Americans Read Fewer Books 726
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.
But of course! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But of course! (Score:2)
Re:But of course! (Score:3, Insightful)
The internet is a platform delivered through text and porn.
Re:But of course! (Score:5, Funny)
True. But I read it just for the articles.
Re:But of course! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But of course! (Score:3, Funny)
So if I'm reading Slashdot, I'm not really reading. Those aren't really words and I'm not really here. I'm not really writing this, either. It's all just some fevered fantasy of a some tree that fell in a forest that nobody heard. (Okay, I didn't say it was great writing.)
Re:We should just (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, it's especially ironic since I've read about five links to this article from other sources already.
Finally,I don't think the free speech ethos of this place is ever going to allow what you suggest to happen -- and rightly so.
D
why books (Score:5, Funny)
Re:why books (Score:5, Funny)
Re:why books (Score:5, Funny)
As long as /, ers provide audio links for stories. (Score:2)
Re:As long as /, ers provide audio links for stori (Score:2)
Then again, since nobody ever actually RTFA anyway, it's a moot point!
Attention spans (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Attention spans (Score:3, Interesting)
I am concerned, because I see mistakes like the one in your post being made with increasing frequency. "A lot" is two words - you wouldn't say "alittle", would you? Another all-too-common mistakes is misuse of the apostrophe; no one seems to know (or care) about the difference between a possesive and a contraction. Homonyms are another common error; writing "their" instead of "there" or "t
Re:Attention spans (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Attention spans (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Attention spans (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Attention spans (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't that be a good reason to study it? We know language evolves - we can study and compare historical documents from different time periods to see that. But when have we ever been able to see the evolution happening right before our eyes, at such a rapid pace?
A thought just occurred to me - could this trend be compared to biological evolution? We can only observe that in action in insects and other organisms where the life span is so short, and reproductive cycle so fast, that we can easily observe the changes as they happen across dozens or hundreds of generations.
Could the internet be accelerating the pace of linguistic evolution similarly, to the point where we can now observe it happening in real-time? Is it really that the internet is informal, or reduces attention span, or is the language(s) evolving more quickly as a result of a more efficient and faster communications medium?
Re:Attention spans (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Attention spans (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, there are languages that evolve very fast. One example are the Swiss German dialects [dialekt.ch]. As they have no fixed written form, those language tend to change in short spans of time (mine is twenty years old for instance). One the interestin
Re:Attention spans (Score:2)
You know, from context, it's impossible to tell if you mean read pronounced "reed" (current) or read pronounced "red" (past.)
I stopped reading after that
Look! A shiny . .
Re:Attention spans (Score:3, Interesting)
Dora the Explorer especially disturbs me when it comes to the whole lack-of-attention-span thing. In case you haven't seen it, here's how it works. Dora asks a question and then pauses for so of seconds. The pause is for the children to yell out at the screen the answer to the question. Dora then goes on to say how they got the answer right and did a good job.
Could it be that thi
television is the opium of the masses (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:television is the opium of the masses (Score:5, Interesting)
TV is also disruptive to anyone within earshot who wants to do something else (like read a book).
I actually don't have this problem. Tonight, for instance, the toob was on, my housemates watching it, me in the same room, and I had no problem with my book (I'm re-reading The Prince. It has been a while, and I haven't read the Adams translation before).
The reason for me writing this is that I think people are wired differently for dealing with background noise - I live in Brooklyn, and have spent all of my adult life in large cities. I grew up in extremely rural areas, and went nuts - I was constantly bored and edgy. In a city, I feel at home. I think it has to do with background stimulus. When my mother comes to visit, she goes nuts - there's too much noise (that I never conciously notice), too many people, too much going on.
A high tolerance for others' background radiation allows me to read a book with the TV on, code when people are talking, and sleep on the subway. (Although sometimes there are exceptions... the meth head who just moved in above me will soon learn to eat his techno CDs... I can only deal with thumpa-thumpa-diva-shriek for about 14 hours out of the day.)
No real point, just highlighting what seems to me to be an interesting differentiator in people.
Re:television is the opium of the masses (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Attention spans (Score:5, Insightful)
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 had a student like that in my senior design lab. He would write really long sentences describing his design that would cause me to reread everything two or three times. Then, another student had an inferior design but explained it very well. Anyone care to guess who got the higher grade (on the written portion)?
[contrived example]
Student #1: "The quadrature radial encoder transmits a series of unsigned binary positions and a checksum through a radio frequency (RF) channel to the monitoring terminal, where the results will be dissiminated to the proper interfaces."
Student #2: "The sensor communicates with the computer through RF."
[/contrived example]
Re:Attention spans (Score:3)
Re:Attention spans (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Attention spans (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm hoping the first one. The second one conveys no information about the transmission other than it used RF. What is the computer doing? What does the sensor measure? What happens to the data? Hopefully you had a third student who wrote:
The first student needs a smack in the head for that run-on sentence but the second student is a lousy engineer. If they can't describe the situation more precisely than "communicates with RF" in a written report then I wouldn't want them anywhere near my team.
