And then some! I just feel the need to defend a medium that makes up a huge chunk of my reading material.
Once when I was reading a book, I laughed at something I read in it, and one of my classmates asked me what was so funny. When I told them, they seemed astounded that I could find the written word genuinely funny. The perceptions of some people toward reading just baffle me.
Nothing is sexier than a woman who reads all the time. Reading is awesome, and people who don’t read should be regarded with great suspicion. You CANNOT read too much. It’s impossible. Actually, I am starting to think my time on the SDMB is cutting into my reading time. That’s trouble. But it’s reading in its own way, I guess.
I love reading. Used to sit for hours on the library steps at lunchtime in primary school.
But… now I’m in year twelve, and this has (tragically) reduced my ability to read.
Not that I don’t WANT to, you understand. It’s just that every time I pick up a book (when I should be studying for exams and whatnot), It inevitably chews up an entire evening.
I tell myself, I’ll just finish this chapter, or, just another ten pages. Never works. Hmph.
-Oli
Griffin, you weren’t, by any chance, talking to my dad, were you? 
Seriously, I have always loved fiction more than non-fiction, although I’ve read copious amounts of both…and this idea that fiction is “just silly escapism” drives me nuts. My dad always assumed that since I “love to read” I should be reading something “real.” You know, because you can only learn from non-fiction. :rolleyes:
I think the percentage of readers who do themselves or their lives actual harm vs. the people who harm themselves every day b/c they don’t read are pretty damn low.
And people who think fiction is silly or pointless are usually those who don’t like to read much at all; it’s a excuse. “Oh, yeah, I read on a ‘need to know’ basis.”
Whatever.
Oh, and Shy Guy, I call sig line!
“The moral of the story is that people need to shut up when I’m reading.”
Luv it.
[sub]Total hijack here, but will other readers testify about the magnetism of a reader when he/she is reading? WTF is that about? I can stand around at work for an hour, doing nothing, and nobody will stop by to talk to me, but the moment I pick up a book, people feel compelled to come bother me. Talk to me. Ask me what I’m reading. Ask me “what it’s about.” Tell me about the last book they read five years ago, that I “really need to read!” No, I’m sorry, I don’t want to read that book. What I want to do is get back to, oh wait, THE ONE I WAS READING WHEN YOU INTERRUPTED ME![/sub]
Oh, and FTR, you can physically read too much, yes. Years of reading under the covers with a flashlight, reading by streetlight and barlight and starlight, has left me with a seriously screwed up prescription. I’m near-sighted in one eye, and farsighted in the other, and I can’t wear bifocals and reading glasses make my head swim.
So turn up the lights, people. Look into these eyes and be afraid of the otherwise.
Read…too much? That’s setting me up for major cognitive dissonance right there. Aaaaaagh!
I’m guessing that 75% of what I own right now is books. (Most of what crappy furniture I had before the last move was tossed or given away.) I DO need to sort through them, but it doesn’t bother me one bit.
I can’t remember NOT being able to read. Once my mom (also a bookworm) tried to punish me by banning me from books. It didn’t work for more than a few hours, and she never tried that one again.
I love books. I love reading them. The thrill some women get when they walk into a department store I get when I walk into a bookstore. I even love the SMELL of books. Books are my friends, and I am not about to abandon my friends.
I’ll testify to that. The worst is when I’m reading some kind of Epic Fantasy that spans like 4 books and I’m just finishing book 4 when they ask me! How am I going to condense 4 books of a major complicated plot into one or two sentences especially when, more often than not, the most complicated thing they’ve read is Left Behind. I can just see their eyes glazing over now…
Oh, and while I’m in good company in this thread, I have to see if anyone else does this. I buy books all the time because I want to read them. What people don’t understand is I don’t neccesarily want to read them right now. If I see a book that looks interesting, I buy it, and then when I feel like reading it, I’ll read it. Even if it’s five years down the road.
“But you’re not going to read it right now, so why are you buying it?” They ask.
Well, I don’t know if it’ll be in print, if I’ll remember I want to read it, if I even remember which book it is…
If you have time to read in the bathroom, you need more fiber.
I have the exact opposite problem as Archergal’s. I really like to read, but I’m so busy with other things, that I squeeze out my reading time. So for me? Not possible to read too much, as in amount of information in. Relative to the group posting in this thread, I don’t read much. However, I still have the experience of getting “how did you know that” reactions from people when I come up with some trivia not directly related to my career.
Reading = good, as long as you’re not compromising your physical, emotional, or social health. The amount of reading that could do that vary person to person.
I feel that reading almost compusively from a very early age has had mixed blessings. As earlier posters have said, vocabulary and writing skills is improved, an abundance of trivia and academic benefits accrue- I would read a textbook if nothing else was available. I had endless fights with my parents over lights-out time, and spent a lot of hours reading under the covers with flashlamps.
