Sometimes I think it’s a matter of perspective. I have a niece who claims she “only reads the books she has to in school”, but I’ve been monitoring her internet use. She’s got several hundred favorite stories on her fanfiction.net list. She’s interacting on blogs and message boards all the time.
I am a reader. I like histories, Wodehouse, biographies and action books.
At one time, I gave my late mother books for birthday and Christmas gifts nearly every year, always assuming that everyone would want a book as a present. She never read a single one.
A few years later, one of my kids was diagnosed as having dyslexia. She was really bright but really struggled with reading. So, she got to attend special classes that taught her skills to use to
see words differently. She began to read voraciously.
In hindsight, I recalled that my mom really seemed to struggle with even simple books when reading to me as a child. I now think she was also dyslexic but didnt have the tools to enjoy reading at all, 1930’s era education.
Cheers!
I like to read but rarely read fiction. It wouldn’t occur to me to wonder about other’s reading habits.
It could be that after working all day and dealing with their careers, they’re too tired to read for pleasure and prefer to relax in other ways.
And yet they’ve managed to raise at least one kid - yourself - and presumably they own a house and have at least one car and have managed all of that. Can you say the same?
That was my view when I was younger. I have read books from an early age. Growing up poor in the UK I rarely met people who read books; they tended to be middle class, skiing trip-type people who I could only observe from afar. And at the back of my mind I was thinking “so you read books, fat lot of good it did you”.
On a practical level it’s a lot harder to read in the modern age, because fewer people have access to enough storage space to house books, and there aren’t many libraries. There’s a whole underclass of people the newspapers never write about who live in cramped bedsits, without enough space for any personal possessions, and certainly not for a load of books. eReaders and laptops and the internet are the cure for that, although conversely I’ve always found it a bit odd reading a book on a computer screen. I mean, reading a novel. I keep wanted to flick to another tab. I feel as if I’m not doing enough if I can’t flick to another tab. Like leaving the cooker on when there’s nothing cooking.
Know what I can’t understand? People who always have to have a book in hand. Or worse an Ipad or MP3 player stuck in their ears. Or watching South Park on their mobile device of your choice. I mean, really, are these people SO uncomfortable in their own heads or so uncapable of having an internal intellectual discusion with themselves that they must have external intellectual stimulation constantly?
You probably woundn’t see Einstein or Plato doing that shit if they were alive today.
TL;DR.
I have a friend that was getting on his son’s case for reading comic books. I told him that he was crazy. I started out reading comic books when I was a kid. I moved on to science fiction when I was in middle school. The last thing you want to do is teach kids that reading is a chore. I could keep A and Bs without studying by reading the text books in class. I still think that trying to learn by listening to someone talk is pretty tedious.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it sound like there was anything wrong with people who didn’t read or that they were “weird”. I guess I just assumed that most people on this board were readers.
And I don’t think I’m “well informed” just because I read. I was talking mostly about fiction and the like, not non-fiction–although, really, “reading” sort of covers reading anything. : p
For me, I think it was depression that did it.
Reading was my FAVORITE thing as a kid. I was a total bookworm. And there have been times more recently that I’d find a book (or series) that could keep my focus, but they were always fairly good times, brain-wise and the books had to be really good.
Mostly, now, I just can’t focus well enough. If the book is really gripping, I can sometimes get through it. But usually, I just can’t. It’s the same with a lot of things. Right now, I’m trying to find a hobby because my therapist said I should… so I’m learning to embroider and I’m making a series of watercolor animal skeletons (so far I have a fruit bat skeleton and an archaeopteryx… looking for others). But I just now got through a teeny-tiny ultra simple butterfly cross-stitch and have had the kit over a week. I have a gorgeous pattern I’d love to have on my wall, but am almost certain it won’t hold my attention all the way through.
Anyway. I found my balance in audiobooks. I can listen to them in the car, while cross-stitching, while falling asleep, even sometimes at work if I’m prepping or doing something that doesn’t involve much communication with others.
And I really hope I don’t lose interest in the embroidery or the painting. I like the paintings I’ve made so far and embroidery is made from patterns, so I don’t have to have much artistic talent to make nice things.
Then a different thread title might have been more appropriate.
“We need to make reading cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don’t have any books, don’t fuck them.”
