So why DO you like to read?

Cafe Society
1

Inspired by the ‘non-readers’ thread below which has all gone horribly wrong I thought it would be interesting to add why people do like to read.

Do you have a preference for factual or fictional material, what subjects do you like best, and why? What are your reading styles? What subject leaves you completely cold?

Personally I like to have a book on the go at any given time, emphasis on ‘book’, I can’t grasp how people can dip into and out of multiple books at a time, for me that would break my flow of concentration on the material. Once I start a book I’m very reluctant to give it up before completion even if it isn’t really grabbing me (sometimes a book can take a long time to get going) and I can count the number of books I’ve left unfinished after starting on the fingers of one hand.

I like to read on a rotating fiction and factual basis and my main interests are military history and Irish history (mostly about The Troubles), as for fiction I like science-fiction and technothrillers, although I’ve started making a concious effort to read more ‘high-brow’ novels but those are still the exception rather than the rule.

I have a particular interest in the Cold War (all aspects of it), I wouldn’t say I find the Second World War uninteresting but I wouldn’t seek material on it out.

As for genres that leave me cold I have to say I’ve never understand why people enjoy reading horror stories and although I recognise it as a very important subject any time I’ve attempted to read something on economics it may as well be in Swahili for all the sense I can make of it.

As for why I like reading its mostly because I like learning things and reading books (and websites like the Straightdope) is my chosen method for doing so, it has also gotten me the very much unfounded reputation for being the ‘smart guy’, people think because I like to read and can often be found with a book in hand that I’m a lot more intelligent than I actually am, I’m the ‘go to’ person for when someone needs a question answered (apart from my chosen topics above my self-education is wide but shallow but people still seem impressed). I’ve also found that having a book lying around is a good means for starting a conversation, people like to talk about what they and others are reading.

As regards fiction I was quite badly bullied at school and books were very much my ‘escape’, I could imagine myself as a hero in the story-world I was reading about and it helped me deal with the bad aspects of real life. If I’m honest with myself I’m not particularly imaginiative and an author created story-world gave the necessary imaginative building blocks to play around with. Although not needed for the same reason I still like to imagine the realities the authors are describing, an advantage is that I’m rarely, if ever, bored, the disadvantage is that I sometimes slip away into a daydream when I should really be paying attention!

So what say you, the cool dispassionately intellectual throbbing hive-minds of the Straightdope, what do you like to read and why? (please play nice, part of the reason I started this thread was so people could discuss the subject without the ill-will apparent in the other thread)

Ack, apologies for the coding in the thread title

2

One reason I like to read is because I enjoy using my brain. Reading allows me to do that in many ways including processing information, interpreting information and using my imagination to visualize the information I’ve just processed and interpreted. I find that pleasurable.

Another reason is that I like to learn new stuff and experience new ideas, and reading is, for me, a terrific way to accomplish those things.

3

I like information. I’m into non-fiction (psychology/sociology, general science, history) and political commentary, mostly. I will read fiction if someone recommends it, but I enjoy learning over entertainment.

I’m an avid reader but it’s not my main hobby. It’s what I do when I’m on the toilet, when I’m traveling, or waiting at the doctor’s office. I’m not ripping and running around all the other times, but I am doing other things that aren’t conducive to reading.

4

Male, 41. I’ve always been a reader. Maybe because I grew up in a rural spot without any other kids around besides younger siblings. However even as a toddler I was apparently fascinated with the printed word. Mom would sit me on the floor with a pile of magazines and I would spend hours ripping them up.

As a kid, I read a lot of history and fiction. I loved the Time Life pseudo-leather Old West books and the Landmark series of history and biographies for kids. I read most of the Micheners in high school.

I still read lots of historical fiction,but have been on post-apocalyptic/dystopian fiction kick for a while. I read some mysteries and have just finished all the Roger Smith South African crime noir books.

I don’t read much high-brow fiction. I just can’t get past over-written works. A lot of science fiction also falls in this category for me.

For non-fiction, gardening, self-sufficiency, metalworking, and history.

5

I’ve been able to read for as long as I have been able to form memories. So, to a large extent, I like reading simply because it’s always been a part of my life.

I breathe, I sleep, I read.

If you’re getting into the reasons I chose the subjects to read that I do, it depends on the circumstances:

Bored out of my mind while running errands or waiting in line or in a waiting room? If it has print, I will be reading it.

Stressed or unhappy about my own life? Fantastical fiction - fantasy of all stripes, science fiction, humor… just about anything that’s about people who don’t have lives or choices even remotely similar to those in my every day life.

Curious or restless? Nonfiction, especially neuroscience or space or any weird in-depth history of mundane things like salt or pewter or snails.

6

The short and sweet version is that I’m an actor. I was through high school and I almost wanna say a good part of my every day life is me pretending I’m someone else. Reading gives me the chance to act. It’s only in my head and it’s heard/seen by no one else but I can act out all the parts.

