Would listening to an audio book on your commutes count for the purposes of the OP’s question?
Kinda difficult in a car pool with two other guys. However, there are solo-driving days. Hmmm… I should look into that.
Strangely, my parents don’t read, yet my mom gets some of the credit for making me into such a reader.
As a kid, my mom would read a book to me (or later, with me) almost every night before bed. Little Golden Books, Sweet Pickles, Sesame Street Library, Frog and Toad, etc. I think that’s partly why I got into reading so much. Up until about 10 years ago (early 20s), I read constantly. There were many summer days spent sitting on the porch with a good book. And there was the time while, on winter break from college, I read Don Quixote just for the hell of it. I think because I now spend a lot of time online, I don’t have quite the same attention span to sit for an hour or two at a time with a book, which is a bit sad. But still, I read for at least 30 minutes at bedtime each night, which helps to relax me.
But funnily, my parents don’t read. Despite all the reading she did to me, I rarely saw my mom read herself. She’d read the newspaper, and literally the only books she read were the regular new releases by Danielle Steel - no exaggeration, I don’t think I’ve seen her read anything else. My dad never even reads books - just the newspaper, Popular Mechanics, and Consumer Reports.
If you meant to direct your OP at people who don’t read at all you shouldn’t have said:
Not reading at all, and not reading regularly are vastly different levels of reading. I think you were just feeling superior that you read often.
Why are TV shows and videogames empty and depressing, while books are productive self-improvement?
Watching TV is passive, at least with most shows. It requires little thought. My roommate seems to mostly watch intelligent shows like 30 Rock, but even programs like that have little educational value and don’t require much thinking. It’s just laughing at one joke after another.
My other roommate plays video games like Call of Duty, which is probably stimulating in a way but also lacks educational value. At the end of the day, what do you get from playing such games? How do they help you develop as a person?
Reading good literature is like having an intimate conversation with another person. It builds empathy, helping you understand other people, and yourself. It provides guidance in your life. Good non-fiction teaches you about the world and how to analyze it. I have read dozens of books that have changed the way I look at the world and opened up new interests for me. TV is capable of doing that but the vast majority doesn’t, indulging the viewer with superficial pleasures instead. Even high-quality documentaries and shows like The Wire and Mad Men and The Sopranos don’t have the depth of a really good book, in my opinion.
TV and video games seem like a big waste of time to me. I’m not saying it’s bad to indulge in them, and I watch a little bit of TV almost every day, I just think it’s sad to spend all your free time doing them.
Maybe not of a really good book but probably more than a romance novel or the latest retread shit from Grisham or that DaVinci Code asshole.
I find reading not only boring but often painfully so. Even when I’m reading a story I enjoy, it’s very difficult to continue. But I’m the only one in my family and one of the few among my friends who doesn’t love reading. I’ve gotten a lot of grief over it too “Oh, you’re so smart, why don’t you like to read? Don’t smart people like to read?” However, I can tell you exactly why I don’t like to read, and there’s a few reasons why.
The big one is preference. Some people like to do some things, others don’t. I love music. I can get a new album and just listen to it beginning to end in the dark, or while looking at the art and lyrics as I listen, but I know plenty of people who can barely finish a 4-minute song, muchless listen to an entire album. And it’s something I don’t really get in the same way people don’t get why I don’t enjoy reading. It’s something I love so much that I have difficulty understanding how other people don’t love it similarly or at even more or less indifferent about it. But I do get that that gulf exists, so I understand.
Another reason I don’t is how my brain works. No matter how fast I try to read, my brain is moving way faster. I’m not a linear thinker and I often find that I lose focus on what I’m reading as a result. I’ll have gone through the process of reading and gone a few pages, but somewhere along there I started thinking about something else and I have to double back and reread things again. If I could read fast enough to keep my brain occupied, I might be able to do it, but I’ve always had difficulty with that.
Another thing is that it’s just contradictory to me. With something like music, I’m creating an internal world, but that internal world completely involves the music. With reading, I need to read the words but those words aren’t part of the imagery. I’m not even a very visual person, and so it’s difficult to imagine a world in my mind disconnected from my eyes, whereas I can do that with other senses much easier, especially sound (ie, I can hear a different song in my head than what I’m listening to or simultaneously listen to different parts of the same song.
So, yeah, reading just isn’t my thing. I can read relatively short things just fine, since I can keep my focus for a few minutes, but that’s about it.