An excellent question posed by Glee in the “Why Do You Read?” thread.
It makes my lips tired.
Time and bang for the buck.
My spare time is limited so I need to choose wisely how I spend it. Activities, movies, TV, video games, books?
Books take up a lot of time. I can see a classic movie in 2 hours and be satisfied. Or I can read a book that takes me 5x as long and get the same level of satisfaction.
Maybe someday when I have more spare time than I know what to do with I’ll read a lot.
This, but also the amount of time it takes to realize that you don’t like what you’re reading. You can get 30 minutes into a movie or video game and realize that the plot isn’t your thing and turn it off. But if you spend 30 minutes reading a book, then you’ve still only just started.
Nothing sucks more than spending two hours reading a book and then realizing that it’s actually not going to get better.
Writing styles are also more constraining than directing/video game styles. You can watch a movie with crappy direction that makes up for it by having good acting and dialogue, or a game with a crappy plot but really fun gameplay. But if you’re reading a book and the writing style just bothers you, then there’s nothing else. It’s just crappy writing.
Ahh, then I’m seeing that you don’t read because you’re a slow reader.
I’d say in 30 minutes I should be able to get through 25-50 pages, depending on font size or layout or whatever. (Is that slow? Honest question. I never really timed myself or compared to anybody else or entered any reading competitions with uniforms and refs and thick guidebooks full of regulations…)
In a 400+ page novel, 50 pages isn’t even the end of Act 1. However, 30 minutes could easily be a third of a movie, or the first couple levels of a video game.
Although, it did take me over two hours to read your post, so you might be onto something.
I do read, but I would read more if I didn’t devote too much of my limited free time to surfing the Dope and Facebook.
See, I think in the not-too-distant future, we’re going to redefine “reading”. I would define surfing the Dope as reading. In that context (message boards, social networking sites, emails, etc.) I think more kids are ‘reading’ now than they were in the past.
I do read novels, a lot of them. In fact, I’m headed for the library in a little while to see what Christopher Moore they might have that I haven’t read. But I’ve always told my kids “It doesn’t matter what you read, as long as you read”. Back when my two oldest kids were very young, that meant I didn’t care if they read graphic novels, anime, stuff that was pretty racy, etc. These days, it could just as easily be expanded to reading message boards, etc.
IMHO, of course.
I read, certainly, but I’m an extremely slow reader. Sometimes I’ll read a paragraph and have to think about it for days. And I rarely read at home. If I’m not at the pool or beach, or on a long train ride, or on a plane, I have little reason to pick up a book.
Between my job and my commute, that’s 11.5 hours of my day.
Breakfast and dinner w/my family take about another 45 minutes, so let’s just say 12 hours all told.
I sleep about 6-7 hours a night, so 18.5.
Morning and evening ablutions, bathroom visits, various activities, another 30 minutes, so 19.
Figure 2-3 hours a night of cleaning up from dinner, helping my kids with their homework, overseeing their nightly showers and hair drying, read them stories (I gather this doesn’t count as “reading” as envisioned by the OP), pay bills, make a couple phone calls, plan or perform any number of house/home-related fix-it type things or projects, sit and talk to my wife & kids… you know- life.
The remaining two hours? Watch TV or a movie, quality time with my wife, play the piano, and unwind from the day. Sure, I guess I could skip the TV/movie and read instead, but at the end of the day, I usually need some passive time-wasting activity to help me unwind and relax enough to go to sleep. When I am able to read, I prefer something meaty to fluff, but if I’m weary it’s hard to keep focused while I’m reading. So I relax and let the visuals from the TV wash over me.
I wish I could read more, but frankly there are other, higher priority things that need my attention.
Poor attention span.
I get asked this question a lot and, at least for me, it’s a combination of a lot of things. The main reason though, I think, is how my mind works; I simply don’t have a one track mind. I’ll read about something and it sends my mind off thinking about something related to it, or worse, I’ll just sort of phase out; all the while, I’m still reading words and just not processing them. Next thing I know, I’m a few pages ahead of where I last realized I was and I don’t remember a single thing I just read. Then I have to go back, figure out what the last thing was I read, which takes a while in itself, and reread that part.
The thing is, I think I’m just easily distracted, especially when it comes to visual stimuli. For instance, I can be in a lecture, never look at a professor’s slides, and pretty much pick everything up; but if I go through the slides (or the reading) without the lecture, I do poorly. I’m a much more audial/tactile person than I am visual. Music, for instance, does a better job of keeping my attention simply because it’s a sense that I focus on better. Hell, I know a lot of people who play videogames with the sound muted and other music playing; I simply cannot focus or enjoy a game nearly as much without the sound, even if it’s repetitive. In most cases, unless I’m literally doing something mindless in the game (like grinding levels, which, by the way, I generally refuse to do), I would rather not play than play with the sound muted and listening to something else.