Prices, etc... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Prices, etc... (Score:5, Insightful)
Riiiight. It costs so much to walk down to the local public library and check out a few books every now and again. Remember, if you return them on time they're FREE!
Also, I buy used books. They're cheap and have the exact same content.
Re:Prices, etc... (Score:2, Interesting)
I will give props to the used bookstore bit, but they arent exactly common around where I live (and I get to be charged 5 bucks a book from most sites!)
libraries and squeaky wheels (Score:3, Informative)
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 boo
Re:Prices, etc... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Prices, etc... (Score:2)
Might this affect spelling as well?
We have a solution for this... (Score:3, Informative)
Think about that during the next mil levy.
-Peter
Re:Prices, etc... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you compare newspaper readership statistics which is somewhat linked to reading of books you will see that you can't blame it on the recent economic downturn either. During the financial crisis in Japan in the ninthies people continued to read newspapers. (and book readership remained more or less frozen AFAIK).
So I don't think price is the problem.
I would rather think that it has something to do with culture. There is a term called "cultural capital", coined by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The term makes a distinction between the traditional capital value of material wealth and of the cultural "assets" or capabilities of a particular class. Just as traditional capital(money) cultural capital can be aquiered, ignored and converted. Cultural capital again can be divided into several sub-classes just as traditional capital. Some of the sub-classes helps define the person based on the fact that they are "thought into the person" and therefore they can't be changed easily.
For example if your parents are "white trash" you don't read Bourdieu, or any other written text/newspaper, because no one told you about him and you are busy watching the latest news about Lacy Peterson and Kobe Bryant.
On a related case consumers will decide what they want to consume based on their cultural capital. (10 bucks and a beer on continued decline in US book readership...)
The term really makes sense if one belive that people in the USA are more or less to some extent seperated into different classes both economical/social and cultural (regardless of whether you think that this is a good/natural/bad thing). If one say that these differences have increased in the 1992-2002 period it matches the teory that increased differences will lead to a larger gap between peoples cultural capital and also inderectly to a larger gap between those that read more and those that read less.
So even if people in the USA do have the money to buy tons of books some of you don't because the more cable TV you watch the more you are prone to continue subscribing.
Well, who has time? (Score:2)
I agree... (Score:2)
Re:I agree... (Score:2)
Is this really a big surprise?? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Reading is poor... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Reading is poor... (Score:5, Insightful)
You need to work on your reading skills... You should retain more info from the book that is not in the movie than info actually in the movie... Even the most pathetic contemporary authors like Clancy, who are writing in order to sell screenplay rights, include far more detail than you could hope to include in a movie...
If you think that a movie can replace a book, you don't know how to read fiction. Seeing an elephant's shadow is not the same as seeing an elephant...
Re:Reading is poor... (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that sight/sound/effects is a better combination for memory, but I think time plays a critical role in format. When I was reading LOTR, I remember thinking, outside of reading, about the characters (mostly characters - Gandalf's voice/tone, the beauty of Arwen, etc.) and what the fantasy world was like. As I took my time reading the books, I grew my own conception of the world. Now I'm not a big fiction/fantasy reader (in fact, LOTR is the only such series I can name), but Middleearth was a place in my mind and I was a part of that mental creation. In a way, I made my kind of film-like experience in my head.
But that took time. I had to think a little about it, turn over a few ideas at night (I read before bed), until I decided what I wanted the world to be like. As I read, my world grew with the book's story. By the end, I was left somewhere else where I was comfortable.
Having three movies with some good length helped the theater experience, but the books were my highlight (which I read before the films). The films also reinforced how I envisioned the world from the books. In some ways, the movies are foriegn to me (if that makes sense).
Re:Reading is poor... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
It's called a reading group. They do exist. For many years I was involved in one at the University of Michigan, and it is still going.
But you do not have to be connected academically to start a group. You have seen people at Borders and B&N and your local coffee shop, right? They are all holding the same book in many cases...
If, for some reason, a physical reading group doesn't work for you, then there is always the Usenet (it's not all porn and warez) and other sites on the Web.
Don't blame your lack of reading on those around you. While the Internet may very well to blame for the severe downturn in reading over the past 12 years, it is also the greatest tool you have to discuss things.
Like we are now. ;)
Re:Reading is poor... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have yet to see a movie that successfully managed to cover more than 1/5th of a good novel, and the process of going from novel to screenplay usually does quite a bit of violenc
Read a lot online (Score:2)
Audio feeds? (Score:2)
Not the Net (Score:5, Insightful)
Many schools will allow a magazine article to stand in for a book.
Disgusting
Re:Not the Net (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus you find that kids don't do well at reading novels, they get bored and don't finish them and don't perform well. You find they do better with magazines since they are shorter (thus easier to force your way through bored), usually easier to read, and usually more interesting.
Now before you go on about reading skills, the thing you have to remember is that not everyone is bound for university. What I generally find when people argue for these dense novels is that they expect all kids should perform at university level. Hell, some seem to think that they should all perfom at unviersity level IN HIGHSCHOOL. That's just not a valid assumption. The majority of kids will not go to university. They need good English skills, of course, including reading, but good to common literature, not good at decoding Dickens overly verbose and arcane style.