I had two sets of library tickets from age 7, one for myself and one for my (non-existent) brother so I could check out more books at one time.
The downside is that, in my case at least, I missed out on a lot of the fun stupid things that kids my age were doing, living in a world of my own. And this is something that stayed with me almost until I started college.
But I can’t say for sure if reading made me a dork, or if it was a symtom of dorkiness…
My $0.02
Hijack…if Audrey Levins is still online, can you email me at kennethlevins@depthofmind.com please?
duh…writing skills ** are ** improved but not typing or grammar checking obviously
While I may have said that a woman reading is sexy, I would never bother them. Maybe steal a look at the cover, then move on. I hate being interrupted while I am reading.
Books are people’s perspectives on the world. So, how can they be antisocial?
Ding ding ding! Audrey Levins, I think we have a winner! I think it’s far more likely that people are harmed by not having read than by reading “too much,” whatever that is, just like wearing seat belts.
If I’m reading and totally engrossed in a story that takes me to a completely different state, country, or planet, in a time likely long ago or not yet here, meeting people I would never meet otherwise, and you, O Bookless One, are at the corner bar and grill with coworkers having one too many margaritas for the millionth time–really, which one of us is “getting out more”? As Eudora Welty said, “All serious daring starts from within.”
Yes you can read too much. There is nothing inherent in reading that renders the act of reading as “good” within itself. And if you read a worthless book for five minutes you have read five minutes too much.
People read for only one reason - to learn. We learn through trite fiction, through textbooks and comic books. Once we stop learning from what we read we stop reading. So in spite of the exultations of teachers and librarians everywhere a large measure of reading, depending upon the person, is worthless and bad. So stop it.
Tell you what: I’ll stop reading when I stop learning things from what I read. At the rate I’m going, however, I’ll almost certainly die first, as I learn something from pretty much everything I read.
When I was little, I read too much. I was a Reader.
I don’t know if that was the cause of my emotionally stunted growth, or a symptom, because my sister was decidedly not a Reader, but she was the same way. Instead of reading, she made three-dimensional color-coded mathematical models and computer animations of her visualizations of four-dimensional figures.
Now I am a writer.
Happy
I used to think I was happy.
Well, as long as I thought that, what of it?
My life was a line.
A slim silver line, straight as an arrow, I skated upon.
I was pulled along.
I lived a life no trouble could overtake.
I had peace.
I used to think I was happy.
Life was always the same.
Sometimes I cry, why couldn’t it still be that way?
Forever, in peace,
Running along my silver line.
Now,
Now…
It opens up like two mirrors,
A kaleidoscope,
Reflecting the colors of the world.
Beautiful destruction!
Eager pain
And in between,
Honest happiness!
Not the piercing joy of my intellectual
Silver line;
Chills, that used to give me.
That doesn’t come often to me now.
(I want it back! It was a constant!
It kept me alive when I barely lived!)
(No! I want more! More of this anguish
entwined with warm wonder!)
This, even, this terror,
Pulling me in two directions,
Tearing me apart,
Opens me farther and
Makes me want more of it.
My heart will not keep to itself any longer.
This it swears.
And from the other perspective, have you ever had someone come into your house, and upon seeing packed bookshelves askes, “Wow, have you read all those books?”
How about if you answer, “Yes, and I’ve even read some of them twice” you get, “How can you stand to read a book twice? You already know how it ends!”
(Of course, this is usually coming from someone who watches endless reruns of Mr. Ed and The Munsters on Nick At Nite.) :rolleyes:
Who decides if the book is worthless?
I disagree…one does not always read merely to learn. For some, reading can be like watching a sunset, or spending a day at the beach. Beautiful, pleasurable, entertaining, but without an “educational” benefit. Are they “bad,” then?
FTR, I have learned almost as much from “worthless” books as I have from their more worthy counterparts, even if that knowledge is only: “Even BAD writing can be published and make millions.”.
I am a total and complete bookaholic. I would much prefer to sit at home on a Friday evening with a book than spend time at any sort of social event. Luckily, my husband and most of my friends are the same way and I am lucky in that respect. I get a lot of grief from non-bookish people in my life though. My MIL, for example, suggested that I simply throw away the books I’ve already read so I could free up more space in my house. Boggle
I simply don’t understand the thought process that leads to a statement like that. Books are not disposable to me.
I have an ex-sister-in-law who once claimed she had never read an entire book in her adult life and was quite proud of that fact. She said that reading was a waste of time and refused to have any in her home other than the Bible. Going to her house was a strange experience because a house without books is just off-kilter somehow. There’s a sense of something missing. I always wanted to sneak a book or two in there and leave them lying around somewhere where she wouldn’t find them. Sorta a bookaholic’s version of Feng Sui.