Now, some people have told me this might be improved if I read a lot more. Maybe I would read faster so more things would happen and keep my mind engaged better, or I would just get better at focusing in general. However, this sort of argument to me seems akin to the “it’s an acquired taste”. If a certain food tastes bad and is expensive, why would I want to go through the effort to acquire a taste that I may never actually acquire? In the same fashion, if I’m not enjoying reading, and it’s time consuming, what’s my motivation to put in that extra effort. For reading I do have to do, I generally don’t have much of a problem if it’s short or broken into relatively small chunks so that I can keep myself focused. This means I generally don’t have too much trouble with papers I have to read for my research or message boards. Beyond that, it just takes a lot of mental focus which is exactly the opposite of what reading for pleasure should mean to me; isn’t it supposed to be relaxing?
And while we’re on it, even though this is a little off topic, I’m also sick of being criticized because “smart people are supposed to like reading”. Where does that even come from? How do people justify it? In my opinion, intelligence is about being able to take information and process it into ideas or concepts; it’s not about just memorizing random facts or remember other peoples ideas and concepts. I’ve known plenty of people who do lots of reading and know lots of random facts, but they only seem to be able to regurgitate whatever they read and aren’t creative or able to link the different concepts. Don’t get me wrong, information is necessary for intelligence and reading is a good source of information, but you can get plenty of information without ever touching 500+ page books.
And for those who think it’s necessarily part of the creative process in exercising your imagination or whatever, I call BS on that too. What about music and fine arts? And even in the realm of reading, what about short stories and poetry? Hell, films and TV do count towards this, maybe a plotless mess of violence and eye-candy doesn’t, but surely there are plenty of examples of excellent films out there. I get plenty of creative input and output with the media that satisfy me, so I just don’t see that angle either.
TLDR: Lack of time, slow reader, difficulty maintaining attention, not a visual person, prefer other activities.
I am absolutely not criticizing you for not reading! But to a dedicated reader (i.e. those of us who are addicted), this schedule would read (heh!) like this:
Commuting: a chance for reading (unless you’re actually driving, in which case it’s an opportunity for audio books)
Bathroom visits: a chance for reading
Overseeing nightly showers: a chance for reading
Making dinner? Read while stirring the spaghetti sauce (or whatever)
Relaxing to get yourself in the right frame of mind for sleep? Read.
I’m not at all convinced that readers are superior to non-readers. But if reading is important to you, you find time for it.
Because there’s no remote.
Actually, there’s two reasons. First, I’m reading all day and usually when I have a little downtime my interest is in catching a movie, documentary or game, gardening, doing things with the family, etc.
Mainly though it’s because when I want to get into a book, it’s not for 30 minutes here and an hour there. I never know when the opportunity is going to come again so bit reading is too haphazard, to easy to lose the book’s mood, forget some elements, etc. When I read I want to be someplace where I can devote my near full attention to it until it’s completed. Everyday life just doesn’t seem to grant those conditions for me, so I load up on vacations.
What Norinew said.
Kinda strange…a thread about not reading on a word filled board…
I guess the OP should read ( sorry ): " Why don’t you read books".
I sometimes cite this as a reason I don’t watch many movies. If I’m reading and the author is going overboard with a lot of boring description zip I’m on to the next paragraph. Movies have to be taken at their own pace.
Blaster Master, some of my most dearly beloved are non-readers, so no condescension from me. I feel a little dumb sometimes because I do have a one-track mind, and do better having things literally spelled out for me.
I do love reading, and can’t fall asleep at night sans reading a few pages of a good book. Having said that, however, no matter how fascinating the book may be, it does put me to sleep! So as much as I’d love to read even more, I obviously can’t afford to spend all day and night asleep.
I’m not the OP, but I did inspire the thread… 
I think reading stories to kids 
is amazingly useful on several levels and it definitely counts as reading in my book (so to speak).
Understood.
I drive. Audiobooks aren’t reading.
I read magazine articles in the throne room, but again, I suspect the subtext of this thread is about reading more substantive matter. Now I’m not criticizing you, but most proponents of reading look down their noses at something as pedestrian as a periodical, so my post was describing why I can’t/don’t read books.
I prefer to interact with my kids rather than have my nose buried in a book, for the little time during the day that I actually can spend with them.
You’ve obviously never tried to prepare dinner at my house
Point taken. However, I’d just be passing my eyes over the page and not absorbing it, given the late hour of the day that I have available to me. I’d rather not just go through the motions of it.
And Blaster Master, your post pretty much describes me to a T. I only mention it because it’s one of the things that caused me to investigate why it happened that way, and I discovered that I am severely affected by ADD. I don’t know if you ever looked into it or whether you care to know if you have it, I just thought I’d mention it since I have exactly the same problems.
I haven’t read much at all for the past 2 years - usual practical reasons, main one being a baby.
I used to be an avid reader, though, and think I will be again - just taking a break. I was getting a little fatigued by the novels I was reading in recent years - as I was reading fewer and fewer books, I got very polarised in my tastes - almost like I couldn’t risk reading a bad book. I think when I start back reading more I’ll be a lot more relaxed about book choice and pick them up from all over - a good thing about being really into reading, or cinema or any of the arts is that you get surprised now and again.