Fiction: Escapism. I’ve always been a daydreamer.
Non-fiction: I love to learn. Like Johnny-5; need input!
I actually do it partly because if I go to bed without a transition between up and about, and sleeping, I get panicky. I can’t be alone with my thoughts for the time it takes to relax and fall asleep. So reading substitutes someone else’s thoughts until I am sleepy enough to drift off.
I’m another escapist. I can’t put myself into movies or TV shows the same way I can into books. It sounds kind of weird, but I have entire casts of characters circling my brain to make up my fantasy worlds, and they are usually directly inspired by things I read. It sucks because when my fantasies start to run dry a bit, or I’m in need or greater escapism than usual (school deadline coming up!), I’m desperate for another book to fuel my fantasies, and it’s not something you can explain to someone when you ask for recommendations.
I do find that I don’t read as much, and usually spend more time on the internet when I’m mentally preoccupied with other stuff. I always put big, heavy books aside for the summer holidays, and either read lighter stuff or reread books while I’m studying. (I can reread most books as soon as I’m done reading them, if it’s a good book with enjoyable characters and a relatively happy ending. I can also reread favourite sections till I can nearly recite them.)
Exactly this. I am eternally frustrated by my lack of knowledge of history and science. But I was just in the bookstore today - Borders sent me a 40% off any book coupon - and meandering in the history section, I had a hard time choosing a topic I wanted to learn about more than all of the other topics. Yeah, I know a little bit about Japanese history, but I’d like to know MORE. And I don’t know anything about African history! And I really have only vague ideas of what happened during the Civil War (but the Civil War section is intimidatingly large, I’m not sure where to start).
I ended up getting a biography of Mao that I had read a good review of awhile ago. I don’t know as much about China as I should.
Books, to me, are an escape to other worlds, and the keys to understanding this one. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that thrill of “this is FANTASTIC!” from watching TV or a movie (and I like TV and movies!) that I have from a good book.
I read because:
I love a well-turned phrase, a well-drawn character.
I can completely immerse myself in a book in the way that I cannot in a movie.
Hey, cool, I can learn stuff, too! (Not that I can’t with movies, but…)
Written words, they just draw me in like nothing else can.
Get books on tape. They are great. You can listen while your on the bus, you can go for walks, I use them when I go to the gym. I couldnt go to the gym without books on tape, I’d get bored SO fast.
But now I have read (via books on tape) all the old classics I like and filled my otherwise wasted time on the bus and waiting for things. And the plus is I don’t have to hear the idiots yakking on their cell phones
Sometimes I read and web surf at the same time. A book mentioned an actual geographical location so I looked it up on google earth and got to see what the character was experiencing visually. I like to look up the words I might otherwise skim over if I didn’t have a handy laptop in front of me.
Reading feels more intimate to me than tv, like the author is whispering directly into my ear.
I can’t remember any ti me when I did not love to read.
I usually read non-fiction and I consider it a furthering of my education. With the topics I read about, I would either never be able to learn about them anywhere else, or I’d have to pay a lot of money to do so.
TV is sanitized and formulaic.
Me too. I went over most of Philip K Dick’s novels over a few months, recommended them to a friend even though I was barely being able to recall what happened for most of the stories, not even being able to adequately describe what was so good about them.
Ha. Me too. Cereal boxes tend to be rather boring, but shampoo bottle labels are written by some incredible fiction writers.
I love reading, and have for as long as I can remember. I also watch TV, watch movies and play online computer games.
Books are different then all those others. I can lose myself in a book, for as long as I care to. TV has the constant interruption of commercials. I can change the pace of a book. Slow down to appreciate, reread to better understand, skim if I don’t want all the details. Movies, TV and games have to be taken at their pace, not mine.
I have noticed that most of the heroes and some of the villains look like me. Where else can I get that identification factor?
Also there is the travel. Years before I had actually traveled to Nepal, I had seen the Himalayas. Before I saw the Taj, I had seen it in books numerous times. Before I set foot in the Louvre, I had been there many times. I have been to London, the Lake District and the Moors of Scotland in person, but before I was, Holmes and Watson took me there. I have ridden on the Orient Express, but Poirot first introduced me to that train and its strange charm. In fact I went to college near the Cache La Poudre River, but the characters of Centennial really got me to enjoy the area.
When I was overseas in the military, I seldom had fewer than four books on my person at any given time. There were more than a few times that people on either side of me were sitting in a hot and miserable hooch and I was with Hilton in Shangrila or with Updike in Australia, or with Haggard in Africa or even with Clarke on the moon. I owe reading so many good times, I am sometimes surprised I do much else.
I read fiction because often the storytelling in books is more complex and interesting than in most movies or TV. Also some writers can do beautiful things with language. I’ve got a good imagination, and the images I create in my head when I read are better than most movies.
I watch movies as well, but I like different modes of express. Each has its own qualities. Variety. It’s like asking someone why they listen to music when they could spend their time watching TV.
