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Americans Read Fewer Books
DesScorp writes "The National Endowment for the Arts has released a study that shows a decline in the reading of fiction, poetry, and short stories. The study began in 1982, but shows a particularly steep decline from 1992-2002, the first decade of the Age of the Internet. They never seem to draw the conclusion that the Net may have accelerated our turn from this kind of reading, but the timing seems suspicious to me. I know I don't read for pleasure as much as I did years ago because of the time spent on the Net (and in technical books). NPR has a good audio link here for you non-readers; the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a nice article as well." You could also - assuming you read - see the study itself.
sci fi sucks lately. I haven't really read anything in months except postmodern fiction from Argentina from the 60s just because I can't find any other good books.
Enough "Wheel of Time" and knockoffs already!
Why do you think everyone on Slashdot has to yell RTFA?!?! Oh wait...I think I posted without doing so myself--DOH!
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Why should we read books? It's just a matter of time before they become movies anyhow. America rules.
friends don't let friends use linearly dependent row vectors.
blame in on the net. Most stuff i read is online. Granted, i don't like reading books, i get bored
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
I don't really see a problem with not reading lots of fiction. It's still fiction, so other than being more detailed than other forms of story telling, I don't see it as anything that would make it better than factual books.
Americans are fat, they like guns, and they also like TV.
DUH!
:-p
There will be fewer and fewer readers left. ;)
A blog like any other.
I read alot, particularly content on the web, so I'm not really concerned with our culture becoming "post-literate" because of the decline in novel consumption. The thing I do worry about, however, is attention span. I believe my attention span has dropped thanks in part to sites like slashdot, where you get your morsel of information, feel satiated, and move on.
That said, I believe television to be much more dangerous to the attention span than anything else.
BTW, I just finished The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey. Incredible!
Shouldn't You expect more from your DJ?
Book prices have gone thru the roof in the past 10 years.
Combine that with more Internet use and a 500 channel cable TV system (with a DVR, of course) and it's no wonder I hardly read anymore.
Drop softcover prices down to a sane $4 and hardcover to $12 and we'll see an increase in reading again.
Who has time to read when all Americans do is work 12+ hours a day just so they wont be replaced.
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
Have slashdot wait 20 minutes, then automatically prune the first 10 toplevel comments in the story along with all the replies.
There's anyone who posts the first five to ten toplevel threads will have read the article. All we get are:
- Uninformed posts by people who haven't read the article trying to get in within the first couple of posts
- People karma whoring by replying to the top couple of top-level posts under the assumption most moderators won't read much further than that
So invariably the first few threads in an article thread are offtopic flamewars full of score:5s that go like ten levels deep, because the first couple toplevels have nothing to do with the article and all the responses go to those posts because the moderators don't read that far down the page...
I've got several books stacked up to read, but I just don't seem to get around to them as interesting as they are. It's not that I don't read a LOT, but the majority of it is on this little screen that I'm looking at now. The immediacy and interactivity of the Internet much more easily grabs my attention. The times when I do get some significant reading done are those times when I don't have easy Internet access, like sometimes when I'm traveling or if I'm stuck in waiting rooms like the doctor's office.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Nah. The servers will get nuked in short order.
Then again, since nobody ever actually RTFA anyway, it's a moot point!
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
The price is ridiculously high now.
Book prices have increased steadily over the past decade, now being 50% more in cost in New Zealand at least.
Prices are just too high to continuously buy new books, and the public libraries only tend to stock 50-odd copies of the latest John Grisham novel, instead of a wide variety of literature.
So people are going to find cheaper forms of entertainment, or entertainment perceived as better quality for the money spent...
For the time invested, reading is a very poor way of getting information, especially with regards to fiction. Yes, there are advantages (ability to use imagination, etc.) but really, reading at 50 pages an hour I might spend 10 hours reading a new Tom Clancy book.
At the end, the total amount of recall I have of specific aspects of the book will be about equivalent to the recall I'd have after seeing a movie, only the movie gives me the information passively and in a fifth the time. Do you really remember significantly more detail about a story from reading a book than from seeing a movie?
Also, (and I think this is hugely important) reading has very limited memetic aspects. When I've read a new book, the first thing I want to do is discuss it with other people. However, since relatively few people have read the same book. The meme hasn't propagated. I can explain the experience of reading the book to others, but most of the time they really don't care because I'm unable to convey enough to start discussion. With a movie that millions have seen, or a webpage with a quick read that I could blog about or send the link around in email, the memetic aspects are much greater.
Many times when I formerly may of picked up a book I will find myself reading through the comments on /.. Other times I'll look for something of interest on Wikipedia, and once there I may read up on half a dozen associated articles. I still do read physical books of course and wish more people would, I can't think of any medium other than a book that has the same stimulating effect. Music, while relaxing, doesn't really contain a real story, nor does it lend itself especially well to being the center of attention. Television while very enjoyable and relaxing often lacks the same depth that is inherent in books. Moreso it's far too dictorial in pace and mood, the active participation of books (you visualize the characters and setting, you decide the pace) leads to a far stronger effect.
I stole this Sig
As we gradually lose the ability to read, it becomes imperative to find alternate transmission formats of essential knowledge such as ./ Based on this, I propose an automatic TTS service begin added to compliment the current RSS feed.
Always the voracious reader, my tastes have definitely veered from good, mind expanding works of art suitable for a liberal-arts degree to the latest dense, incomprehesive tome of the month from O'Reilly's book club.
Damn internet and all it's false promises..
well, okay fine, I read less as well, you guys can be my moral equals for once (thumbs nose).
Seriously though, I think I read way _more_ because of the internet, just not so much literature. In fact, I spend almost all day, everyday, sitting in front of a computer screen reading something. It might be a program or an email, but at least I'm reading words.
Better than watching TV!
I dunno. I should probably start reading again. Those book reviews alone I see just aren't enough.
I guess the chick on the motorcycle was pretty good (and too good to be true, as well, sadly).
I think the biggest problem is that books and author's don't write back to you if you leave a note in the margins.
I watch a lot of subtitle film. Does that count?
CP
I feel this is the eventual fallout of not teaching the novel innhigh school.
Many schools will allow a magazine article to stand in for a book.
Disgusting
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm still buying as many books as ever, just mostly used - and I hardly read any. I'm saving them all for when I'm 90 and have some free time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Most days I drive an hour to work then goto school after an 8 hour day. Then flop on the couch and fall asleep watching aqua teen hunger force.
Reading is work!
It is no surprise that books are "going to the wayside." The problem is largely because of the Internet and television. People are glued to screens/monitors for their source of education and information. I mean take a look at encyclopedias and libraries --since the revolution of the Internet, sales of encyclopedias have skyrocked downwards, and fewer people are visiting libraries. And for good reasons, the WWW is literally a library and it is convenient. Libraries and encyclopedias once spurred reading.
It is only until now that I realize the value of reading. I am seriosuly pursuing a doctorate in Computer Science, and a critical part of the doctorate program is reading and writing --reading technical journals and lots of papers (on paper). Training yourself to read at a fast pace is vital in order to catch up with your work and to comprehend all the information. The less capable you are reading, forget any chance of being a researcher. Nonetheless, this news is sad.
Offtopic? He's right - if he hadn't gotten there first, I would probably have posted what he speaks of.
Also, I'd say Flamebait is better than Offtopic.
the net has actually increased my reading. before the net, i was only reading technical books for study or work. the net has meant i at least now rtfa - oh wait..
When I travel for work, I read heavy stuff. I got through _War and Peace_ that way. I look around and people are only reading stupid pulp or Executive Management books.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Yes, but can you get sparknotes of sparknotes? For the really lazy of the laziest?
That's right. All your base.
Entertainment is entertainment.
Maybe one reason people don't read books is because they don't have the emotional need to think they're "better" because they choose one entertainment choice over another.
Or maybe there's just too much other stuff to do.
I am American... allow me to repost a post of mine to another forum (#indie.torrents), the topic of which was "Read any good books lately?"
n zen_winfrey/index.html)
I have been putting away book after book lately, but here are the good ones I've read recently:
Tolstoy - Anna Karenina (Not as good as War and Peace, and certainly has less indie-cred now that the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation has been added to Oprah's book club, but still a fantastic read).
Nabokov - Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin, and Look at the Harlequins (The latter being my favorite, after Lolita, is best read after having read a number of his other works. It is quasi-autobiographical in nature.)
Proust - In Search of Lost Time AKA A Remembrance of Things Past AKA La Recherche du Temps Perdu (Attempting to plow my way through this tome while I still have a stomach for long novels, good so far.)
Mark Leyner - My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist , The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog (My Cousin is the best book I've read in the last 18 months that couldn't yet be considered a "classic". FANTASTIC stuff, all of it. I have yet to read his other book Et Tu, Babe, but I have high hopes for it).
Charles Portis - Dog of the South, Masters of Atlantis (the latter is particularly dry and witty)
Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections (great book, almost an Oprah pick: http://dir.salon.com/books/feature/2001/10/26/fra
Jonathan Lethem - Motherless Brooklyn, Fortress of Solitude (the former is entertaining, if a bit gimmicky; the latter I haven't read but hear is good.)
Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex (Book from a couple of years ago, by the guy who did Virgin Suicides. Excellent book with creative plot. Not gimmicky at all.)
Steve Martin - The Pleasure of My Company, Shopgirl (the former started off a touch lamely but the main character quickly becomes quirkily sympathetic' Shopgirl is on my soon-to-read-but-alas-not-yet-read list.)
Arthur Nersesian - The Fuck-Up ("quintessential" New York hard-up tale? Maybe. But it may also be the book with the most indie-cred that you're likely to find in your local McBorder's.)
J.D. Salinger - Franny and Zooey, Raise High The Roof Beams Carpenter, 9 Stories, 22 Stories (Everyone seems to mention Catcher in the Rye. Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic novella. But Franny and Zooey really shook me to the core. I think this book is in my top 5 books most influential on my everyday outlook on things, and this is coming from someone who's read all the Biggies. The other books are all really great, and Seymour Glass, hell the Glass family in general, is one of the most delightful creations in all of modern literature. 22 stories is a bootleg copy of unreleased or difficult to find Salinger stories that I picked up in both real and electronic form a few years back. If someone wants me to email them a copy, I can probably rustle it up.)
If you like food and wine:
Hugh Johnson - The Story of Wine (a classic)
Koneman - Culinaria: France, Culinaria: Hungary (the culinaria series are part cookbooks, part cultural studies, they survey in depth and pictorially the food culture of a particular country. An amazing series, though oft-poorly translated.)
One thought that came to my head is that people are busier creating media now - more photos, lots more video - and thus do not have as much time to read.
In a way, even posting to Slashdot as indulgent as it seems is another form of creation - I'm sure a lot of people spend a lot of time on forums now that might otherwise be reading. And perhaps the act of a lot of people writing is just as mind-expanding as reading a good book (depends on the forums you are in of course!)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Americans read?
People "Read" more now, for education and entertainment. The delivery form is just not a book, but a computer or even a TV (those damn scrolls).
And another thing... It's hard to find good new books at book stores. When you walk in it's nothing but diet and chicken soup crap.
That I read Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, All Quiet on The Western Front, and Brave New World in High School while it was still required. Damn good books. I mean, I would have read them on my own, but the fact that they counted towards a grade was icing on the cake.
That's right. All your base.
In the end, doesn't it do the same thing? Instead of reading sonnets by Shakespeare, people read some girls poems on her webpage, and instead of reading the editiorials from The Times, you read some guys opinions on his blog. If it intrests you and is valid for you, go with it.
It's also been shown in recent studies that American's are spending less time in front of the TV. Is this all internet time now?
I consider reading a really good thing. But if these people are spending more time reading on the net maybe it's just as well. It certainly better than TV.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
That's right, all the slices in these things always said the same thing, had the same pictures... if a "fact" changed, there wouldn't be any note of it until more trees were cut up and stuck together... but even that was rare--new books would continue to be printed with old information. Absurd! The only way most books changed was if you drew in them with one of those graphite stick thingies that we used to fill in the little circles....
well nevermind, it's getting late, but I'm so glad I'm not burdened with a bunch of books anymore--otherwise I wouldn't have room in my bag for my laptop, phone, PDA, music player, GPS, and towel...
Along with the internet, a separate beast arose: News Entertainment. Between the OJ Simpson trial, the Bill Clinton scandal, and all the rest of the yellow journalism of the 1990 the need for harlequin romances has diminished.
Here you have things that appear pressing, dramatic, and interesting that also are kind of real as well. Why read fake dirt about fake people when you can have real dirt on a public figure?
I'm sure the internet has had something to do with the reduced book reading, because everyone who uses the internet reads and writes a hell of a lot more than they used to. That cuts into the desire to "read for fun," as they say. But for my money the rise of programming for every demographic possible and the horrible yellow journalism of today have satisfied our need for fiction.
Thats not so! I wasnt even around when this survey started so i can personally say that my reading level, intensity, and frequency have ALL INCREASED over the past decade. Even WITH the introduction of the internet a few years after i was born.
I read as much as ever (2-4 novels a week), but for the past 4 years, I've done most of that on my palm computer. Since there is no viable way to buy ebooks (paying amazon.com more than the cost of the paperback for something that can only be read on the desktop and expires in a month doesn't count), I get my books on IRC. Occasionally I'll buy the book if there's a good reason. When Brian Herbert had a book signing, I bought the hardcover version of the Machine Crusade the week it came out and had him sign it for me. Then I proceeded to read it on the PDA when the IRC version came out a few months later.
...I can't get away with saying RTFA.
Movie special effects are getting better every year, and we do most of our reading on the internet.
I hated reading books in school, but I didn't hate to read. I think they just ruined the experience for me, choosing books I had no interest in and attaching so much work to the task. In high school, the english requirements were like double the math requirements, despite that all the kids had no struggles with english, only the work, and desperately needed those math classes.
Public libraries are one of the few public institutions we have that break down economic barriers to gaining knowledge.
Think about that during the next mil levy.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
I think the submitter's premise is totally wrong -- people haven't turned to the internet for their reading material, they're outsourced their reading to India in order to free up more time for napping, loafing and general malaise.
