fits right.

I call the process snarglehoffing. The outcome, if the word created is successful, I call gurbledong. If not successful, yorxnaw.
You have no control over whether someone understands what you write. All you can do is write well and you've done your part.

Making up words no one has seen before for no other reason than you can't be bothered to find the word you want does not constitute writing well.

You have no control over whether someone understands what you write. All you can do is write well and you've done your part.
Why thank you captain babbledongyopshyqurpleyork. That's captain obvious if you couldn't figure it out.


Making up words no one has seen before for no other reason than you can't be bothered to find the word you want does not constitute writing well.
Way to make assumptions, you nurlyvat. I employ a thesaurus and a dictionary like none other. It's you who can't be bothered and realize that I'm making a joke.

Maybe some people don't have time to read ie work alot of hours.
Maybe some people can't read ie immigrants who can't read English.
Maybe some people have various illnesses that stop them from reading.
Maybe some people wouldn't class reading as "cool" and unsociable.
Maybe some people just didn't find pleasure in reading when young and assume it will be so when they are older.

That's just a few reasons i'm sure there's more. A link with all of the above are they can all be found under the "underclass" or "Lower classes", if classes really do still exist, due to lack of money(or other factors that keep them poor) they might have issues that lead to the above.

Maybe some people just didn't find pleasure in reading when young and assume it will be so when they are older.
If my kids don't find pleasure if reading they're not likely to find much pleasure.

I'd like it if people would go back and read what I wrote, though. According to studies, it is not that smart people are literate, but that literate people are smart. Reading makes you smarter because of the way it exercises the brain.

Yes, different individuals will have varying degrees of intelligence. Some people are naturally smarter, some people not so much. But according to neurological research, reading will make ALL people score measurably higher on brain function tests, measured from their own individual baseline standards.

Fear not, I agree with you. I did not mean that smart people read, but readers are smart, as you say. There was a village in Russia or Ukraine where they tested literates and illiterates, and found a distinct difference between the way they thought. For example, when showing pictures of a saw, a hammer, and a pile of logs, they asked the groups which did not belong. Most of the illiterates chose the hammer, because they would much rather have firewood and be able to cut more than a hammer. When they were told that others had said the logs didn't belong, one illiterate person said something to the effect of, "Then he must have plenty of firewood."
The villagers weren't stupid, and the literate people weren't removed from the illiterate (they needed firewood just as much). But they could think more abstractly, which is necessary for anyone who wishes to advance from Russian peasant to something more.

EDIT: I can't find what you originally wrote. Could you provide another link? The studies you mentioned sound interesting.

Maybe some people don't have time to read ie work alot of hours.
While this is valid it does not make up for an entire year without a book. Generally if someone has to work that long they are poor. Poor people generally use transit, this is a good time to read. If they are working homeless they generally have a lot of time to kill. Some people may fall into this certain category it makes up a small number of the 30%.
Maybe some people can't read ie immigrants who can't read English.
This study was not just English books. And there are books from other languages all around.
Maybe some people have various illnesses that stop them from reading.
Dyslexia? It doesn't stop someone from reading and as you need English to graduate from highschool no exceptions these should be overcome in school.
Maybe some people wouldn't class reading as "cool" and unsociable.
This is a reason, but it's a bad one and as a problem. This is the reason I'm afraid of.
Maybe some people just didn't find pleasure in reading when young and assume it will be so when they are older.
Again, I know that this is probably the biggest reason. However, this is the reason that depresses me and one that should have been addressed in school by:
1. Giving children the foundation in reading so that it is second nature, or first nature to them, as the case may be.
2. Allowing children to explore literature and books my themselves. Not forcing incredibly hard, easy or just painfully boring books on them.