I read nonfiction because my learning style is more visual and audio.
I honestly don’t think I know why I like reading. I know I do like it, but I’m not sure I can deconstruct the reasons.
I don’t read as much now as when I was younger, because I don’t have the mental energy for it. When I was in high school I could easily knock off 2-3 novels (adult novels, not YA) a week, but these days I find it more difficult to focus on reading a book for that long. There are too many other things I have to take care of, and it’s less mentally taxing to watch TV or play a computer game. I also have less free time in general than when I was a teen. I’m often reluctant to sit down and watch a movie for the same reasons – I don’t always feel up to devoting two hours of my time to paying attention to something.
That said, one of the advantages of reading a novel over watching a movie is that a novel can fill more than two hours and can easily be spread out over days/weeks while still being entertaining. It’s also easy to take a book with you wherever you go. If I’m in the middle of a good book I’ll read it on my lunch break, and I never make a plane trip without at least one book with me.
This is a bit of a chicken and egg reason, but I think I like reading better than some people do because I’m good at it. Learning to read came fairly easily to me, I didn’t have to struggle with it the way some kids did. I never really had the experience of reading being difficult, confusing, or tedious (at least not until some of my college textbooks!), so there was nothing interfering with my ability to enjoy a story. And the more I read the better I became at it. As an adult the main advantage this gives me is that I can read fast, so finishing a book isn’t a big time investment. Although if I like a book and I’m not up against a library deadline I deliberately don’t read as quickly as I can – I want to make it last longer!
It was something I enjoyed doing all through my life. I started reading at age three (my mother says I started scolding her for skipping sentences at bedtime). My parents had a saying: “I’ll refuse to buy you toys and video games, but I’ll never refuse to buy you a book.” I intend to say the same to my kids, and hope that they grow up believing that books are as fun as toys.
Though, I made the mistake of majoring in English literature because I liked to read. Makes sense, right? I love to read and this is all about reading stuff! It nearly destroyed my love of reading, and I stopped reading for pleasure almost entirely. It becomes less and less fun to read a book when the intention is to dissect it and then discuss every dissected piece until the cows come home, leave, and come home again. I’ve recovered since I graduated, but my concentration is now on reading books I feel like reading, instead of books people think I should read. I’m very anti-canon at this point. I love the classics, but I’d rather read fluffy science fiction books.
Part of it might be my circle of friends. I hadn’t read the Lord of the Rings trilogy by age twelve, and my friends (all older, all gigantic nerdshoes) chastised me constantly for it. When I finally read the books around fourteen or fifteen, I was like, “That was it? That was what all the fuss was about?”
I have a bit of my dad in me, I guess, because I can absorb a non-fiction book in a matter of hours. I’m not sure why, and I don’t struggle through fiction books, but I tend to mosey through them, and take a billion times longer to finish. Non-fiction book? Cover-to-cover in a day. Makes no sense.
I’ve always liked reading, but I figured out why I have to force myself to do it more. I don’t have a dedicated reading place any more. In the living room, I’ve got a plasma tv and my laptop. So, I need to make sure I don’t turn on the tv or get online. Otherwise, I’ll get distracted.
Since Jan 1, I read in the morning. I only put the TV on one of the digital music stations and I don’t get online until I’ve read for an hour.
What’s in your bedroom? I do most of my reading in bed at night, and most of what I don’t do there gets done in the bathtub :o.
A somewhat related question for the readers. Is the actual act of reading part of the enjoyment? Suppose technology made it possible to “upload” a book directly into your brain. You just push a button and you instantly have the same memory of reading the book as if you had just spent several hours reading it. Assume the cost is the same.
Would you think “Great, now I can read a book in a second. I’ll be able to read hundreds more books than I’m reading now.” or “What’s the point in doing that? The reading part is where the fun is.”?
For me, it’d be a no-brainer (pun) to use the instant upload instead of reading. It’s just the information that I want. Long sessions of reading are actually somewhat grueling (eyes dry out, arms get tired propping up the book, etc.)
In a related example, I sometimes listen to audiobooks but I always speed them up to 3x playback. I just want the raw information. I’m not interested at all in savoring the authors’ voices; most speakers talk too slow anyways.
I wouldn’t use the time savings to do another activity (ie watch TV), I’d just “upload” more books in that same allotted “book” time.
I wouldn’t find this appealing for fiction. For a lot of non-fiction, where my primary goal in reading was to learn factual information, then I might as well have it uploaded to my brain. I could learn a lot of new things almost instantly then. But as I mentioned above, I usually don’t even read as fast as I can when I’m enjoying a work of fiction because I don’t want it to be over with too quickly (some non-fiction is the same). I also return to favorite books and re-read them, even though this is time I could be spending reading something new.
If it didn’t take me any time at all to do my recreational reading, I’d just have to find something else to do with my free time. I do have other hobbies, but not all are suitable for doing in bed (!), while waiting at an airport, during my lunch break, etc., the way reading is.