;-)
Seriously though -- When's the last time a Slashdot poster read an article before posting? I certainly didn't
--- "DNA helicase kicks more ass than a barrel of highly trained ninja monkeys. Never forget that." - N. Howard
While it is interesting to correlate the decline in leisure reading to the rise of the Internet, the reality is that several other technologies have grown in this time period.
The early 90's were really the booming growth period of video rental. We've also expansion in the areas covered by cable and satellite television, meaning that the average person has access to far more entertainment programming than before. When I had only six channels of free-to-air programming, I was nowhere near as likely to stay glued to the television.
Add to that the increasing growth of suburban sprawl and the likelihood of a larger commute. For a lot of people, this easily has started to eat and extra hour or two out of their day, and that's not just in the largest metro areas anymore.
The Internet has contributed, but moreso in being able to be productive from home. Remember back in 1992 when NOBODY in the US had a mobile phone? A few maybe had a car phone. Now they're everywhere, and almost standard issue at work, so you can do more work at home and be reached at all kinds of hours.
This added stress of the work anywhere, do anything, growing city contributes to the decline of reading anywhere in the world, but impacts the U.S. even more than others because most U.S. cities do not have adequate public transportation. If you take a train or a bus to work, you might be able to do some reading then (I used to read a chapter or two each way in Helsinki), but it's not too likely to happen when driving.
At any rate, this isn't an Internet-driven change. It's more a 'the man is squeezing every last drop out of us' kind of change.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
One thing nobody's pointed out yet (at least that I've noticed) is that people do much more writing now than they used to, thanks to the Internet. The fact that your writing actually has a chance to be read, and to influence people, defintely makes you more likely to write. The threat of grammar nazis makes it more likely that you will want to write correctly, too.
I know that I write more than ever, and that's A Good Thing from the standpoint of literacy.
Also, when people go on the Internet, they are almost always reading or writing. And this means literacy is more important than ever, not less.
Perhaps this is something to applaud. If reading stuff on the Internet is displacing TV watching as entertainment, then that's surely a good thing for reading as an activity.
D
excuse me while i go take a dump and read a Carl Bark's classic uncle scrooge story, in comic book format.
Indeed, the Internet has replaced everything when it comes to reading. I bet that Americans are reading more and more evey year due the the internet. I'm reading more than I ever have. It may not be literature, but I'm reading =) See? your reading thing right now. I bet that reading the comments of a regular article gets you maybe 5 pages of book equivlent reading.
i love the way you went anonymous to say that. you know, /. is probably the one place you don't need to do that :p. proclaim your love of sci-fi loudly from the rooftops. personally, i hate sci-fi. mostly. well, i've never really given it a chance. does Red Dwarf when i was younger count? :p
to contribute to the topic.. it just occured to me that the only time i really read (other than you know newspapers, mags and TFM*) is when i don't have internet access. i get through several novels a year, on holidays and staying with people w/o net access.. guess i'm pretty sad too huh.
a good novel often sticks in the mind. my web browsing (which there's so much more of) rarely does. hmm, should take a hint from that.
*instructions for tech-toys
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
sum 1 can sumarize dis? to much 2 reed. k thx bai.
I was reading a book during my lunch when a manager's daughter walked by and remarked "Oh look at the smart guy reading a book! Roloffle! I can't remember the last time I read one!"
She's not the sharpest deck of cards in the kitchen drawer but I found that remark to be damning for America. Living in my ivory tower I figured that people just complained about the illiterate or functionally illiterate but it was not a real problem.
For a moment I wanted to give her a copy of something, even drivel like J.K. Rowling, except I'm sure she would've just drawn on it with crayons and used it to wipe the asses of her three toddlers.
Its official...
Books are dying!
. hehe. . .
i've heard.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
I pirate ebooks from Kazaa of course! What else would a music-thieving, movie-swindling Gen-X'er like myself do?
how much this is caused by culture, simply, "I don't read because I'm a slacker, and a being a slacker is cool!"
I just graduated from college, and I know it's a fairly universal joke on campuses that people either "don't know" where the library is or they haven't been there in three years. Granted, I was an EE, and we probably read less fiction anyways.
But again, laziness is key.
The other thing is the baen library is very nice for Science Fiction and Fantasy. I've bought several books after reading a downloaded txt file of the book and then wanting it in a hardback and the rest of a series.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
Combine this with teachers who have trouble with spelling and we have a real problem here...
They make it sound like not reading fiction and poetry is a bad thing. Well, not to me it isn't. Life is short, and I'd rather spend what little free time I have consuming real, *useful* information, i.e. non-fiction. Scientific papers in my field, essays, even philosophy, it's all good. But fiction? Who the hell needs that?
Half Price Books.
That's where I get my fix. I'm hooked on reading books, can't stand reading anything other than code on a monitor. If I have to read someone else's code, and really take it apart, I print it out. Call it a failing if you like, but I'm addicted to the printed word.
If I could get a good, functional tablet PC - not running windows - I would give it a try, at least for the content that's available digitally. But it's not there yet as far as I know, so the only avenue I have for the things I like to read is paper. There's nothing like cracking open a good sci-fi, fantasy, or computer science book and digging in.
A bit more on-topic, I'm not surprised in the least. Quite a few people I knew when I was younger wouldn't read a thing unless they had to, so those are the people that turn to the net for their information, but don't read other than that. Those are also the people who memorize things and do not get a goddamn thing out of them. Nowadays, almost everyone I know reads a lot, and they fall into 2 categories : the people who read a lot of books and net, or the ones that just read a lot of books. The ones that read both are my technical compsci friends, the others are my friends that I've grown up with, who mostly discovered the wonders of reading in jail.
Hmm, this topic reminds me - I need to get some more bookshelves...all of mine are stacked 3 deep and look like they're about to topple...
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
First off I'm Canadian and I used to read a lot when I was in my early teens (and I do mean a lot) I would rip through novels and be hungry for more then I'd get into history and politics and then switch back to novels. Through high school and college I was still reading fiction but only a few hours after going to bed, still a good flow of literature, but nothing like before. Once I got working though I found that I really didn't have the time or the juice to read every night, then that turned into every week and now I barely read at all. Personally I think it's sad and I often wonder why I can't get back into the groove. I went through a streak of some really bad (new) books and I started working more overtime and found that I was too fatigued to keep up even a rudimentary interest in reading consistantly.
;-)
Oddly though, I find myself reading a lot of humour content on the web (blogs, articles, etc), but it still doesen't compare to a good book. I guess I have a kind of reader's apathy, I would like to read more, but I never do...
From time to time it strikes me when I go searching through the cards in my wallet and find my old, expired, Library card and think to myself "oh yeah, I should renew that one day..."
Anyone else there in Slashdotland feel this way? Did you ever get back into reading on a regular basis (if so HOW)?
P.S. The last good book I read was "Goodbye, Mickey Mouse" by Len Deighton written in 1982 which I am convinced the 2001 film "Pearl Harbor" stole it's story from, but whatever...
crazy dynamite monkey
My children are required to read for 30 minutes every day. My son that just finished 1st grade is reading Harry Potter now. My daughter will be going into 1st grade and is reading Dr. Suess and equivalent.
Both of them enjoy reading and may whine a little initially when it is reading time, but then they oftern read longer because they get into it. At least once a week they end up going an hour. During the summer they have lots of time to read, so I have them make the most of it.
Learing to enjoy reading is an aquired enjoyment, and with all of the other forms of entertainment available people need to be encouraged to learn how to enjoy reading.
In fact, it is reading time now. See ya.
I'm not sure, but I think it's probably Microsoft's fault.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I admit that I read only a few novels per year. However, I wish I had time to read more, as some of the brightest humans to have ever lived communicate through novels. The memories I have from video games and TV just don't measure up to those from novels, perhaps because novels engage the imagination to a much greater degree. Oh well, back to reading API specs, on-line news, and source code.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
I read a lot of pr0n mags and tons of slashdot comments, so I should be a different one...
IS that post internet posts are written in a fast, one-pass style. As I write this I am typing as fast as I can. I notice a couple mistakes (I didn't let off on capslock quick enough so is is double caps and I didn't hit it for Internet). I'm leaving them in here to make a point, but even so I probably wouldn't correct them. Takes time and it's necessary, you'll get my meaning all the same.
/. you'll see I'm a verbose individual. If you look for me on the net, you'll see here isn't the only place. My wish to chatter on the net and my limited amount of time requires that I be somewhat hasty in my writing (having a learning disability that screws with spelling doesn't help either).
Not teh same thing as a research paper, where I carefully think everything out, edit it several times, maybe get it copy edited, etc. Same goes for novels, and the like.
Even if I cared to, I just couldn't. If you look at my profile on
I don't see this as a huge problem, my sloppy style on the Internet in no way precludes me from writing excellent research papers. It is simply a product of the environemnt. I consider it informal communication, hence am not caregul. I am more careful if it is something important and intended to be static, like things on my website, but still not as careful as a formal document.
Remeber that commercial with the native american on the horse. He sees a peice of litter float by and turns to the camera with a single tear running down his cheek? Replace the litter with a book. This is a really disheartening discussion. We need another Charlemagne. Literacy was a key component of his popularity and ability to keep the poulace happy. Reading is a gift all too often taken for granted. Shame on all of us, I guess. Sorry to be sappy, but this is damned depressing. The richest country on the face of the planet. Nice work. And I'm Canadian.
I've never, never liked reading books, though. The heck if I know why, but since I was a child I've generally avoided them. Too time consuming? General lack of interest to pick up and read? Laziness of not wanting to flip the stupid page every minute or two?
Who knows...
[Insert praise of E-books here]
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
Why read when you can listen. Seriously, my friend is writing a book and the way I chose to read it was to do a text-to-voice and then listened to it on my iPOD. 100 times more convenient. This is the age of multitask. What can you really do while reading a book?
According to the NPR clip, book sales have actually gone up! So, whether or not book prices have increased, more books are being sold.
It's stems from 3 main reasons
1) Decline in education stictness / increased dropout rate of schools
2) Information overload (I mean honestly, I could waste 3 hours a day reading slashdot comments alone, not to mention the 10 different news / info sites I tend to frequent on a daily basis
3) In america, the work week continues to extend well beyond 40+ hours. Whether it's the student just out of college trying to get a head up in a company... or a family trying to make ends meet... families just planning their lives to 5 minute increments.
Combine any/all of those, and it's not shocking. Plus, add in TV channels, etc and it's not too shocking.
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
Yes, there are many good fiction books out there, but as I get older, I feel as if I'm wasting time reading made-up stories when I don't even have too much time to spend on reading something factual (at least relatively) that affects me and our society or something that can improve my job skills. Maybe I should stop reading slashdot, but who can live without slashdot?
I read on my PDA. I have read a lot of books over the last four or five years that there is no way to for a surveyor to discern. One of the first books I read was War and Peace by Tolstoy... excellent book!
I think reading has increased because we are all online. However, I don't think it positively affects our communication skills. There are too many acronyms and keyboard shortcuts around these days. I find that my written communication skills get slightly better during and shortly after I read a quality, well written novel. However, after a few weeks I am back to the same old crappy writing style I tend to maintain.
That's the way it is IMHO... FWIW.
LOL! I crack myself up sometimes.
A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding...
This seems like as good a place as any to throw in a plug for Project Gutenberg (old books for free!) and the Internet Booklist (a good place to go if you don't know what to read).
-jim
I am on welfare so I download books from IRC and read them on screen. To get books in the library costs to get interlinrary loans - the good ones you have to book which also costs and if you mess up and get fined there are no concessions - so abandon ticket or don't eat.
My eye's are all but burn't out but what can I do I am a hard core addict.
PS thanks to C Doctorow for releasing your books online I hate being criminalised for my addiction to fiction.
Remember knee-jerkers whilst copyright infringement doesn't contribute money to the artists involved like borrowing from the library does ( which makes me feel like a heel ). It does allow many many people who can't afford a lot of music/ books dvd's etc ACCESS to INFORMATION - When I can get a new book then I do, so I spend what I can.
Why can't libraries allow downloads and have author payments from them. Paper is a luxury - information and culture is a necessity.
Furthermore downloading creates markets. Informed markets - there will be more money for artists - but people will become informed consumers not sheeple - buying milk-pap music from the radio playlists.
rant rant ( maybe I should get out more ).
But recently I've become more interested in science--more particular physics. I know I will probably never have my own theory or something nobel worthy but I still, all of a sudden, found it interesting at age 21 (mind you I never did well in school). I picked up Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" the other day and couldn't put it down.
;)
I'm sure many slashdotters will enjoy this book if you haven't already read it. Its pretty packed with information and its not heavy for the amature like me. In fact I only had problems with one chapter. Its a very good book that gives you lots of knowledge on the current state of physics and theory, ideas of the universe etc.
So I suggest anyone who reads this slashdot story should go pick up the book or get it from the library (its a little costly for its short size but definitely a rereadable book many times over). Its very educational and makes you think.
My next book is Einstein's relativity
"I know that I write more than ever, and that's A Good Thing from the standpoint of literacy."
You know you shouldn't really put that comma in front of the "and"...
Yours truly,
Grammar Nazi
"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right." - Isaac Asimov
I still read magazines (PCWorld, Linux Journal). I feel sort of weird on the shitter with one of those eBook devices...
The singular trait that makes novels special in my mind is the length of time involved. Not only is a book a quiet, private way to relax, but the reader also has time to ponder the meaning of each bit of the author's tale at his or her own pace, not being bound to the pace of the film.
I'm not about to parrot "TV BAD!" like a lot of readers, elitists, and elitist readers. Arthur C. Clarke (one of THE greatest scifi authors of all time) seems to think television is the best invention to serve culture since pen and ink. But I don't think he'll want it to replace his hundreds of novels ;)
And oh yeah, what you said about reading's memetic aspects is very true--but the problem you describe sounds like a product of an already lowered population of readers, not a cause. Join a book club or something--hang out in the library and pounce (figuratively) on someone at the Tom Clancy shelf (or in my case, the scifi section). The reader population is small, but it isn't nil.
I believe Americans are reading (even writing!) MORE thanks to the Internet. Now all we have to do is pound it into these kids' heads at school that they have to be COMPETENT readers and writers if they aren't going to sound like dumbasses in their emails to future employers.
Suckin' on my B U B !
Sing liek a Niggro Spiritual!