I’m the hero, the villian, the heroine and everyone. I can craft a voice, a look, and everything. Although I tend to always imagine myself as the hero…and people I know as the characters, but still I can be someone else for a change.

7

Neither: I have a preference for stories, but they can be factual or fictional. Give me an essay on the importance of the EU and I’ll be bored by the time I turn over the title page; give me a biography of someone who was instrumental on building the EU and if it’s half-decently written I’ll gobble it up.

It’s the same for poetry (with or without music): with a few glorious exceptions, I like poems and songs that tell a story better than those which do not.

Sometimes I think the reason that Dolly the Sheep caught politicians with their pants down is that most of them prefer essays to stories: cloning (human and non) and its consequences had been under discussion for decades, but the books mentioning it were stories, not essays.

8

Database error led to out of time, so addendum:

When it’s poetry I just want the story; when it’s prose, I prefer stories whose background can spawn “foor for thought” discussions. The book has X technology: what would happen if such a technology was actually available? My mother dislikes anything that she views as “cannot happen”, but not so long ago people thought that travels of thousands of miles under the sea or visits to the Moon “could not happen”. Dad liked Verne so much he had two different editions of his complete stories: the one he got as a teenager, and a newer one he got when I (his eldest) was a tween, so we’d be able to read them on the floor, upside-down or while eating without him getting nervous over seeing his beloved Vernes at risk of grubby handprints :slight_smile:

9

For me, this is pretty much it.

I will add that I find that I retain information a lot better if I read it than if it’s presented in any other format. So when it comes to non fiction, I have to read it.

10

Here’s something I wrote in my journal some time ago.

That’s the main reason I read. That, and for fun.

11

All of this, exactly. When I’m reading I always feel like my brain is working. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, I almost always come away feeling like I know a little bit more than I did before. I also like the escapism aspect and find reading to be a comforting and relaxing activity.

I enjoy both fiction and non-fiction. I used to read almost exclusively fiction, but have found myself more drawn to non-fiction in recent years. Of the 16 books I’ve read so far this year, 6 have been non-fiction. I will generally give almost anything a try, but I am not particularly drawn to fantasy.

12

I like to read because it is quiet time and solitary. I like being able to escape from all the noise of life such as the tv, radio, computers, cars, rushing around etc.

I mostly read histories, social history and commentary, biographies and the like. Occasionally I will read a non-fiction, but as I get older I read less of them.

My Nook has encouraged me to read things I normally wouldn’t because of the ease of access. I’m currently going through the works of Wodehouse (mainly for the Jeeves stories, but am liking the others as well) and Lovecraft. If I bought the books they’d just sit on my shelf waiting to be read. Since I can now carry them anywhere easily, I will read a few stories in between my usual stuff or if I just want something a little different.

13

There’s reading, and there’s reading.

I read all day long- my job involves reviewing and revising and writing contracts and various transactional legal documents; I read trade and industry journals at work to keep up on current trends; I read the news online to keep up with world and local events; I consider all of this ‘purposeful reading’.

Then, at night, after the kids have gone upstairs to get ready and get into bed, and the bills have been paid and my wife and I have had conversations about life-things, and the business of the day is winding down, I read for pleasure. It might only be 20-30 pages, but it’s for fulfillment, escapism (not condescendingly), education and to workout that part of my brain.

I can’t read for pleasure in short spurts, though. I can’t get into it that way; reading for ten minutes while I eat lunch, or at a stoplight, or while sitting on the toilet, or while other things are going on that may or will require my periodic attention- that’s a recipe for disaster. To enjoy what I’m reading, I need about 40 minutes of general quiet- the TV or radio can’t be on and there can’t be other things going on in the room. Then, after I’ve addressed that need, I can shut myself off and stare mindlessly at the TV for a while, or cuddle, or go to bed, or whatever.

14

Well said. Maybe some people are born to tell stories, and I was born to read them!

When I was little, I always gravitated to books about ghosts and witches. Now I would call myself a horror fan. However, I don’t want to read pointless brutality and gore. I’m looking for that Twilight Zone thrill, that sense of awe when you suddenly understand the world isn’t at all what you thought it was… Besides, if you are always expecting the worst, it can’t catch you off guard, right? Right?

Lots of things leave me cold. I don’t read true crime, and I won’t read books with child or animal abuse whether it’s real or not. I’m generally not interested in war, politics, sports, law, medicine, or romance. There, did that take care of all the bestsellers list? :smiley: Fantasy is iffy. I don’t want to read a nine-book series about Glar, the princess warrior fairy who has a psychic connection with dragons.

I do like science fiction (not too hard, please), young adult novels, and children’s books. In part this is because my brain has not matured past the young adult stage, but I also like to deconstruct these books a bit and think about what messages are being sent to kids, and how they are likely being received. At one point, I wanted to write this stuff.

