No, never, not once. Not even when I was a weird little kid. I’ve always read a lot, but now I am a doctoral student preparing for my field exams. I have been reading about a book a day for the past three or four months. I don’t go anywhere or do anything without my book-and-chain. Aside from occasional sympathy from other people who’ve gone through this process, I’ve never taken shit from anyone about the size of my habit.
Not really taking any grief or anything, but some of my cousins used to be generally flummoxed that anyone could have a good time reading a book. To them books were something you read because the school forced you. Most of the rest of the family is pretty big into reading, though.
Generally, no.
However, sometimes my wife will nudge me to indicate she’d rather I take my head out of my book and do something else.
Like wash the dishes, feed the baby, or make love. . .
I wouldn’t be surprised if being forced to read in school is what turns a lot of people off reading as adults. Really young children all seem to love books but ny the time they are in high school most don’t.
Nope, never, except for the few times my math teacher caught me with a book under my desk instead of paying attention in class. :o
Actually, you kind of implied that you did. “Especially not that garbage YOU’RE watching!” shrugs Some people just don’t like to read, it doesn’t mean they’re troglydites.
Aside from peer pressure saying “smart = totally uncool and target for bullies”, jr. high and high school English classes can definitely damage interest in reading. There are several books I’d have enjoyed on their own merits that were basically ruined for me by those classes and the “teachers” constantly ramming alleged symbolism and deep hidden meanings into the actual text.
Fortunately, my enthusiasm for reading survived. My mother reports that I was literate around age 3, and I honestly do not remember not knowing how to read.
Even though I’m an avid reader, I don’t get hit with this as much as I’d normally expect. Now, when I carried my Kindle around with me everywhere, I’d constantly have people asking me what I’m reading (not why I’m reading), and after the 30th time, it was a struggle not to be abrasive in my reply. It’s like, “What I’m reading is my own goddamn business, goddamn it.”
My Kindle ceased functioning some time ago, but it’s all good because I have a Kindle app for my smartphone. Now I don’t get that question, because it’s not always obvious that I’m reading at all.
I have always envied readers. I read tons of trivia, short stories and articles but am lucky to finish 2 or 3 books a year. When I first leaned to read as a child I read constantly, encyclopedias memorizing all kinds of world stats. Today I enjoy the occassional autobiography but generaly can’t sit still long enough to really read a book.
When I was in elementary school (a parochial school) we couldn’t run in the asphalt-covered playground at recess, which was a definite bummer. The nuns also confiscated “dangerous” toys. This left jumping rope, flipping baseball cards, and walking the circuit (a la the book The Great Escape) as the only acceptable activities.
So I brought a book and read. Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki.
The nuns confiscated it.
Yeah, I bring my Kindle to my in-law’s house, but I only read it when everyone else is busy doing something, and all I have to do is watch TV. Not when the whole family sits down and watches TV together.
The first book I read was Harold and the Purple Crayon at age 5 and I never stopped reading (though of course I moved on from HanPC!). Classic introvert, nose in book at every opportunity. I preferred reading to roaming the neighborhood aimlessly looking for entertainment with the very few other kids who lived there. I have a Kindle now but have yet to put it to good use in a waiting room, I kinda like looking through the magazines. (Or sitting there doing nothing, intent on my own morbid thoughts…reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry asks Elaine what she did last night, and she insisted she did ‘nothing.’ “Nothing?” “Nothing, Jerry. I sat on my couch and looked at the wall and then I went to bed.”)
It’s “troglodytes.”
And in my book, it kind of does.
Reading (loving to read, knowing how to read and comprehend what you’re reading) is the single greatest predictor of success in school and in life. Doesn’t mean you have to carry a book with you everywhere. If someone doesn’t like to read, I want to have a serious talk with their parents and their earliest teachers. Something went off track very early on… and that child (and later adult) will suffer for it forever.
I don’t want to wander off into a debate, but if you put “reading predictor success” into your search box, you’ll find tons of documentation supporting this. I’m immersed in writing on this very topic at the moment, so I’m familiar with this issue.