I think part of this may be ADD and its variants. I don't think all cases are physical manifestations, but rather many may be learned/aquired behavior. I know my attention span has tailed off quite a bit since the mid 90s, and its not just about getting older (I hope!). Look around at how impatient people are with *everything* now a days. We want instant gratification, and long term means more than a week. Look at the way people watch TV. Remotes have been around a long time now, but those channels keep spinning faster and faster. I just don't think most people have the patience required to sit down and read a book, even if its only a few pages at a time.
Hold on a sec.. Post internet? I didn't realize we were beyond that already. Where are we now? Or was that another typo?
they would make a movie out of my European History texts.
My local library doesnt carry any star trek or HGTTG books.
I won't comment on your choice of reading material, since mine is pretty dubious too. But...have you asked them about it? How are they to know that local people are interested in these books if local people don't ask them about these books? Most librarians would rather carry books that get used and read than books that sit around gathering dust, but won't know what you want unless you tell them.
Also, most libraries have agreements to share books with other libraries in the area, and you can usually check for books you're interested in through the library computer system. Maybe your local library doesn't have the books you want, but maybe the one in the next town does, and will happily ship them over for you if you just ask.
the movie gives me the information passively and in a fifth the time. Do you really remember significantly more detail about a story from reading a book than from seeing a movie?
Emphatically, yes but the details are not what matters.
When I've read a new book, the first thing I want to do is discuss it with other people. ... The meme hasn't propagated. I can explain the experience of reading the book to others, but most of the time they really don't care because I'm unable to convey enough to start discussion. With a movie that millions have seen, or a webpage with a quick read that I could blog about or send the link around in email, the memetic aspects are much greater.
That's sad and the root of the problem is the passive thing you desire. I generally grok the concepts in a book better than I do in a film about the same. It's also easier for me to have a real discussion with someone about those concepts when they have not read the same book and easier still if they have not seen the movie. Someone with a fresh perspective is always more interesting to talk to than someone who has exactly the same set of memes as I do. It may be years before I find someone who might be interested in the concepts presented by a particular story, but it's worth the wait. At the same time, I've done enough stupid stuff on my own and read so many different kinds of writing, that there are few people I meet that I can't regale with something.
The only problem I have with books is having the time to find new authors that merit reading. Anthologies help, as do book reviews, but I typically have to go out of my way to get them if they are not on the web. It takes time, then I have to trudge down to the used book store or the library and get my hands on one.
One of the best things to happen to me in the last three years was a friend moving to Canada. I miss the friend, but he had an excellent collection of science fiction. Included were classics by Nieven, Clark and other more recent authors as well as a few anthologies that have pointed the way to more. It's been since high school that I've seen such a carefull collection. I'm just now exhausting the three or four cases of books I got. The breadth of new concepts I found in them was astounding.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's obviously Kazaa's fault.
Next story: a group of publishing houses will band together to sue P2P users for millions in lost revenue.
A very common view that the older way of doing things was a better way. You see this in all facets of life, commonly manifested as people reminiscing on the "good old days" but you see it the most commonly in education. People like to decry education as sliding and use old examples to try and back it up.
/. posts).
On my forum we had a fight about this. Someone posted a state highschool graduation test from the eairly 1900s and noted that few highschool students today could pass it. Well I looked at it and I can tell you why right off the bat, it was a bunch of route memorization. Knowing lots of little facts was what was needed. No logic, no critical thinking, no higher reasoning. Knowing geogrphic and historical facts, and simple arithmatic was what you needed.
He was right, most couldn't have. I could, but I'm a trivia junkie, so not a fair test. However more enlightening is to look at what was NOT on there that I did learn. There was no chemistry, physics, trigenomerty, precalculus, advanced algebra, much less any of the arts. Here are all "hard", "important", topics that I went through before graduation. Such a thing was unknown in the eairly 1900s. The limitations of information access and computation aids, like calculators, precluded it. Now, it is easy.
Also educational theory has changed. We have come to understand, espically in this day and age of instant information access, that memorization is NOT what it important, it's critical thinking, logical reasoning and most important APPLICATION of knowledge.
We HAVE devices with perfect memories, computers. Anything I tell my computer, it remebers with perfection. More, it is connected to a worldwide network putting more information at my fingers that I could ever access in a lifetime, much less read. But what it can't do is apply that information to solve problems. That is what I do, that is where I'm important.
It doesn't matter to remember all the facts and figures form a journal article, it matters to remember what the overall point was, what the evidence was for or against. IF you need the precise information, you log in to JStor and look it up. It doesn't matter to be lightning fast with long division, your calculator will do that. It matters you know how division works, and how to use it to obtain answers to mathematical problems.
So you see the same thing with literature, specifically literature for entertainment. Reading for pleasure is falling out of style. I must admit, though I read significantly above the average number of books for pleasure a year, it is well off my peak. I find my entertainment more from video games these days, then any other source. However I read and write far MORE than I used to, by a huge margin. I'm an info junkie and read the net and journals on the net all the time, and then chatter about it on forums (over 1600
However many fail to understand that what is important is that your reading skills are good, and used frequently. IT does not matter if they are used for bussiness or pleasure, just that you use them, and keep them sharp.
Does slashdot count as reading?
...so when the hell are we supposed to read? I'm "lucky" enough to have a job with lots of down time, and Books-A-Million and Amazon have swallowed whole percentages of my personal income lately. I might recommend: "The Connection" by Stephen F. Hayes, "The Third Terrorist" by Jayna Davis, "In Code" by Sarah and David Flannery, "A Tour of the Calculus" by...nevermind, I don't recommend that one.
Another typo, one I didn't catch. Again one that illustrates my point. I was orignally going to write that as "posts on the Internet", but decided that "Internet posts" was more clear. However, partially due to the mentioned writing style, partially due to being about 4 drinks on the positive side, I neglected to delete the "post" part.
None the less, I imagine you deciphered my meaning, hence my point. Some people on the net love to rag on spelling, grammer and syntax. Of course they themselves generally have nothing at all worthwhile to contribute to the converstaion. They get the message, but have no useful response, so nitpick.
http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame31.html
W3 h4v3 mtv, vh1, b00m c4rs, shizzle and janet jackson's nipple.
FIGHT THE MAN!
Although its more due to a lack of social life than a great interest in reading i've managed to average 90 pages a day over the last three years. I even keep a spreadsheet listing the author, title, date read and the number of pages for each book. There are 241 books on the list so far.
On a sidenote I actually buy most of the books i read and recently I've been buying copies of the books I had read at the library before I got a job.
Cost of books. Do *ANY* of you have an idea how much a paperback novel is going for these days? $6.00-$8.00 dollars.
Few years ago that same paperback would have been around $3.00-$5.00
Libraries are understocked. Don't get obscure stuff. All the good stuff gets nicked (stolen). Miss a couple of days (everyone does sometime) and its costs bigtime.
And its costs to reserve stuff or get interlibrary loans. So swapping scanned books and being a copy-infringer is todays way to learn more.
Swap sheet music and books.
I'm down to about four cheesy SF novels a week now. Back when I was in school (late seventies), it was more like ten. That's a pretty sharp decline, I suppose. :)
...and other techical books of the sort. Where exactly would I fit in reading a book for pleasure.
Definitely I won't check anything out of the library to read. PS, be sure to wear a big hat, sunglasses, and gloves when you visit a library.
Add your list here ->
I wonder of sci-fi, or fantacy or romance novels are included in the study....i have my doubt that they are. Anyway Stories are just that...stories..I think over the same span of time americans have increased their reading habits in general...just shifted to techical, news and non-fiction.
stendec@gmail.com
And they needed a study to figure this out?
If a million monkeys randomly pounded on keyboards, they would all log into AOL.
I think you should speak for yourself perhaps. We all tend to find those things that reinforce what we believe of ourselves. I, for one, find that I am more patient and more willing to dig into complex topics that aren't a complete waste of my time. I often watch multi-hour programs (without the commercials thanks to TiVo), read complex books that require actual thinking, and even have taken up writing again (which can take a lot of time). I even listen to music CDs front to back without skipping around in order to get the effect of the arrangement that was intended by the artist. Why/how did I do this? Because I want to. I decided it was going to happen and it did.
It's really quite simple. Either these things are part of your life or they're not. You make it happen either way. Not having these things in your life doesn't make you a bad person, but it might mean that you're living an unexamined life.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
You know you shouldn't really put that comma in front of the "and"...
That really depends. If he meant that he knows that he writes more as well as knowing that writing more is good then the comma is improperly placed.
If he means that he knows he writes more and is asserting the fact that writing more is good, rather than just knowing it is good, then he has two seperate sentences which then need a comma between the two.
Really though, if the latter is true, then he might consider a semicolon. As in:
I know that I write more than ever; that is A Good Thing (tm) from the standpoint of literacy.
That would likely clear up the confusion as to whether he is asserting or merely knowing.
If not now, when?
Still, on a more serious note, one has to wonder what that means over the long term. One needs the ability to read and read effectively to digest technical material like Comp Sci, or to communicate with others. If fewer Americans read fiction, the foundation upon which most comprehension is built, I can perceive negative consequences over the long term. A less informed, less scientifically-inclined population could lead to eventual structural deficiencies in society.
Then again, maybe the problem also lies in the school system itself. As Paul Graham points out, most English teachers have an extraordinary ability to deaden material. The novel Election by Tom Perrotta goes into this high school malaise, albeit in a subtle way.
I got a job in downtown LA and due to the need to save money I am taking the train. (Yes there *IS* mass-transit in southern California!)
Since this change I am on to my 24'th book at a rate of 6 per month.
I have never expected this change but I do love using that normally wasted time to do something fun.
I wonder if it is the lack of the right kind of time that people are not reading as much.
It's because people copy books!!!! We need to TAX printing paper!!!
Yikes. I'm a statistic. I guess if you count slashdot and cnn.com I read plenty (and if you count HTML code and javascript, I read lots), but for the most part I read very few books since high school. I even avoided nearly all of my college reading. Baaaaad.
So, I've decided to do something about it. I have some weird drive to buy classic books. I don't know why, except that I feel like if I have a book collection I need to include classics. We just moved into a new house, and when I was reshelving these classics I felt awful. We just had our first baby six weeks ago, and it occurred to me that the last thing I want is for Killy to come up to me in a few years and ask, "Daddy, what is this book about?" and me not know.
So, I've assembled a list. I've enlisted the excellent ToDoList (discovered via a recent Slashdot thread....) to keep track, including exporting an HTML file so all my friends can laugh at how much I have left. Some of these books I've read already, and are planning to reread. Others are textbooks that I merely intend to scan through. But most I have never read, and will be enjoying for the first time.
As you can tell, I've only just started the process. I recommend everyone do the same! Read, dammit, read!
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
New books are for assholes who like people to see what's on their shelves.
Read, L
So now is somebody going to tell us there is a PIAA (Publishing Industry Association of America) that is going to start suing big anonymous blocks of IP addresses, under the assertion that rampant online piracy is to blame for a large drop in book sales?
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
The main advantage reading has over movies is the amount of time it takes. For fiction especially, this is, depending on quality, an insurmountable quality. The more time you spend with a story, the more you think about it, turning over potential outcomes and imagining the players, places, and reactions. Those aren't advantages for, say, the latest news from Iraq or stock prices or a sporting event, but they certainly are for an epic story (e.g. LoTR or 100 Years of Solitude), complex logic (programming, math, rhetoric), or introspection (religious texts or a teenager reading Catcher in the Rye). The patience required for delayed gratification or subtle thoughts is what is dwindling, not any inherent supriority of communication.
The mass appeal that you give as a positive misses this point also. Having a watercooler conversation over a hit movie is easier than a hit book, but how many movie discussion groups start up (compared to reading groups)? The depth of the experience is mirrored by the depth of the conversation.
It helps to be a fast reader, but I'd think most slashdotters would qualify in that respect. It's not a bad place to spend a little time every now and then and closer than the library for me.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
And the 30-second TV advertisement the most dangerous of all. When I went to college, I would go a good part of the year without watching any TV at all. When I did watch a show, I was appalled by the idiocy of the commercials -- how did I ever accept them as a normal aspect of daily entertainment? They teach people to accept simple emotional appeals instead of complex logical arguments, and tend to encourage vices (buy stuff you don't need with money you don't have, convince yourself you deserve a higher standard of living than the people around you) instead of virtues (solve your own problems, be happy with what you have).
Digression: short attention spans are a threat to society because they cause people to be intellectually lazy and assume that the world is simpler than it really is. Then they make poor decisions based on their incomplete understanding.
I try to avoid TV now, but I keep having the misfortune of living with someone who can't live without it.
TV is also disruptive to anyone within earshot who wants to do something else (like read a book). I wonder how often people are drawn to the tube because someone else insists on watching something and they say to themselves "oh well, as long as its on, I might as well watch because I can't concentrate on anything else."
-jim
I don't have time to read fiction, poetry or short stories. From the time I wake up to the time I go to bed I'm constantly filling my head with reading material of the non-fiction variety:
o Slashdot and various news sites plus the actual articles
o Product documentation
o FAQs
o Code syntax and programming guides
o The ingredients and other useless info on my food so I'm not bored to death when I eat
If you counted up the amount that I read in a day (as in, actually READ...not just browse) I would probably put these reading programs to shame.
Besides, I do fiction and short stories all the time. Today I imagined how to do tweaks to my MTA exim, wrote up a synopsis, read up on it online, and made it happen. Barry The Retarded Elephant short story didn't help me at all.
Once upon a time, I would think nothing of spending a summer afternoon sitting in the shade of a tall tree with a novel and reading it from cover to cover. It was enlightenment, it was escape, it was inspiring; a good book would fill me with the ambition to become a great writer.
Alas, some time in the last ten years this habit has fallen by the wayside. I can only place partial blame on Slashdot (or the net writ large). For the last dozen years I've been involved in technical fields (IT, graphics, animation) where much of my non-billable hours have been spent reading manuals and other forms of documentation.
Now I consider myself lucky if I read ten novels in a year. Prior to 1994 I'd read five or six times that number. And my reading material tends to books that lend themselves to fragmentation, like anthologies or collections (A Bukowski Reader comes to mind here). In terms of pure word count, I really think that I read more than ever. But how much intellectual nourishment can I derive from a Cisco IOS manual?