My reading time is short these days, and I’m in it for pure enjoyment, so I don’t waste much time on a book if I don’t like it. I’ll ditch that sucker on page two, yo.

15

Language makes me happy. Reading is a part of that, whether it’s novels, non-fiction, comic books, or webpages. Also writing, listening to music, and watching particularly clever things on video.

Reading is important to me to the point where I will go out and learn a language in order to read something which isn’t available in translation, or whose translations annoy me – I decided to take French in high school partly because I wanted to read Dumas and assorted Victorian policiers, and I started Japanese partly because I got the feeling that manga translations sucked. Given a choice of taking a third language as electives in college, I picked German, so that I could read the original version of The Neverending Story.

I go very rapidly bonkers if I’m stuck somewhere with nothing to read (or, if I’m walking somewhere or engaged in some other activity where having a book stuck in front of my face would be hazardous, no audiobooks/podcasts to listen to). My back is much happier since I bought a Kindle and no longer have to cart around a full messenger bag everywhere I go, but I do still haul big stacks of things home from the library when I go on a research kick. I usually have more than one book going at a time; when I pick any given one of them back up and start reading, my brain just clicks back onto that train of thought, like unpausing a tape.

The printed word, I feel, has an aesthetic appeal that isn’t solely due to its content. The interplay between form and function fascinates me. I have this sort of half-assed eidetic memory thing that isn’t good enough to read words off of the memory of a page, but does store thumbnails of what the page looks like – the way the paragraphs start and stop, the arrangement of whitespace, and the cadence of the gaps created by punctuation are as important in establishing the feel of something as the language is. About half the time, when I write, I’m working from both a picture of what’s going on, and a sense of how I want the words to sit on the page. Reading other authors and seeing how they manipulate the timing is part of the fun for me.

There’s very little I won’t read, although I avoid some genres unless I have a specific recommendation. I don’t usually go for things like romances or straight-to-paperback spy thrillers or traditional high fantasy – the kind of things that are too often churned out to a formula, mostly for the benefit of an audience who will buy every last one whether they’re any good or not. For the past decade or so, I’ve been particularly fascinated by autobiographies and particularly uneasy about poetry, for exactly the same reason: Both of them are very good ways to get into other peoples’ heads, but while I consider the autobios straightforward and ‘fair game’, as it were, poetry gives me the feeling that I’m sort of peeking into their souls through a window they might not know they left open.

I’m not one who uses reading as a ‘quiet escape’. I can stick my nose in a book no matter what else is going on, with the possible exception of a migraine. I can also pick it up and put it down without losing the flow – I’ve been known to carry the Kindle into the kitchen and sort of wander around with it, stopping every few minutes to poke whatever I’m cooking. It probably helps that I’m a quick reader, especially in English, which means I usually get to finish a thought in between interruptions.

16

Ha! I agree completely.

17

I come from a family of non-readers. I was an only child, though, and my books were my salvation. I love words and will forever be grateful to my parents for encouraging me to read even when it wasn’t their thing.

18

I started a reply and was only going to focus on my fiction reading, but then I realized that when I read message boards like the Dope and online newspaper versions and tech blogs, that counts as reading. I don’t even think about it that way, looking at words is as essential to me as breathing. It’s a bodily function, I couldn’t not read just like I couldn’t not pee.

When I think of myself reading, I think of picking up a book or loading up the e-reader. In that, fantasy and pre-18th century historical fiction are my main genres. I’ve never warmed up to anything post-1700s in my reading, it feels too close to present day. It’s my escape, a world that I really cannot conceive of living in. I already live in 2012, I don’t want to read contemporary accounts of someone else’s life at the same time. Sci-fi is too world based for me, I need compelling characters to go with my new environment.

19

What Anaamika said.

Reading takes me to places I’ll never go and introduces me to people I’ll never meet. TV and movies can do this too, but reading is more immersive, or personal, or something. Hard to explain.

Historical fiction is my favorite genre, especially if it includes mundane details of daily life. Show me someone going to a creek to draw water, or scraping mold off a piece of meat, making a dress from velvet draperies and I’m yours. I’m less fond of historical fiction that focuses on historical figures – kings, generals, popes, etc. If I want to know about those, I’ll read their biographies.

Post-apocalypse is my second favorite genre. I used to daydream about being one of the last people left alive, helping to build a new society. Jude Law often figured in those daydreams. :slight_smile:

20

I’m an avid reader. SWMBO is so happy that I now have a Kindle. My dead tree library is up over a thousand books and almost completely fills my office area.

I have a vivid imagination. I “see” the story happen as I read it. That’s why movies with great character casting are so wonderful. I loved the LOTR movies because almost every character, with the exception of Frodo, was almost exactly the way I had envisioned them.