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I find it funny you felt you had to make it clear you were not still reading “Harold and the Purple Crayon”.
“Honest! I finished it! I mean, I was ten when I finished it, but I did!”
Don’t bother,** amanset**. Years ago I started a thread in the pit about people who love to tell everyone how much they read. I really don’t have the energy to start another one but if you do it, I promise to back you up. Just don’t misspell troglodyte like **Guin **and I did.
Okay, I know I’m in thread shit territory; I apologize.If anyone remembers or looks up the thread I’m referring to, you’ll see it wasn’t all that hateful and we all remained friends (in my mind at least). I just remember that at the time I felt like everyone couldn’t stop themselves from bragging about how much they read and after seeing the “book snob” thread followed by this one, I got a little deja vu.
And to answer the OP in earnest: hell no. Why would they, unless I read at inappropriate times or constantly talked about reading ( if they themselves aren’t readers).
I wasn’t even thinking so much of us here. I work in the administrative end of the early childhood education field. We stress the importance of parents reading to their kids every day, even something really short. My mother read to me from one of those “365 Bedtime Story” books. The kids where I work are read to by their teachers every day (these are children <age 3). It’s just so important to introduce them early to the joys of reading. That is the single most important skill they need for success in school. When I meet adults who “hate to read,” I want to go back in time and slap whatever teacher/parent is responsible for that.
*
I’ll go now…*
I do remember a conversation at school that went something like:
“What are you doing?”
“I’m reading a book”
“Okay then, what’s the fifth word on page 234?”
The idea was that when you read a book, you memorise every single word. Which isn’t the case. The words create an impression in your mind, and you memorise the impression. It’s like the difference between eating flour and water, and eating bread. You know?
The only times I’ve been a bit wary of showing people the front cover of the book I was reading involved (a) Ken Alibek’s “Biohazard”, which I picked up shortly after 9/11, (b) “Bravo Two Zero”, which is the kind of thing you wouldn’t admit to reading in polite company - I hid the cover and told them it was a biography of Stanley Kubrick instead, (c) “I Flew for the Fuhrer”, a book by a Luftwaffe fighter pilot, which I read because I was playing Aces High, the online flight simulator. Not because I am a Nazi.
And I was flying the BF-109F a lot. It’s got a good balance of speed, climb, manoeuvrability - poor firepower, though - but because it’s an early-to-mid-war plane you get more points for shooting down P-51s and so forth. Which you can do, if they don’t just dive away from you. See, the P-51 doesn’t turn or climb as well as the BF-109F, so if you can lure an overconfident opponent into slowing down, you have him.
Indeed. As a kid I loved to read - but with a few exceptions I detested the books we learned at school. I’d slog my way through some utterly super-boring crap at school (Great Expectations can slurp me) then go home and read three novels in a weekend.
Definitely, sometimes its just not worth reading certain books in public as it takes to much explanation. Also I’ve learned that certain books need to be put in more discreet places on bookshelves when guests will be around:
“‘The Rape of Nanking’? What’re you reading about rape for?!?”
I do take a certain perverse pleasure in putting contradictory books next to each other, a history of the IRA and one about the British Army, or something by Richard Dawkins and a biography of Pope John Paul II for example…what can I say, I’m easily amused… 
Of course people are justifiably irritated by people who boast about how much they read but this thread and the vast majority of replies are about how sometimes people get negative reactions just by the mere fact of being engaged in reading in public at all. And some people have never had any negative reaction, such is life.
Sometimes reading at all is apparently ‘boasting about how much they read’.
There you go, I always like people asking me what I’m reading, it makes for interesting conversations. But different strokes for different folks.
If I’m really invested in a book and don’t want interrupted then I save it for private reading time.
Don’t leave a copy of The Rape of the Lock around, or they’ll think you’re really sick.
I am not a big reader but a good share of the reading I do is in public places because I hate having nothing to do. At home I would be working on a project. Sometimes I welcome a question about what I am reading because I am really more in the mood for talking, other times I really want to finish a book and want to be left alone. I tend to smile, give a very brief explanation and go back to reading.