It all comes down to a time management problem, I suppose. I take my work home with me and I shouldn't. Ever hopeful to return to my former voraciousness, I still scour used bookstores for volumes I haven't yet read: The Name of the Rose awaits, as does The Cuckoo's Egg and Delillo's Underworld.
Aw, hell. I'm pulling all of my power strips and throwing them in a closet for the weekend. It's going to be a beautiful weekend here on Cape Cod and I've got a stack of books to read.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
I just think it is an indication that we've traded one addiction for another. We want to read, but it's much easier to devour through a medium where we also play our games and communicate with friends/family. When I read a book, that's all I want to do until it is finished. I love to read, but do not, because I'll find myself fetching just a couple hours of sleep a night at most and not getting much else done.
The loss of reading might have to due with a shortened attention span due to movies,tv, the internet.... I personally can read a book in about twice the time it takes me to watch a movie, but I read really fast and I skim a lot. A lot of people read much slower, and I imagine some people may be discouraged by the amount of time it takes to read a book. Plus it is not a social activity unlike movies or TV. Even fooling around online can be a social activity. I believe our society frowns on solitary activities such as reading, for the most part.
I guess that video games can take just as long as reading but the social/interactive features probably add to the appeal. Some good games also tell just as much of a story as a novel would.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics. As has been mentioned many times before, I think that people have been reading more literary works. However, the population of the study could have been lead to think 'reading a literary work' only constituted reading a book.
/. posts), I read more now than I did 5 or 10 years ago - remember not counting work or school related reading - be honest.
.", I am convinced that people are reading more literature today then ever before.
I agree that people have a shorter attention span than in years past (how often have do you hear "just get to the point"), but this is a reflection of how the United States society has become. Really, between my work (wearing a support phone which I *have* to answer and resolve issues) and my wonderful family (which always has many activities, including reading), I only have time to read 2-3 books a year that are *not work related*.
But, I do read the daily newspaper (delivered - I know - old school) 4 to 7 times a week and spend an average of 3 hours a week reading on the net (man are there a lot of
Perhaps because more people are in school (can't count that) throughout life and companies have more policies, emails, manuals, ect. that are required reading, the study is skewed towards a definition which is becoming redefined.
Reading through the study (yes, I did) and talking with more and more people every day who seem to say "I read an interesting article/story/piece the other day and . .
One thought that came to my head is that people are busier creating media now - more photos, lots more video - and thus do not have as much time to read.
I wouldn't count on it. Maybe the people who participate in this blog do, but "regular people" don't seem to be any more creative than they were 10 or 20 years ago.
I read as much now as I did 10 years ago. I create more "media" than I did 10 years ago. But I don't think that a significant proportion of the population does either.
I can't believe the number of people I know who are completely wrapped around the reality show du jour. Maybe that's a clue as to what's going on.
Lawrence Person (Who is actually in the process of packing 3000 hardback books...really!)
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
So without new books, where are you going to find used books? =o
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
The survey also makes a striking correlation between readers of literature and those who are socially engaged, noting that readers are far more likely than nonreaders to do volunteer and charity work and go to art museums, performing arts events and ballgames. "Whatever good things the new electronic media bring, they also seem to be creating a decline in cultural and civic participation," Gioia said. "Of literary readers, 43 percent perform charity work; only 17 percent of nonreaders do. That's not a subtle difference."
Pardon me but as a member of the open source community this disturbs me. I've helped with multiple open source projects and released my work under free licenses (GPL, Creative Commons, etc.) and my time is voluntary. If that doesn't classify it as charity I don't know what does. Maybe the census bureau (which this study is based on the work of) should ask a few more technically evolved questions than those along the lines of "Have you volunteered your time at a soup kitchen recently?" or "Have you volunteered at any charities, or non-profits recently?" Granted ten years ago those were perfectly valid questions but in the internet age we aren't constrained to local, or national charities. We've the world at our fingertips and some of us enjoy helping the community that brought us these gifts*.
* The internet is based on open source works given to the community as a whole without any request for payment. By giving back to this community without asking for payment you're effectively helping it much like a person who helps the homeless, or visits with a person in a hospice.
I read computer manua...ok, so I don't read them.
That's because the other NEA has destroyed American education.
But the schools do turn out plenty of stupid Democrats, who empower the "education lobby" NEA, who make more stupid Democrats, who empower the NEA, who make more Democrats.
I'd rather read a book on using Linux etc or news than a work of fiction. I have little use for someone else's fantasies. Maybe more people are taking a more platonic view of the arts, instead of the Aristotelian one held previously. There seems to be more value placed in empirical fact than fantasy.
I am not sure that it is necessarily a bad thing.
Like most slashbots, I read a great deal on the internet, and I read a larger number of books than the populace at large.
:)
However, I have started to actually absorb more information while reading less. This slashdot article discusses timeshifting, and using timeshifting I "read" a great deal more.
www.audible.com is an incredible service - and I now listen to two books a month from them. I listen while driving to and from work, I also listen when at the gym or jogging. As a result, I am able to get through more books (and exercise!) than I otherwise normally would. So do I read less? Perhaps - but I am absorbing more.
Blatant plug: www.audible.com is the only site I have ever seen that actually justifies (in its own way) DRM files that I would say are worth paying for. If you like it, and sign up, say "chumkil" reccomended you. (I told you this was a blatant plug!
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
My business faces ruin. Book sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many books as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique bookstores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one reads, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family reading - stuff that the whole family could read together. I don't sell sick stuff like Stephen King or trashy romance novels, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian sections that I know of.
The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase books without profanity or violent scenes. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer books. Why is no one buying books? Are people not interested in literature? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, listen to music? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Slashdot use is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three hours spent reading is spent on Slashdot. On Slashdot, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of reading material in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the publishing industry, from authors, to publishers to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the movie rental store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike text, it's harder to get video clips posted to Slashdot.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with Slashdot junkies gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to go home and post a comment to Slashdot right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the publishing industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to go home and post to Slashdot, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of Slashdot readers. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If Slashdotters want to steal from the publishing industry, then the publishing industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable bookstore will allow you to buy another book. If the Slashdotters can't buy the books to begin with, then they will become illiterate, and they won't be able to post to Slashdot, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.
I have just written a letter to the publishing industry outlining my proposal. Suing Slashdotters one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention Slashdotters use the fact that they're being sued to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of Slashdotters would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected Slashdotters to a hotline, similar to TIPS. Once we know the size of the problem, the police and other law enforcement agencies will be force
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
I don't wanna flame or anything (although i'm sure some American blind-faith patriots will disagree), but notice this is an american study (yes... i can read). Last i heard, around 40% (?) of all Americans havn't read a book before. over 50% believe in UFO's (the Alien kind). So whats this about society advancing... D'Oh ?
Of course no one notices the irony of linking a story about Americans not reading to an NPR audio commentary.
No, they're writing insightful and well-thought-out posts like the one you replied to.
Of course, there are also a lot of stupid posts. There are a lot of stupid books too. Sturgeon's Law: 95% of everything is crap.
I think my grandparent is on to a very important idea. Writing a coherent statement or argument is a better expression of literacy than reading someone else's.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
"and that the pace at which the nation is losing readers, especially young readers, is quickening."
Don't they mean "and that the pace at which the nation is losing readers, especially young readers, is embiggening."? Or am I misunderestimating their language?
And to think people say that reading (and hence grammar and spelling) are on the decline!
How many years did it take you improve your reading? From being a slow reader to being able to read for 10 hours straight? Also, how many days a week do you read? I burn out after like 2 hours reading lol.
The Internet as a whole has probably contributed to my constant and at times increased amount of reading. Because of the diversity of book information available, and the number of books available not being limited to whatever my local B&N has in stock, I read much more than I probably otherwise would.
Point in hand: I've purchased around 12 books online this month, and read 7 of them.
Then there's Amazon, which regularly knocks 10 - 40% off cover prices. As if that isn't enough, used bookstores offer easy access to a wide selection. There's your $4 papaerback and $12 hardcover.
And then there are libraries.
Finally, consider that the hardback book I buy today I will still be able to read in 40 years. Some of my Dad's books, which he bought as a teenager and young adult, I still read and enjoy. Robert Heinlein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemmingway are still every bit as enjoyable as they were when purchased.
I'd like to see cheaper books too, but they're already here if you know where to look.
Is there any reason why not reading fiction is proof people are not reading more books in general?
I mention this because I read a lot of books, but almost all of it is non-fiction. I guess I find fact more interesting than the made-up world.
In case anyone's interested, I found these books, which I've read recently, very interesting:
"Krakatoa" by Scott Winchester. Known for "The Professor and the Madman", Winchester is an excellent writer and a top-notch researcher. "Krakatoa" not only explains the science behind the eruption, but the socio-economic impacts as well.
"Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser. Although it's been out a year or two, I recently read this book and was surprised by its information. It definitely cubed my appetite for fast food, but please note this book is yellow journalism at its finest.
"How to Read a French Fry" by Russ Parsons. Being a true geek, I'm interested in how things work. This book explains some of the chemistry behind cooking (as well as provides a few good recipes too boot).
As someone already noted below, special effects are getting better every year. From that alone, your statement would be true. But acting skills haven't improved much, especially in under budgeted sci-fi flicks. The experience will be different from a movie that spoon-feeds you what someone else decides you should know. In a novel, details are important, but each individual may read a character differently. It's also important to note that some things simply don't transfer well to screen. Heck, some things in books never even make it to the screen, and in many cases, it's a crucial difference.
This last New Years, I made a resolution to read 100 books this year. I simply wanted to expand my concentration and know more about novels. I had a limited experience in classes, and like most others here, did not enjoy the vast majority that was handed down as an assignment. I felt like I was missing out, and wanted to know why. Through the course of my reading, I have seen through the eyes of characters, instead of merely observed them.
No point in listing everything I've read, so here are my two favorites so far. "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley is absolutely nothing like the ridiculous movies. Instead, it is a gruesome and touching story of a creature created without any access to the comforts of love and friendship. In the story, the obscenity of the creature can be fully explained due to the full details of the time period. In a movie, this is somewhat lost because of lack of time. You can show the time, via costumes and fancy sets, but you can't completely empathize with the characters. Reading "Frankenstein", you see how crucial this is to a fabulous novel. I hope to teach someday, and this will definitely be on the reading list.
Second recommendation is the extremely short but immensely funny "Candide" by Voltaire. Subversively political and almost crude in terms of the sexuality and lifestyles, it follows a section of life of a young man, who seems a bit too innocent compared to those around him. It's short enough to be read in a single day (or a few hours) and is definitely neither something you will probably ever read in high school or college (unless you're lucky) nor see at a movie (but maybe a play or tv short).
Do you really remember significantly more detail about a story from reading a book than from seeing a movie?
Absolutely. I remember images from movies, but with books I remember entire scenes, emotions of the characters and minute details about the whole story. I read because I want to know more. I read because I want to expand both my vocabulary and language skills. I read because movies are expensive and generally unsatisfying, and TV is filled with reality crap. I love the internet for the tidbits it provides, but it is honestly enjoyable to stretch out a story over a week. To feel in a rush to get home so that I can find out what happens next. It's like an On-Demand miniseries :P
When I've read a new book, the first thing I want to do is discuss it with other people.
Either: 1) Actually recommend the book to a friend and ask them to read it too. or 2) Join a book club. Besides that, your choice of actions should not be determined by what everyone else is doing, especially if it sucks. I've read a few books that were recommended by friends and am glad I did. The experience will be shared if you make an active effort.
An explanation of my choices for friends
The will now petition for more money.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
"How many years did it take you improve your reading? From being a slow reader to being able to read for 10 hours straight? Also, how many days a week do you read? I burn out after like 2 hours reading lol."
If you're used to reading, it wouldn't take you 10 hours to finish a 500 page book. On a typpical day, I finish a 300 page paperback in about three or three and a half hours and still remember most of the detail.
But then again, to put memory in perspective (at least as far as mine is concerned), I ran across my old padlock for my high school locker (I graduated in 98 and haven't really used it since) and knew the combination the moment i picked it up.
Personally, I tend to read at least a little every day even if it's only 20 minutes or so when i have the time. Putting creative things *in* my head is a nice break from taking creative things out of it.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
I think people are reading as much as ever, but in shorter chunks of time than in the past. I know probably 50% of what I read is articles and stories online. But I'm old-fashioned enough to want printed copies of things I know I'll want to look at again.
The short story in particular is enjoying a resurgence in popularity. I'm the webmaster for a mystery magazine which started out as a print quarterly. Now, in the magazine's 8th year, we've started featuring a new story online every week. I thought people might like printouts of the stories, so I set up all the webpages so that one page onscreen = one page sent to the printer. I know at least some of the readers appreciate this, but I have not yet seen the server statistics for the print style sheets, which will give me a definite answer.
Futures magazine
FAME weekly ezine
Americans read fewer books
fewer than what...
other countries?
fewer now than before?
What?
If it is indeed fewer books now than before....fine. Is it only Americans? Doubtful.
Why not "People read fewer books"?
Oops..I forgot where I was. Anything to take a jab at the USA.
But we read only carefully selected, government approved materials.
Beware World: it appears that the Geneva Conventions are not on the current list...
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Is pResident Bush hiding something?
Look! It's the Fa-a-abulous Outing of Mr. Gee Dubya Bushikins
(Maybe he was "outed" before: and the event got him removed from the National Guard.
Could that be why those records had to be "inadvertently" destroyed?)
million effing monkeys. who plagiarize each other.
Me no how write gud! Me reed to buks! Wun not culurd in yet evun!
I saw many comments posted that I would like to touch on
The article isn't about reading in general, it's about reading fiction, and poetry, not technical manuals and news (on or off line.) So it's not about the literacy (as one poster seemed to think.
Also movies can not possibly contain all the content of a well written book, take The Lord Of the Rings for example, if all the content of the books was included in the movies we'd be waiting for parts 4-9 to come out still.
Reading is not made to be interesting any more in schools, required reading includes books that no one wants to read anymore, and the school describes them as "Literary classics" and to kids classics = old, and un interesting.