-John Waters
But they might have a Kindle somewhere…
My son reads as much as I do (which is A LOT!) but my husband doesn’t read books - but he will go through every single page in two to three newspapers a day so I guess that counts. My mom, she doesn’t have the time. My brother, not sure but I think my SIL reads - I always see good books over there when I go there and my nephew reads. My stepson reads cookbooks and stuff by Bourdain - that’s all I know since he doesn’t live close. My work friends are all BIG readers.
My partner when I worked Armored sneered at books and reading in general.
“Nothing interesting comes out of books” :eek:
Take this with a grain of salt, because there’s no way I’ll be able to find the cite, but this OP made me think of an article I read years ago on this very topic. As I recall, there were studies done that categorized readers into two camps with regard to how they processed what they read. One group mentally transformed what they read into images in their head. These readers were truly immersed in their reading. If they read an adventure story they could picture Sherlock Holmes (or whoever) acting out the scene they were reading, with vivid circumstances evoked instantaneously. Almost like effortlessly creating a movie in your head, with all the emotions and reactions such things produce.
The second group does not process the written word that way. It’s more or less the same black-and-white words in their heads. They can follow the narrative and understand the dialogue, but reading is more of a chore, a way to plod through words to comprehend but not quite “experience.” They could tell you the plot of the story, but they didn’t “witness” it. This group would read if there was a need to gain information, but not for the experience itself. If they could instantly download the same info into their heads, they would. Spending several hours on their patio reading a book to accomplish the same thing would not be the preferred method.
Have no idea if this holds water, but it made sense to me in that I am a first group guy. I love to read, and it is a supremely evocative act for me, at times thrilling, hilarious, or deeply moving in some way. But I could understand why someone who didn’t experience reading that way wouldn’t be quite as enamored.
When people stare into space, they usually think about mundane stuff and not having an intellectual discussion with themselves. That’s why I have to have a book in hand when I’m waiting for someone/something. Keeps my mind occupied intellectually and not wondering about whether Julie from accounting really fancies me or when is Joe going to pay back that five bucks he owes me.
I live in a country of non-readers. Thais, even educated ones, generally tend not to read a single book up to the day they die. (I don’t count comic books.) University students by and large don’t seem to bother cracking open their textbooks much while undergoing their studies. Books are considered luxury items and rather pricey, although the prices seem to have come down a bit in recent years. Walk into any bookshop, and the vast majority of customers are Western. I am usually the only one reading and not staring into space while on the Skytrain or a bus, and no, the others are not deep into Eastern meditation. I may not have the time to read that I used to, but at least I make an effort.
Some people just like to think. That time in the laundromat may be the only time they get a chance to be alone with their thoughts. That same person may read you and I under the table. If you need a book in your lap and one waiting, he may need one in each hand and a stack waiting and three authors on indentured servitude. But he prefers not to read at the laundromat.
I know lots of people who don’t appear to read many books. But with so many ways to gain information in this technological age, I’m not really that surprised that many people don’t seem to need books much.
I know my brother’s wife never reads anything other than her bible and is proud of it, but she reads that every single day, so I guess she is more of a reader than lots of people.
The interesting thing about these kinds of threads are the direction the responses take…look for a second at SurrenderDorothy’s response. No response to the OP at all, that I can see, and she didn’t even seem to notice that.
Not to pick on SurrenderDorothy, just an interesting detail I noticed.
ETA: Wow. I notice some posters actually seem to believe they can read the mind of people who stare off into space!
But you see there is a problem here. You (and others) seem to think that people are reading stuff that ISNT “worthless crap” but people sitting around thinking or watching the world around them ARE involved in thinking about or just observing “worthless crap” and wasting their time.
So, if you are reading Harry Potter and I am sitting there trying to figure out the economics of laundromats in my head as I stare at the machine who is the smart person involved in intellectual persuits and who is wasting time on intellectual masturbation?
Or in other words. Some people read a lot of stuff. But, IMO a lot of the stuff they do read is just another form of mental crap (like the non-reader wondering about Julie from accounting).
I taught high school for twenty-six years. I believe I read about five novels in that time, and untold paragraphs pertaining to my subject matter and profession. I suppose, then, the OP would call me a non-reader. I also believe if the Accelerated Reader program and our school librarians had their ways, no one would ever do anything except read fiction, and I can’t see an economy running like that. Non-readers are the doers that allow your pastime to exist.