So in conclusion, reading can still be fun, we just have to have our schools upgrade the required reading, perhaps some Douglas Adams (may he rest in peace) or Terry Pratchett. Or allow students to pick books (not magazine articles) to read. But some required reading that should include the classics are...
There are others that I would recommend, however their titles slip my mind at the moment.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
I like to read. I retain probably 60% of what I've read on average. With liberal arts crap, thats about 90%. With theorem-heacy math stuff, its about 30%. With most fiction, oh...70% or so, depending on the book. I read fast, and it takes a truly bad author or a philosopher to bore me- its very difficult for me to lose interest in a book. Overall, I can do 500+ fiction/history pages a day if I want to. How can I do this? Its simple- I was homeschooled, and didn't have a TV until I was 13. I was often bored, and my parents encouraged my reading. Also, I had good teaching in reading. Most people I speak to were poorly taught how to read, which makes reading an effort for them, whereas people that have been taught well can read with pleasure. Its a natural effect of the MTV generation. If you enjoy Punk'd and Viva la Bam, you probably won't enjoy reading much(too much thinking). And MTV only does it for the money, which means that lots of people watch those shows. XD But then again, many people like learning. Its natural selection...the "durr"s and the badly taught and the people who dislike education sink into Mickey Dees, and those who enjoy education rise to the top of their chosen area, be it a trade or more intellectual areas. Yup. I've just ranted. =)
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
But what it can't do is apply that information to solve problems. That is what I do, that is where I'm important.
This is what humans were touted to have over computers when I was a young sprat and it seems the line hasn't changed much. It isn't even necessary for computers to gain sentience and start passing turing tests to meet this standard. Computers can be setup to at least solve certain classes of problems. These precanned solutions are stacking up one on top of the other. At the moment, it seems that hot skill is finding the precanned solution. More than once, I've got a bug up my ass to write code at work. I always check Google, Freshmeat, and Sourceforge first though. It usually isn't necessary. My thoughts on the subject weren't original.
So just what are we supposed to do when some piece of tech we've built starts thinking for itself? This thing of having a big picture view that the computers don't have won't cut it anymore.
New York Public Library spokesperson Larry "two-fingers" Benito would only say that they had contacted "our people who deal with this sort of thing", and that he "expected a swift and satisfying outcome" to the suit.
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"Old" books are great. But what about old records? Let's say: some "old" National Guard service records?
Those are REALLY interesting, and even educationally informative. Well, some of them would be, if only our government would not stoop to censoring them and even destroying them...
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Is pResident Bush hiding something?
Look! It's the Fa-a-abulous Outing of Mr. Gee Dubya Bushikins
(Maybe he was "outed" before: and the event got him removed from the National Guard.
Could that be why those records had to be "inadvertently" destroyed?)
Given the prevalence of books on tape (or CD or MP3) and the time spent commuting, its easy to see why black marks on dead tree pulp are less frequently perused.
Pity e-books haven't taken off. They probably need the OLED displays. Given a decent text-to-speech software and a high end PDA and the Gutenberg project, and Baen's library, a guy could read until needed his eyes for driving and then listen in his car.
What idiot thought this was newsworthy?
I'm looking forward to reading the forthcomong Slashdot article "butter melts in intense heat".
Q1:
...pst, you fill in this part...
True: Most people think Americans are ignorant.
It because the other 5.7 Billion citizens of the world are:
A) Jealous
B) Know Americans read less than other high-literacy and privileged nations
C) Knights of the New World Order
D) Are Wrong. U!S!A!
E) Point Of Order: This poll is flawed.
F) Other. -explain-
A1:
For all of you complaining about the lack of good sci-fi, pick up an OLD sci-fi book. Get out of your corporate book store and support the local used book store. Some of the best sci fi was written before NASA was even concived. (Some of the worst was too) Give it a try
Who do I have to blackmail to get some representation around here!?!?!?!?
At the end of high school, I ended up with a lot of leisure time and somehow found myself reading a few nonrequired plays. Since they were light reading, I could usually get through an act each night before I went to bed. What I discovered is that there is a lot of insight, imagination, and thinking that goes into reading recreationally which is absent both on the internet and in technical (or even required) reading.
My suggestion is to try reading even for 10 minutes before bed. It turns out that it's both a wonderful way to relax and a good way to expose yourself to new feelings (even if it's not "real" literature)
I dislike Sci-Fi, and focus primarily on Fantasy, but I enjoy some classical literature and general fiction. Kurt Vonnegut shares equal pile-space with Dante, but both of them are dwarfed by L E Modesitt Jr. I also read a good deal of religious and 'spiritual' work, even a fair share of stupid new age nonsense, so Aliester Crowley sits there next to books on Mayan mythology and the Tao Te Ching rests atop my copy of the the Bible.
I read at work; I read while my fiancee is playing Rise of Nations; I read during the boring television programmes that I have to suffer through. When I was in high school, I carried a novel to every class and read through all of them, except Calculus and my Tech/Shop class. I used to read for an hour or three before bed every night, but don't quite so often anymore because I've taken to playing online games with friends whom I've moved far away from. When I lived nearer to them, and could keep in touch more regularly and reliably, the internet never affected my reading.
So, if you wanted to, you could say that the internet has cut into my reading time, but not in the dastardly, make-everyone-stupid way that the intelligesita want the population to believe.
I don't think people are reading more on the Internet rather then paper books. I think people are simply reading less and watching more TV and playing video games. Take for instance pen and paper RPG's, those are pretty much things of the past, people play magic or Playstation now. No one uses their imagination. Sort of sad, oh well.
Part of the balance could be redressed in many interesting ways through computers reading to humans.
What is the state of that art?
Some groups have spent millions to advance text-to-speach technology.
Others have made a free open source text-to-speach engine.
synthesizer.allocate();T Y);
synthesizer.resume();
synthesizer.speakPlainText("Hello, world!", null);
synthesizer.waitEngineState(Synthesizer.QUEUE_EMP
synthesizer.deallocate();
On the other hand, on the internet people seem to loose the ability to spell certain words no matter how angry the grammar nazis fell about it.
Nary has a day gone by without me seeing those two words misspelt.
Your local library is a wonderful place. They have such things as books, magazines, and CDs.
A University library, however, can be a dangerous place. You'll drown in the sheer amount of information availible to you.
It's definitely improved my vocabulary, and I keep dictionary.com bookmarked. But I actually like to learn so maybe that's the reason. My niece certainly doesn't learn or benefit from using this thing.
There is one problem though. I've never understood those pronunciation keys, so I sound stupid in public sometimes. For instance I have a habit of saying "continue-ity" instead of "continuity".
I'm sure there's plenty of reasons why people aren't reading as much fiction, and a lot of that probably has to do with the Internet or modern technology.
But, I don't think we're reading less.
Think of how much other stuff there is available to read now, too. Novels have competition, and it's not just movies. It's blogs, RSS feeds, and zines.
-David
I'd love to see a syterical comparision between the US and Canada regarding book consumption. Perhaps we can get Michael Moore out to make a hilarious movie about how US folk read as many books as Canadians; however the strange thing is, Canadians are so, so, so much smaarter.
... must be fear of the black man.
What gives, as more Moore said
xoduszero
Gamblers Forum
In the last six years I've probably written more pages of my own than I've read of others.
In Junior High I read every thick novel I could get my hands on. In High School I got out of the habit. Now if I want to hear a good story I rent/buy/go see a movie. There are plenty of deep movies and since I'm more visual I retain and get more out of it. I have a terrible imagination. When I write stories (of which I've written many) they aren't drawn out with detail. They have a major theme and everything deals with that theme. I'm more interested in the ideas than what color a character's shirt is.
I imagine that when I get older I'll start reading more books. In the mean time I don't have that kind of attention span.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
It is better, if you understand deeply the content of a good book rather than read a lot of books but not to the content. There is a good book about how to read a book: Mortimer J. Adler, the autor of "How to read a Book" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671 212095/104-4622031-4181543?v=glance
The new pompous word for "idea."
/,ers? Like... Slashcommers? ;-)
Mind Booster Noori
Of course you can: it's even a good exercise for studying: reading all the things you have to stury and do sparknotes of it, then read the sparknotes and make spark-sparknotes... Probably those are going to be the ones you really need to study, you'll be able to recall the rest...
Mind Booster Noori
for one second. How much in a day do you read on the internet? Every day I read probably more than the average Joe read years ago because I'm reading articals on the internet writing programs and such. The grammer and spelling (as you can probably tell from my own writing) is gone to hell but people in general are reading just as much and in some cases more by using the internet. Though their are alot of people who just play video games... People online are now reading online articals like slashdot, blues news and online comics like mac hall and penny arcade, and online books, as well as the numerouse chats. Some of it is informative and some is not. Just like real books. I think its more of a transition, its not going to replace books ever but its a new type of reading.
Seriously, while Beostein was mildly interesting (I remember almost nothing of it) and Frankenwulf was worth reading so I could know the 'real' story (I remember only a little more of this), they aren't readable for many of the millions of HS students out there. I know there have been 'translations' of various sorts to attempt to 'modernize' books like these so that they are readable, but they don't seem to have taken hold of the main portion of texts that are used.
I've run out of fingers and toes on which to count the number of books I've read in 'electronic' format these days. What's especially helpful is to be able to look up a word in one tab of a web browser while reading in another.
Let S_n = {nst+us+vt : s,t in Z \ {0}, u,v in {-1,1}}. For all n in Z where |n| > 2, Z \ S_n is infinite... right?
As we all know, NO ONE on Slashdot reads the articles...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
This reminds me of an issue I've been pondering on the past few years. My mom (like much of my extended family) reads a lot. However, despite my efforts to the contrary, she only reads non-fiction -- things like biographies, financial books, etc. She also reads a lot about angels, Nostradamus, etc, but I'll consider those nonfiction for the moment. Whenever I try to convince her to read fiction, she complains about how "it's not about real people" and thus irrelevant.
As for myself, I consider fiction an important factor in broadening my mind and shaping who I am. Any ideas of how I can convince her of this?
"We read book after book after book of "great" literature which more or less meant old, and hard to read. Anything new was crap, anything kids might enjoy was crap."
You're exactly right about this. Why do we make kids read things like 'Hard Time' or 'Emma'? Does a knowledge of 19th century literature really fall into the "thing you should know to be a good citizen and productive member of society" category that's supposed to be what public education is about? Yes, people need to learn how to read and analyze books, but why do we go out of our way to make it boring for them? Let's be honest, knowing about the literary themes of Dickens has almost zero value in daily life, and only a very tiny minority of people ever actually read that sort of 'classic' literature for entertainment. The important thing is that kids learn how to analyze what they read, not what they read in and of itself. You can learn to analyze literature just as effectively with things that kids are likely to enjoy reading, so why make them suffer needlessly through Jane Austin? It only serves to make them less attentive to the lessons that they're supposed to be learning, as well as giving some kids the idea that reading is inherently boring.
Do you really remember significantly more detail about a story from reading a book than from seeing a movie?
I've also never been affected by a movie as deeply as books have affected me. Crime and Punishment made me cry like a child at the end and had a profound effect on certain parts of my personality that were reminiscent of Raskolnikov. There are still some days when just thinking about passages in that book can give me chills.
Movies on the other hand only seem to speak to more basic emotions to me. Some movie rembrances bring fear or an internal laugh, but nothing life altering... and this is despite watching a good deal of non-fiction movies.
So for me, movies are definitely more of a easy to remember, sharable experience while books maintain a special, long term effect on me in a personal level.
--- I do not moderate.
i dont reeding boucks much theese daze and i dont sea how it hurt my abelitey too comunnickait atall reeding is a waist of tim too me and your not so smarrt cause you reed alot
Baen is realy nice to, if you like Military SF and fantasy. They have a nice free library, and none of their e-books are DRM encumbered. Once you've burned through the free library the non-gratis e-books aren't that expensive either, and still not DRM encumbered. You may also want to check out Project Gutenberg for some older fiction.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
I really can't consider this as offtopic, since it was also my first reaction: didn't all you know that people (not only American, all around the world) is reading less?
Mind Booster Noori
I used to read 12 to 20 books a year but now I'm down to about 2 in the same period. To help compensate I try to read less contemporary literature and more of the classics. The reasoning is the if it's 100 years old and is still published someone did something right.
I think Stephen King is a great example here. Most of his books read similarly, good to great, with rich characters and interesting interior monologues. His ideas and plots kind of suck, objectively. I mean, killer cars, killer clowns, killer aliens, etc. Movies made from his books run the gamut from terrible to great. The ones that just lift his plots tend to be terrible. The ones that lean on the characters are super (e.g., Stand by Me, the Shawshank Redemption).
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
I read all day. Usually it's IRC, system prompts, the command line, news feeds, etceteras. In gradeskool and high school, I read all the sci-fi I could get my hands on- magazines, novels, short stories, etceteras. I Consumed. Had to do something with my time in the summers! I always had a book. Gave me something to read on the bus, before bed, etceteras.
:P So I've been sticking with authors I've known from the past, and rereading comics and books I read back in high school. Big trunk of comics and books I barely remember buying! Cheap! Convenient! O.o
When I was younger, my mom read the entire local library's selection of romance novels. All of her mom's, all of her aunt's, all of her friends. She never read anything else, and she mowed through at least three or four of them a week. It's escapism, pure and simple. I escape with Quake.
I still read before bed. I write in my journal on the bus these days, though I read when I'm travelling (no license- greyhound or shotgun)- managed to devour half of Gibson's All Tomorrow's Party's on my last trip to Philly. Comic books in the pooper.
Currently, I'm rereading Appleseed (Shirow, you know, that Ghost in the Shell guy), and as an adult, I'm finally capable of realizing how much ass it kicks.
It goes in spurts- I'll have months where I'm too busy writing and drawing and IRCing to read. I'll have months where I inhale a stream of novels (I read ALL of the Sandman and several Gaiman novels in the span of about three weeks...), and I'll have my periods where comics are where my head is (last jag being Transmetropolitan).
Problem is, I'm picky and I'm poor and IRC is free and cheaper than the coffee house. I dearly love my dead tree picturebooks and novels, but I find it increasingly difficult to figure out what's good at a glance- much easier to do with comics than novels.
Print isn't dead. It's a preference.
...noticed similar things. But their internet was something called "bread and circuses."
... and I just finished Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, published 1927. Hesse won the Nobel Prize for literature.
...
The book cost me $1 or less (that's what I'll pay for a book in NYC, generally). I don't remember if I got it from a library book sale, or a used book store remainder cart, or some apartment's book-swap shelf in the basement next to the laundry, or the giant institutional rummage sale across the street from me several times a year (I picked up 250 books there once for $80, mostly vintage 60's and 70's science fiction), or from one of my friends, or
New York City is full of cheap books. They're everywhere. I got my copy of Cryptonomicon for 75 cents at a thrift shop. After I read it, I gave it to my friend, and before he could read it, his roommate glommed onto it. Three readers, one Cryptonomicon, $0.25 each, beat that!
I don't have a lot of sympathy if you need to read the hot novel of the month. If you need to read a current technical or non-fiction book, and you're not comfortable hanging out in Barnes and Noble (why do you think they provide chairs?), that's one thing. But really, you have hundreds of years of great books to choose from, focussing on the past three months is myopic.
I get some good stuff from used bookstores. Paperbacks range from $1 to $4 (for stuff that had a cover price of $9--10). Generally good yarns; if you keep your eyes open, you can find some classics. I found the original novel "A Simple Plan" (much, much darker than the movie), the occasional Heinlein book, etc.
If you don't care if your books are shiny and uncreased or not, it's a good idea to check out a used paperback store. They usually give trade-in credit on old paperbacks you might bring in, too.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I read, maybe, a novel every other year or so, though the other text I go through doesn't seem to met the criteria for arts.
Hey! We can't all be libral art majors!
I don't see why "Fiction, poems and short stories" are considered to be 'literature'. In Portland, Oregon, there is a three story library. The first floor is fiction. Floors two and three are history, religion, science, sociology, economics, art, music...does reading about science and history not count?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
The Internet has changed the content that the average person reads, but it also has brought a change in how more 'formal' reading is consumed. A prime example of this is the ebook - as in a full length book that may (or may not) be in a printed form that IS, in some form or another, electronic. The way I see it, this form of media can be broken up into two major catagories: "illegal" and "legal." Legal would be books like Cory Doctorow's, which are licenced under the Creative Commons, and books in the public domain, many of which are obtainable through Project Gutenburg. On the other hand, there is the "illegal" side of this form of reading. I am a strong supporter of the filesharing movement, if you want to call it that, and perhaps a little cheap too, but it doesnt matter. Using P2P networks, as of late I have obtained numerous books and read them using my iPod. Obtaining my reading material this way, combined with the ammount of reading I do just browsing, I would consider myself to be a pretty active reader for my age. Even so, I haven't read anything within the past two months that would qualify as legitimate reading for this study.
The internet has encouraged thousands upon thousands of previously isolated writers to gather into critique groups (critters, Online Workshop, etc) - maybe they're all so busy creating they don't have time to sample? That's what happened to me...
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Commas should never seperate two complete sentences.
In place of reading one of the greatest minds of all time, aspiring to share his joy of the ENglish language, you are suggesting to replace it with the rants of a teenager that most likely will write worst than me.
Stay Intarweb only, you will never reach the complex mental process involved in understanding a great novel, which is a skill with many lateral benefits. The reachness of the langauge you speak and write can be only enriched by great minds that devote their full time to craft the language.
Stay with people at your same or lower level (like most people posting and writing in the "Intarweb") and your language will stagnate in stillness.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
People are giving up the posibility of relate to complex ideas and narrations.
The Internet, in all its reachness, is a medium for short time attention spans.
There is no way that you can absorb complex ideas that require many ours of concentration in such an uncomfortable medium as a computer.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Some of Heinlein's predictions sneak in as part of the detail.
... but BART opened in 1971/1972, and Citizen of the Galaxy was published in 1957!
Heinlein wrote about US troops in southeast asia in 1963 (Glory Road). And in Citizen of the Galaxy, one of the characters takes a tube transport under the bay. Hey, I've taken BART under the Bay
The book I always wanted Heinlein to write: a completely non-SF book about Ira Johnson's adventures in his youth.
When I was younger reading was just about the ONLY way to educate yourself about something quickly and cheaply.
.......I wonder which school will be the first to have students' theses switch to the form of a web page, freely accessible to all.
If you wanted to learn how to make homemade rocket engines or troubleshoot your car, you read a book.
Now that information is on the internet.
It's really changed the way so many things work. The amount of information just a few mouse clicks away is just staggering.
I've also noticed a bit of a "generation gap" between my generation and many current college professors:
To them, researching a topic means going to the libray. To me, it means seaching the internet.
I hunt down a book only when I can't find what I want on the 'net.
I expect it will eventually change the entire academic scene significantly.
Life is too short to proofread.
used to spend 20-40 a week and read lots, now spend the same 20-40 a week and get 2 to 4 books if I am lucky. Maybe it is just me but books WENT THRU THE ROOF, and the remarkets, with new covers and titles, makes life more difficult. I spend more and more time getting old masters, Geo.O Smith, PK Dick, Norton and Carter just to name a few. I refuse to pay for a hardback anymore, they are just over-priced paperbacks with no life span, and CURSE the trade paper back fad as well :( :)
I do like a lot of the new comic-style work the net has made possible...RedvsBlue Rocks
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
This article reminds me of a very scary thing I heard from a friend many years ago:
Me: "I really liked the book Farenheight 451. Especially the description of how the world got that way. The censorship didn't come from the leaders - it came from the masses. They wanted everyone to be as vacuous as they were, so they started pushing their leaders to outlaw various intellectual things."
Him: "Wow. That's kind of deep. Who wrote it?"
Me: "Bradbury". You should see the film version too - it's done fairly well.
Him: "Oh, there's a movie of it ? I think I'll just save time and watch that. Reading the book takes too much time..."
Me: "uhh. that's pretty funny - good one.:
Him: "What? What did I say that was funny?"
Me: "Oh...never mind."
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
>>NPR has a good audio linkhere for you non-readers.
Thats funny.
One insurmountable advantage books have over all other forms of entertainment was once pointed out in a discussion of interactive fiction:
With words alone, an author has an unlimited special effects budget.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Because excluding the classics (teach yourself ancient greek is slow going for me, and I like greek more than latin) and non-English texts (you miss so much in most translations, so once greek and latin are done..) aren't in my mother tongue, I've read either all of the good fiction, or enough of one author's sampling.
Accursed speed reading courses.
Also, deconstructionism sort of ruins things. You get a few paragraphs in and you discover you have hero type 342, with nemesis 209, with foil 101, and the most you can hope for is clever plot twist 59 at the end, where you discover the hero - or let's be more apt, protagonist - is secretly suffering from split personality disorder, and IS nemesis 209.
then
Why can't libraries allow downloads and have author payments from them
PS. get a fucking job, I don't pay %40 of my income in tax for you to whack off and hang out on IRC all day
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I wonder if they asked each person how many books they've read in the last year or so. It would be interesting to see if we've fallen below one book a year.
I could see the book publishers run ads with the slogan "one book a year-- that's all we ask"...
-cmh
Before I rant, Google news turned up what I think is a much nicer artilc in the Macon Telegraph called "Johnny's not reading." by Ed Corson.
The title is in reference to the 1955 report by Rudolph Franz Flesch called "Why Johnny Can't Read" that plasted the whole language movement. Their has sence the dawn of history been dabates about the best way to learn to read, but I wnat to write for a few lines about my experence learning to read in the 80's and why I don't enjoy reading.
My lack of reading for pleasure did indeed start with my schoolong, but it wasn't how I learned to read but what and why. This is slashdot so I'll be blunt. The reading list in schools sucked. Of the 60 some odd books I read in school, I enjoyed no more then a handful. If "Harry Potter" had been part my reading class I might have actually "gotten into" reading.
Unfortunatly, the reading list was -- and is -- a political hot potato that if created more for it's apeal to the PC Culture Cops then the interest of 10 year olds. Most of the stuff I read was in the class room because the author "Brought a unique cultural perspective" reather then an engaging story.
Even when the liturature might have been enjoyable, reading it for class was not. comprehension tests meant that I read with an eye for content details, not naritive apeal. By the time I was in 6th grade, I would reread every paragraph at least once to make sure I could pass the test. This was never an enjoyable way to read, but it was what the system wanted.
Now days, I read a great deal. Two news papers, this and many other websites, technical manuals, and academic tomes, comprimize a good chunk of my time. I read because I want or need the information on the page, but I almost never consider reading something because its fun. That was not an aspect of reading I found until I was a senior in high school, and not because of the Shakespear I was reading in my english class.
Just incase you were wondering, the books I read in shcool that I enjoyed: Huckelberry Fin, Where the Red Fern Grows, The White Mountians, and Island of the Blue Dolphin.
Lets do something dramitic and put engaging book on the book list and drop the high stakes testing. Reading will never be the same.
JFMILLER
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
Americans read of course... but they read garbage. Self-help books and tv guides. Basically the only reading that actually creates an active and critical mind is barely covered in high school. Then maybe a few required courses on the classics in college. Active reading of nonfiction and literature does not permeate in American culture. Sure you have book clubs etc... but thats the vast minority.
Just take a look at the NYTimes Bestseller list.
Its filled with pulp fiction about nothing meaningful, self-help books on how to make money, how to lose weight (yet we are still fat) and just plain out crap. Most of the nonfiction books are about fiction books (da vinci code anyone).
What if us Americans were deeply involved with John Rawls, Plato, Locke, Marx, Chomsky, Zinn, Derrida, Heidegger, Mohammend, Mark, Paul, Lao Tzu, Samjaya, Nagarjuna, Wittgenstein, Shakespeare, Heinlein, etc.... I guess we'd be a population of smart people.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
The NEA paper doesn't take into account the growing popularity of listening to books. With commutes getting ever-longer, especially in the United States, it's getting more and more popular. I know I took it up in my commuting days, listening to the great works, various lectures, etc. I think Audible (or its successors) has a great future.
Finally, you have to ask why the NEA has any kind of interest in this. Could it be a "justify our existence" move to expand another bureaucracy, especially one that finds itself under regular attack? naw....
First off, you have a problem of perception if you think Ender's Game is crap. I would point you to the awards its won (Nebula, Hugo) and the massive sales. I'm guessing you are one of those literary zealots that Card blasts in his intro of it, those that think the only good literature is one that requires a masters degree to comprehend. The funnt thing is Ender's Game DOES have all those levels of meaning to be decoded, it just makes the primary story accessable without doing so (Card talks about this too).
You also seem to be ignornat of educational history. High school has undergone a shift in the last 100 years. It used to be something that few attended, only those prepping for university for the most part. Now it is something that more or less every person must go through. My generation was that way, ver few did not complete high school. My parents' generation had a very high rate, but far less than mine. My grandparents', it was fairly rare (neither of my grandparents have diploma), only for those aspiring to be intellecuals.
As such, our cirriculm must evolve. It used to be that to get into university, such as Harvard (called Oxford back then, one of the only ones in the US) you had to speak Latin and Greek. This was just to get IN. It was an elite instution for very few, the privledged intellectuals. Now university is for a much large part of the population, those who's fields require more than primary education, but not always those that wish to be pure academics.
You'd do well to read Howard Gardner's "Multiple Intelligences" book. It is modren educational though on the matter of intelligence and education. You will see why the traditonal idea of what is good and correct in education isn't correct.
That's science, we learn, we evolve, we get better theories. It amazes me how people can advocate the teaching of modern though, then fail to apply it to education.
I remember being given a list of 100 books all people should read in high school. The only thing approaching Sci Fi was 1984 (excellecnt book, but that's beside the point). BAsically anything new was discounted, and it was mostly books that were favourites of English majors and such. Good to know that things are progressing a little.
. . . it would have been titled,
"Americans: READ FEWER BOOKS!"
The following authors are favourites of mine, and their wisdom and insight into humanity is far greater than anything you'll see on television today:
Herman Melville
Jorges Luis Borges
Miguel de Cervantes
Italo Calvino
Saul Bellow
Philip Roth
Thomas Pynchon
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
William Gaddis
James Joyce
Mikhail Bulgakov
Those are a few of my recent favourites. To me, these men - unfortunately they are all men, as I haven't really found many female authors that I like (A stupid prejudice, but I have it) - are capable of looking into the windows of our souls and turning that into text for us to read and learn from. Don't sell them short, and don't sell yourself short. We can all read and enjoy these books, and yes, even learn from them. Most of them have uncovered truths about humans that were always there, but that needed to be put into words. These men did it, and I am grateful for it. Sure, it may take a while for a non-reader to get into a lot of these authors, but once you do, you'll be laughing, smiling, crying, open mouthed in wonder, etc - and you'll be thankful for the life lessons you can apply to your own reality.
Enjoy.
Once Americans stop reading books altogether we can just burn the books! No one will care.
DoublePlusGood!
SOS
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
I've all but given up on the sci fi world - I used to live on a diet of scifi, but as of late the new stuff just sucks. Even books that come highly recommended suck - Game of Thrones is a perfect example. It apparently would be a sin for anyone to write a decent sci fi book. And to make matters worse, everything scifi apparently needs to be a series now. So once you've determined that either an author or a book sucks, you can't find anything else to read but more and more of the same.
I long for the days of good scifi / fantasy books, and stories that could begin and end with one book. There are exceptions to the series sucking theory, but they are all older series (foundation, lotr, etc). Nothing new is even close.
Then, there are those people who insist upon using uncommon words and structuring painfully complex sentences in an attempt to impress people when a simple sentence would be much more effective.
I remember when I was in high school, as a product of the public Texas education system and graduating in 1992, a requirement for graduation was passing a standardized test called the TAAS. In order to pass the test required a passing score on all three sections - English/Reading, Mathematics, and the Essay. Failure on one section meant ineligibility from graduation if you haven't passed it by then, and testing began in 11th grade. Now, the issue that relates to this is the fact that the state agency that oversees the exams, and the Essay portion in particular, looked for certain things when grading the Essay. One specific item that these essay graders looked at was how much a student elaborated in his/her sentences. Even more specifically, the same graders would frown upon short, succinct sentences and would look more favorably towards essays with long, complex, almost Faulknerish sentences. In turn, English teachers would teach students to write in such a manner early in a student's academic career. Students, as one might surmise, would do as they are taught in order to pass.
This leads to the issue at hand. Students, as the lump of clay that they tend to be with little exception, are taught that this practice is how an intelligent man writes. Unfortunately, no one is telling students that quality outpaces quantity - especially when often lazy teachers offer too many assignments with word or page minimums without justification, which only reinforces this habit. This response should, at least in the slightest modicum, serve as an example of the public education system.
As for me, the only things I prefer to be complex are numbers.
"Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two" -- RFC 1925
No, I have nothing else to say!
If you want to read some fiction, try "Windows security".
... that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Oscar Wilde
Have americans ever read that much
(PS I love Allen Ginsberg)
One thing nobody's pointed out yet (at least that I've noticed) is that people do much more writing now than they used to, thanks to the Internet.
LOL! u r so rite!!!!
Is it just me or did everyone read the latest John Grisham book? Ever since it came out the use of the phrase "Yellow journalism" has rocketed on Slashdot.
It's just a hypothesis, but I would guess that the reason for the decline in "literary" reading is related to the decline in network TV viewing: more options.
Literary reading (outside of school, which is what they were counting) is a form of entertainment, and the number of entertainment options has steadily increased over the years. Older forms of enterainment have probbably all declined as a roughly fixed amount of time is divided among an ever growing variety of activities.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
No wonder you lot are a bunch of obviously retarded idiots.
They'reall too busy downloading from Project Gutenburg.
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
The census portion of "Reading at risk" is based on the actual report called "The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts"
In "The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts." they say the following:
In 2002, 56 percent of respondents indicated they had read a book during the previous 12 months, about the same as in 1992. However, the percentage of respondents reading literature, defined in the survey as plays, poetry, short stories or novels, decreased by 8 percentage points from 1992 to 2002 (46 percent of 2002 respondents), a statistically significant drop.
The reading at risk report is more worried that you are not reading Charles Dicken or a book of poetry then it is something like Quicksilver. In addition it is ignoring all thoses that are reading Code Complete 2(great second editon to a great book) because the original survey would of classified that as being read for work or school.
Science Fiction novels, like those of other genres, tend to have a hard time cracking into education(as they do in many other places). There tends to be a general discrimination of sorts against genre fiction(check out non-genre-specific literary magazines, and see how many of them print genre fiction).
:)
I remember reading some genre pieces in high school and before, but they were few and far between. One Western piece that I can remember. Unfortunately no Noir. One or two Sci-fi pieces... one about life on a terraformed Venus, and another being Tom Godwin and the darned "The Cold Equations". Oh, and a short story by Asimov that I remember finding boring as hell.
Meh... I guess, personally, I don't have many complaints about my education. Then again, I don't know how much of that actually took place in school.
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
One of the biggest problems with school reading requirements is that they are weighted against a lot of valid genres, and thereby give students a false idea of what books can be like.
Where's the Sci-Fi? Where's the Fantasy? Where's the Mystery? Where's the adventure? Where's the comedy? These can all be just as thought-provoking genre's to read. Heck, some of the most insightful (and hillarious) things I've ever read were written Dave Barry.
Schools like to claim that they teach the "classics", but in reality they only teach classics that students wouldn't want to read anyways.
Where's Asimov? Where's 1984? Wheres LOTR? Where's Sherlock Holmes? Where's A Confederacy of Dunces? Where's The Third Man? Where's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance? These are all classics in their own right, and yet are not taught because they are not in the "approved" genres.
Why pound into youth's skulls that books are dull, and are associated with essays and tests? Fostering lifetime readers from a young age is more important than forcing kids to read "the classics".
Wouldn't Uncle Bush do it for them and make ;-)
the nation safer
Have you been to your local corporate bookstore lately( ie Barnes & Noble, Borders... )?
They resemble the multiplexes.
Steep prices for what was originally a cheap venue.
Just as Hollywood ony has about 4 different movies that they recycle into "new" movies every season so it seems with these bookstores.
You see many of the "same" books reappearing again and again.
Steve
Steve
I finally started reading Neuromancer recently, but I just can't seem to get it in gear. I'm trying to fit it in between Latin, Italian, wood working, working out, dating, and a full time job.
Really, given the choice between reading a novel or trying to conquer another language, at least right now, I'll take the language.
Lies!
Nobody reads your blog.
There are millions of stories posted on the internet. From a wide range of styles. And some of them are actually quite good and publishing quality. But that is the point is it "publishing quality", Books need to go threw a publisher, editor, .... until it is printed and sold. While some of the process is good fixing minor spelling and grammar mistakes, but sometimes it can be used to censor a book (We will not sell this book unless you take this out or add this) and the millions of books that publishers will not take not because they are bad but because they are not profitable. Not posing on the internet you bypass all the extra junk of publishing and your story is posted in its raw natural form, where all the ideas are there. Plus the internet give anonymity to the reader. Say a big Manly man is caught reading a romance novel, he would be ostracized by his peers until he beats them up. But on the internet you can read the book and when you are done there is no evidence no cover with half naked people on it if caught reading it they can just hit a bookmark to say Harley Davidsons web site and non is the wiser unless they really want to pry. Plus you can find a new story 24 hours a day 7 days a week and not have to wait for the library or book store to open.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They do define what they mean by reading:
Published poetry, plays, or narrative literature.
So by that standard, I didn't read over 2000 pages of history, world events, or hobby related materials last month. Nor did I read weekly neews magazines, or monthly specialist ones. I also didn't read the daily newspaper.
Although they have a broader point of comparison 'reading', it doesn't expand too much on the first definition too widely.
I'd be interested in a less biased study (after all, this is from the national endowment of the arts) that breaks down what people actually raed, as opposed to defining reading favourably to my point.
Matt
I'm reading below and I can't bear to go on. I read the article well before it appeared on Slashdot and this is what is bugging me:
Post after post, people who did not read the article are asking whether web-reading counts as reading and if not, why not. The article talks about a study that makes its fundamental distinction between literature--defined as poetry, drama, and fiction in print--and all other media. That is, the survey "Reading at Risk" distinguishes between literary books and everything else.
Of course, Internet-reading is reading. But the study was only interested in printed fiction, poetry, and drama. Seems to me that on Slashdot, too many people don't bother to read anything that requires any kind of sustained attention span, printed or otherwise.
blog
One day someone will outline the correlation between American's intelligence and critical thinking and the rise of unthinking fundamentalist moron government.
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
I dont think this has much to do with the internet.
Actually, I blame parenting, I read books whenever one interests me, I used to read them all the time to pass the time.
Thing is... My parents read to me. and that got me into reading, see, most kids, their parents will pump them out after 9 months and for 6 months give them some attention, then eventually grow tired of them, let someone else take care of them, and when they get old enough, sit them in front of the TV and let the TV raise them, then they wonder why their kids end up in trouble when they're in their teens.
There are seniors at my highschool that cant read past the first grade level. and if they do read past that, they mispronounce so many words. it's really sad, namely because the TV and media and money has raised them, their parents either dont give a fuck, dont know english themselves (I live in a mexican immigrant predominant area)
or are bad parents in general.
I think the only reason I'm not as fucked up and illiterate as half the kids my age is because my parents used to read to me, and when I was in kindergarten, I could understand letters and words better because of that.
Reading is more important than you think.
Of course, this is also America, where most children's parents (both of them) have to work to make end's meat (yes, this is in the world's so-called biggest economy) so most parents dont have the time, though both of my parents worked, they actually took time out to parent us, not get home from work, sit back and watch TV, eat, bitch at the kids for wanting love and attention and going to bed. Like I have seen at some households.
I just think the internet era coincides with this.
Yes, it is true I stopped reading books since I started into computers, needless to say, most books I found interesting I've already read and I'm not impressed with most books that come out today. If I see or hear about a book I find interesting, I'll read it.
What disturbs me the most about this survey is that it sounds like it's leading up to "HEY! no one reads books anymore, say, we can take them off your hands, we'll burn them and return the ashes to the earth, where they belong, then we'll resell them in digital format, a much more reliable, and economically friendly format! The Constitution is looking pretty old as well, it needs to be re-written in digital format and to today's standards!"
I so wouldnt be shocked if that ever happened eventually.
Looking at society's ways, Ray Bradbury's book, Farenheit 451 was pretty damn close to the truth.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I know what you mean! I was called up for Jury Duty in St. Louis one time, and I thought I would spend my time reading and studying instead of just sitting around. Well, the folks who set up the jury pool room had different ideas! They put a television in ALL FOUR CORNERS of the room, each one blaring a different daytime talk show! Oprah in one corner, Montel in another, and two others I had never heard of, going at the same time (IIRC). The volumes were up so load, it didn't matter where you went. You couldn't escape them! And the topic on each one was just stupid enough to produce a horrid fascination in a person to distract their attention from what they were doing!
I hate the ubiquity of television! That's why it stays off almost all the time in my house. I occasionally watch the news, and we watch Korean videos (a few hours a week), so my kids and i can work on our second-language skills, and for some entertainment for my wife, who's a long way from her native home. Thankfully, my wife has also started buying some Korean books, and started making my kids read those, too. As part of our homeschooling, our kids read a bare minimum of one hour and fifteen minutes a day (usually more). But as their primary teacher, and full-time software engineer, I don't get to read as much as I would like to. Most of my reading is done out loud to them, which is better than nothing.
dochood
I wonder... Maybe if I send the .pdf to a printer, and he binds it in a nice hard cover... Naah. It still wouldn't be 'Literature'.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
The Germ by Ogden Nash from the collection "Bed Riddance"
A mighty creature is the germ
Though smaller than the pachyderm
It's customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race
It's childish pride it pleases
By giving people strange diseases
Do you, dear reader, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.
... lead to a decline in reading? Time spent on the net *is* reading. Unless you are doing nothing but watching flash movies, or are visually imparied, every thing you do on the net requires substantial amounts of reading. The only decline has been in readnif dead tree media.
Personally, I read way more now than I ever used to. But I read much less books (in fact, the last book I read for pleasure was probably 3 years ago now).
While my reading of books has gone down by near 10%, my reading tim overall has gone up by probably 1000%. I don't have issues with reading large documents online like some, and I do quite frequently.
Obviously an over simplification, but just one observation that may help to explain the trend.
The latter took freakin' ages because I cannot imagine a more boring, overhyped stack of drudgery and I eventually got through it by only setting a goal of reading at least five pages (yes, pages!) per night. I've heard a theory that every who's ready "Ulysses" loved it because those who didn't think it was wonderful put it down after two chapters, and I'm bullheaded enough to be the exception who actually read it through and still hated it.
Anyway, both of those really decreased my throughput during the years I read them, but the NEA would only get the fact that I read fewer books at that time and not that the books were more challenging. I don't suspect everyone was running out to get "Six Easy Pieces" during the study's time frame, but darn it, some of us were!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Let's see, not only do I own ~300 volumes of SciFi + ~400 volumes of fiction and non-fiction - I've even read all of it. I patronize my local independant booksellers and rarely exit a bookstore without a new book (or two or three). My average reading "load" per week is 500-1000 pages, which is known to double during the summer. I maintain that reading in such quantity is the only thing that kept me sane during my senior year of high school, when I had 4 AP courses. I am rarely, if ever, found without a book on my person when I leave my house. Americans as a whole might read fewer books, but I read enough to make up for them. Now, off to read some Neil Stephenson.
I beleive m-w.com has audio clips for a good number of words that you can listen to for the correct pronunciation.
Besides, I haven't seen Neuromancer by William Gibson made into a film yet...
---
IMHO, of course.
May the SOURCE be with you.
It's called fashion. Women no longer wear the hoop skirts popular in North America and Europe in the 1860s, except on the theatrical stage; likewise, in 1700 through 1899 or thereabouts, it was considered fashionable to write with long sentences, but during the 20th century, on the other hand, the fashion moved away from the semicolon toward the period or, when in front of coordinating conjunction, the comma. A late 20th to early 21st century language stylist would turn your Darwin passage into this:
Would one fault the Lord for writing the following through Moses?
Really?
It doesn't look that way from where I'm sitting.
In fact, the internet has had the opposite effect. It's not email or blogs that are the "killer app" of the internet, it's instant messenging, which leads to people writing in asinine shorthand that cannot be deciphered without an AOL dictionary. Then they take these habits with them into the "real world" and students actually hand in papers in their english class written in leet-speak and artificial contractions. SMS, of course, is even worse.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Decline, huh?
These people people obviously never talked to my wife.
*looks at the twin 6-foot high stacks of crates of paperbacks*
Here is just one place that shows it is proper usage in the English language. Try the very first example. Commas should be used to seperate two complete sentences when they are joined with a conjunction.
The real question with the example was whether or not both sentences were intended to be complete. The writer started "I know..." which may have been addressing the latter half of the statement. However, the latter half of the statement was complete on its own, so the comma dictates intent. The comma served to cause confusion, so I recommended a semicolon. That should be easy enough.
If not now, when?
You are right, probably because I don't have one.
:-).
But it's pretty obvious that people have read my post
D
Since when have inter-library loans cost money?
but when your in college or in the real world, making an argument on a thesis written over 40 years ago you're not gonna get a good grade. Thats when you turn to the internet, for the most update to date, the easiest, and the most accessible source there is.
Unless by "the Internet" you mean web bookstores, then copyright keeps the web from having anything published recently by a "reputable" source until after you are dead and buried. Pick two of recent, reputable, and readable on the Web.
Only recently is Jazz gaining any sort of acceptance by the "expert" crowd, and it's over 50 years old. Techno is likewise dumped on almost univerally now, despite some songs that are just powerful (like the Mona Lisa Overdrive in the Martix Reloaded).
It appears that music experts took so long to appreciate jazz music because while jazz was maturing, there hadn't been enough jazz produced to let the experts run Sturgeon's Law on the jazz corpus and filter out the 90 percent of crud; likewise with rock. I feel electronic dance music is in the same position right now.
Is in embarassment, bordering on being an ugly and unpleasant abomination.
I can understand why some around here might like it as it is afterall a work of geek wish-fulfillment wank-fest (good at Command and Conquer? You could Save The Universe. Into posting on web forums? You could Command Popular Opinion!) but what you can't overlook is the turgid plot and the leaden prose. Who honestly didn't see the plot twist coming from a million miles away? The first half of the book is a pale rehash of the Heinlein "junvenile" series published by Victor Gollantz (e.g., Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Spacecadet etc).
A further problem with Ender's Game is that it is really quite unpleasant. Young master Wiggam is actually a psychopath and frankly deserves all the shit he gets. I can feel no sympathy for such a debased character, in his way he is possibly even worse than Thomas Covenant (shudder). It is often argued that Speaker for the Dead provides a moral counterpoint to Ender's Game, however this is really a lie. The Ender Wiggam of Speaker for the Dead is an almost completely different character. The character flaws themselves are never addressed beyond a sort of "Well I felt a bit bad about that, so now I'm a changed kinda guy". It just doesn't work.
The reason we approach the classics is because usually (there are exceptions obviously) they stand at the peak of the craft of writing. Ender's Game is pure trex by comparison.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
We homeschool our kids. In short my wife could not give up our precious kids to someone else. She pours the love of learning into our kids. Our kids are growing up loving to read.
Our local library runs reading programs and can only get homeschoolers to participate. We learned that when principals announce the acheivements of students who do participate, the kids get picked on because reading is not cool. Public school kids won't come to the library, or be seen there. Us they know by name.
Just read in a local paper article that Thomas Edison "was so avid a reader that during the layovers from his train job, he managed to read every book in the downtown Detroit library." None of mine has come that close yet...
Since I discovered
alt.binaries.e-book
alt.binaries.e-book.flood
and
#bookz on Undernet
I read at least a couple of fiction books a week.
The rural area in which I live has a horrible public library and very slow interlibrary loan.
I have been able to read all of Stephen King, Neal Stephenson, Umberto Eco, Don DeLillo and on and on, which I would never has been able to do otherwise.
Being better read means that I talk to people more about issues using both illustrations and analogies from my reading and also argument schema that I've picked up somehow from the interplay of the fiction in my head.
I also write more about issues and appreciate the rhyme and cant of the people that live around me more.
I do not know if this story is true.
On my forum we had a fight about this. Someone posted a state highschool graduation test from the eairly 1900s and noted that few highschool students today could pass it. Well I looked at it and I can tell you why right off the bat, it was a bunch of route memorization. Knowing lots of little facts was what was needed. No logic, no critical thinking, no higher reasoning. Knowing geogrphic and historical facts, and simple arithmatic was what you needed.
That exam story is BS, and Snopes.com explains it.
We HAVE devices with perfect memories, computers.
Tell that to anybody who has lost data despite following a backup plan.
IF you need the precise information, you log in to JStor and look it up.
I didn't see any local public libraries in the list of participating libraries; I saw only university libraries open only to current university students. How does somebody who has already graduated from one of the institutions on the list become an "Authorized User of the JSTOR archive" as the TOS puts it? As good as computers and computer networks are at storing and spreading information, they're pretty darn good at hiding information from the general public (apart from the black market).
since the revolution of the Internet, sales of encyclopedias have skyrocked downwards
Huh? Sales of encyclopedias? Why would any Internet user pay to kill trees when one can get an encyclopedia for free and Free?
5 digits should suffice only as long as civilization is still earth bound.
There is a vast differenc between ripping yarn that's fun to read, and something that's literary. All of the editors that decide what is to be published are from the literary school (English majors and such), so they only print fiction if it fits into the literary genre. It's just gotten too damned hard to find something fun to read.
Quote from a spam advertising a 30 site: "Fell the heat ... Your will be amasing."
Oh, and AOL is sucks.
Way to far-fetched, maybe it should read, "People are to busy copying"
I even listen to music CDs front to back without skipping around in order to get the effect of the arrangement that was intended by the artist.
Do you think the artists really control in what order the songs appear on an RIAA-label CD? Or have you switched to independent music?
I used to buy every book I wanted to read. Then I discovered the library, what a great thing. Of course I always knew about the library but school put me off of reading for recreation and going to the library for recreation. Forced reading in school made me associate reading with boredom and work. I did not start reading for my leisure again until I read Dune in 1999 during my senior year of high school. I bought around 30 books between 1999 and the first few months of 2000. But books, especially nonfiction, can be pretty expensive. Lately I read just as much, but instead of buying every book, I only buy books the libraries in my county do not have.
Maybe because of the increased cost of books more people are using the library like me and reading just as much as before.
As long as i'm posting again however, I'll add Jude Fisher, another new author whose first book (fantasy) took me a little bit to get into but was strongly and amusingly reminiscent of Shakespeare when i did so. (Midsummer Nights Dream i think, or whichever one where everyone ends up romantically entagled with the wrong person.)
Also Paula Volsky, who does quasi-historical fantasy, and Michael Flynn and Stephen Baxter for SF. And just for completeness' sake, there's also Joan D. Vinge (Vernor Vinge's ex-wife, but a good author in her on right. I'm curious if they met because of their writing, or if one of them picked it up from the other after their marriage.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
My library system(Morris County, New Jersey) has interlibrary loan for every library in the county. With a library card from my town I can go to any library branch in the County and take out books. At some town libraries I can even take out other materials like videos but most only allow local patrons to take out movies. When I do not know the library a book in the county is located I request it to be mailed to my library. The interlibrary loan system also allows me to take out books at local universities like William Paterson University and the County College of Morris along with books at the Bergen County Library system. Once I requested a book from William Paterson and it took nearly a month from filling the Interlibrary loan slip to receive the book at my local library, so interlibrary loans can take a while to arrive.
Try bookfinder, which is a search engine for used book sites.
Regular /. readers will recognize this rant as a variation on one posted before about a whining CD store owner. Someone post a crosslink to the original! It's funny and I'm not skillful enough to do it. I especially like the part where the wuss goes home and gets reamed by his school-age daughters about their old clothes and how he cries. Heh
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
However, recently (past 4 years or so) I have been supplementing my paper book reading with Books on Tape, usually unabridged tapes of the entire book.
Some very recent books done that way, catching up on some I've always wanted to get to...by using tape
I am also currently reading several at the same time. Always keep a book or two in your bag, book marked of course. Read whatever appeals to you that day at lunch or when someone else is driving (coax them into driving...)
Always keep some books with you. You never know when you will have some free moments.
Current paper books:
- The Art of Speedreading People, Tieger (also read companion books "Do What You Are" and "Just Your Type", all highly recommended)
- Conquering Deception, Jeff Nance
- Unintended Consequences, John Ross (rated highly)
- The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand
- The Art Of Winning Conversation, Stettner
- More Guns Less Crime, John Lott Jr.
- The Voice of Reason, Ayn Rand
- The Third Terrorist, Jayna Davis
- Stop Being a Victim, Podrug
- The Book of Guys, Garrison Keillor
- Backpacking the Kelty Way
- The Survivor Manual
- Mountaineering First Aid (or something close to that
- Plus the normal raft of Linux, and other tech books.
The key is to keep books around so that wherever you happen to be and come up with free time, you will have it there. And use whatever format fits the situation. Movies are not necessarily bad, especially if viewing one might lead a person to read another book by the same author that is not available as a movie. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand or 1984 might be examples.any self-respecting geekoid should read:
:)
1)DUNE series by Robert Herbert.
2)Neuromancer trilogy by William Gibson
best two sci-fi series EVER
stephen king's dark tower series is a good read too.
Driving to a book store, standing around looking at covers and forking over a few bucks for something you can find in a Google search seems less intelligent to anyone with half a mind. Slower people might think it's more intelligent to waste your time doing this stuff, but that's not saying much.
Did it occur to you that some people actually ENJOY the act of going to the book store, looking at covers, browsing hundreds of spines visually in minutes by genre, etc.?? I love going to record stores for the same reason. Sure I more often that not order online, but actual, physicaly browsing of a giant media library is an activity I enjoy.
Hell, the last few times I've been home a fellow poor student and I have ended up going out and hanging out at bookstores, making fun of the shitty books on the mass market tables, using her gift card at the in-store coffee house and chatting.
I'd say the time I spent online trying to train Amazon to my interests was much more of a 'waste' of time, because it didn't tell me a hell of a lot I didn't already know.
"Ninety percent of everything is crap". Source
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
This is what I imagine when I read posts like yours, you pedantic twat.
NSFW, biatch.
I really think you're all jumping the gun a bit here, you really need to look at how literacy has gone in other comparable countries, i.e. countries that where just as much a part of the Internet growth decades as the US was. I live in Australia and not only do we fit that description, but we were part of the older Internet history, the academic/military period.
The thing is by all accounts we read books like a starving man going for food, and far from declining I gather it's increasing, so if the net is the anti book pill you all seem to be saying how come we in Australia are immune??
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
When it's just a collection of singles packaged up and sold for $16.99.
In my listening experience, I've found that many lps, especially in popular genres such as teen-pop, hip-hop, and "alternative" rock, aren't made as an album to show some sort of progression; instead, they're sorted by which ones are most likely to make it to radio play as a single. The record labels know that side A (that is, the first half of a CD) will get more play than side B, so they often toss the decent singles on side A and the filler on side B. In addition, by sometime around the start of side B, the lp will often have become "background noise" to many listeners, no longer actively listened to but rather just mentally tuned out.
sheesh another "the sky is falling" kind of study. I think the 'net has EVERYTHING to do with it. It's changed how all media is recieved paper, tv, music, you name it. I've seen similar studies showing tv watching of the big 3 networks has declined since the 'net age is well. Truth is stranger than fiction and I can tell you that my reading habits has shifted from fiction to mostly non-fiction and technical reading now. But that also may be due to my shift to adulthood occuring at the same time as the 'net age began. At any rate, when I do read fiction now I prefer ebooks on my sony clie - no more paperbacks which don't stack well on shelves anyway plus its neato built in LIGHT! heh
If you're in a University, you probably have access to IEEE Xplore.
I've already graduated (B.Sc. in computer science from Rose-Hulman, not like that'll help me find a job in northeast Indiana), and I'm too deep in loan debt to go back for my master's. Is there anything else interesting that I don't have to pay my entire allowance for?
Ahhh, the widdle AC said something!
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
One day, after leaving some of my CS classes, my friends and I noticed that a guy from our class was bopping around on that game. We all secretly had a laugh, and I secretly hoped I'd be able to play it some day. Two days later we saw him in there again, and two days after that, etc etc. What surprised me more is that this guy isn't a skinny shrimp like me. Props to Ed!!
Somehow I've heard that a girl had a heart attack after stomping around on it for a while. Yikes. Be careful, Ed!
My reading habits have remained constant. I cut my cable television back to bare bones service, which is approximately 12 channels after blocking the infomercial and religious channels, when I began using the Internet, about eight years ago. I've always been a "reader," even when I had full-tilt cable service. I try to read two to three books every week, along with about six to ten periodicals and a couple of daily newspapers. Unless I'm revisiting a classic, I seldom read books more than three months old. So much new material is published every year, and I can't read everything. If I am not engrossed in a book in about ten minutes, it goes right back to the Public Library. Cable Internet has opened new doors for learning to me. While I am reading I frequently need to learn more about a topic that's part of a storyline or discussion, and my pedestal-mounted unabridged dictionary and Internet access enables me to get back to my reading fairly quickly. I can usually tell when a person with whom I'm speaking doesn't read much. The ideas are not complicated and the vocabulary is limited. I try to avoid people like this.
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Americans Read Fewer Books ...
DesScorp writes "The National Endowment for the Arts has released a study that shows a decline in the reading of fiction, poetry, and short stories.
A decline in the reading of fiction and poetry does NOT necessarily mean that fewer books are being read. Perhaps there has been a corresponding upsurge in non-fiction reading? In fact, this is likely -- look at best seller trends over the last decades, and the interest in books such as "Chicken soup for the...", "Stupid White Men", and "The Akins Plan". Somebody is buying and reading them.
Anyway, my personal take is that the OP's sentence was perfectly clear because "and that's a good thing" clearly referred to the preceding clause, so the comma was properly placed. But then my supervisor picks up on my placement of commas all the time, so what do I know ...
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
Is it just me, or does this tendency to shorter sentences perhaps also speak to a growing laziness in reading? Once, the person reading would keep in mind, at the least, the sentence they were reading so that they might apply modifying clauses and the like to it, eventually extracting the meaning. Ah but no, the generation brought up on "sound bites" and 30-second commercials need the sentences shortened so that they don't have time to forget what it's about. Bleh.
That said, I'm from the generation raised on sound bites, 30 second commercials, and presentations reduced to bullet points. I agree that excessively run-on sentences and bizarre word choices can detract from writing. However, I also can't stand some of the over-simplified sentences I see people write. If I want to have sentences that avoid complexity, I'll read Dick and Jane. Some simplicity is good, but if you have two sentences that are talking about the same thing, combining them often improves the readability of the work.
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm an engineer, not an English major, so I'm sure I'm violating many style rules even in this entry.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I wouldn't count on it. Maybe the people who participate in this blog do, but "regular people" don't seem to be any more creative than they were 10 or 20 years ago.
I would agree that I'm not sure the populace as a whole is more "creative" now. But I still think they are "creating" a lot more.
Witness the rise of many sites like Slashdot, or photo sharing sites like DPReview - or even IRC which is a form of creation, in that the user is activley involved.
I look around and I see a lot more people with cameras, a lot more people chatting, and so forth - some of that has to be taking away from reading time. I know that for myself while once in a while I will devour a book or watch a movie, I do those things far less than I used to and am spending a majority of my free time on my own creations.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How about we go way back, to one of the most influencial of all: The Bible. Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not Christian, I think the Bible is a bunch of fiction and nothing more, but it is probably the sole most influencial book in western society. Yet, I've never seen it read in public schools (believe it or not, you can look at the Bible from a secular standpoint).
Interestingly enough sections of the Bible were required reading for my AP English class in public school. My English teacher was actually Jewish, but she felt it was important to read the Bible because so much English literature has references to Bible stories. The Bible has had a huge influence on Anglo-American culture and litereature.
So rather than studying the Bible for theological purposes, we needed to to understand the stories and ideas in the Bible to gain a better understanding and appreciation for other literature. It is definitely possible to look at the Bible from a secular standpoint. It makes you understand literary allusions to biblical events and stories much better.
O'Reilly's Safari service doesn't include fiction yet. Sorry.