So I don't see a problem with allowing magazines and the Internet in more, and I do think that when novels are tought, they need to be ones kids can actually enjoy. Sure you do harder stuff for honours/AP classes, but not for all kids.
Also the net really is increasing the amount people read overall. IT may not be for pleasure, but no one said you must read for pleasure. People get more and more information from the Internet instead of books. This is not a bad thing, just a different way of doing it. The old way in education is NOT the best way, we revise educational theory all the time.
Re:Not the Net (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the point is not merely to teach basic reading skills, it is also to give people a historical context in which to better understand our shared modern culture (for example, just look at how many movies are rewrites of such classics - "Cruel Intentions" is "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," "Clueless" is "Emma," "Apocalypse Now" is "Heart of Darkness," Shakespeare gets redone both overtly like Baz Lurhmann's "Romeo + Juliet" and undercover like, "10 Things I Hate About You" and "My Own Private Idaho" - the list is effectively endless, our culture just keeps repeating itself). In light of the goal to teach a common cultural base, most Science-Fiction can't even begin to come close to replacing "the classics."
Besides, Dickens is not hard to read, at least not compared to titles like Canterbury Tales, Dante's Inferno or most of Shakespeare's plays.
PS - please no diatribes about concentrating on "western culture," as our country becomes more culturally diverse, certainly classics from non-european countries gain more and more relevance to modern American culture.
Re:Not the Net (Score:5, Interesting)
After taking many honors, AP, and college english classes, it took years before I could get back into reading for enjoyment.
To make matters worse, most English teachers are female, and at least in the classes I took there was a definite skew toward books that are torture for normal teenage males (eg. Emma).
Poetry disgusts me to this day, having had to survive though the bizarre, biased interpretations that make astrology and dream interpretation seem like science. And remember kids, you get graded on having the same interpretation as the teacher!
Luckily I was able to BS my way through, always getting at least a B.
Re:Not the Net (Score:5, Interesting)
Or let's go more modern: Neuromancer. That is what started cyberpunk. It is the DIRECT influence of The Matrix (to the point the named a song "The Mona Lisa Overdrive" in Reloaded). The dark, syber-techno universe that is so popular in many movies, games, shows, etc started here.
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).
Or how about philosphy? Why no Descart, Locke, Searle, Nagel, Popper, Harnish, Berkley, Bach, Kant, Plato, Frege, etc. All these people helped to shape modren western thought on at least one important issue (and yes, I have read at least some of each of their works). They didn't just write stories, they contemplated important issues and shaped thinking.
Face it, the "part of our culture" argument doesn't hold water. Most of what I read in high school is not at all or a very minor part (Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights stand out in my mind). Even that which is a larger part, pales in comparison to other things I can easily think of.
And Yes, Dickens IS hard to read. I fucking HATED Tale of Two Cities. It was hard to read, irrelivant, and boring. Personally, I find it harder than Shakespeare, but that might be because Shakespeare knew how to write about something worth reading.
Either way, my point stands. The point of English class is to teach kids English first and foremost. For that you must get them to read and write and to do that you need things they want to read and write about. I'm not saying you can't find a way to expose them to some classic literature, but saying it has to be all classics because of culture is a load of crap. I can design a much better curriculm of more influencial readings than what is normally taught if you want, but I won't claim it will hold their attention any better.
Re:Not the Net (Score:3, Interesting)
This Is Sad (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
So what (Score:2)
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.
Far-Fetched idea - people are busier creating now (Score:5, Insightful)
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!)
Puuuulease (Score:2)
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.
Why discard the internet? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Is it so bad? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
ewww, books (Score:2)
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 wo
Do not neglect the rise of "Infotainment" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Not only the Internet (Score:2, Insightful)
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 g
The Internet improves literacy, at least in theory (Score:5, Insightful)
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
gutenberg, iblist (Score:5, Informative)
This seems like as good a place as any to throw in a plug for Project Gutenberg [promo.net] (old books for free!) and the Internet Booklist [iblist.com] (a good place to go if you don't know what to read).
-jim
Its official (Score:2, Funny)
Books are dying!
Former Bookworm... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:Former Bookworm... (Score:3, Interesting)
As an example, I
Reading in my house (Score:3, Interesting)
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 wish I read more (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
IMHO (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I suppose it's true (Score:3, Funny)
There are probably several reasons for this (Score:3, Interesting)
Add your list here ->
PIAA? (Score:5, Funny)
I read fewer books - but I listen to more... (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I have started to actually absorb more information while reading less. This slashdot article [slashdot.org] discusses timeshifting, and using timeshifting I "read" a great deal more.
www.audible.com [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!
BIAA blaims 'book swapping services' (Score:3, Funny)
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.
BOOKS=$$$$ (Score:3, Interesting)
I do like a lot of the new comic-style work the net has made possible...RedvsBlue Rocks
Farenheit 451 (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
Have you been to the bookstore lately? (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Who has the time? (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, given the choice between reading a novel or trying to conquer another language, at least right now, I'll take the language.
actually (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Suburbanites read fewer books (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously an over simplification, but just one observation that may help to explain the trend.
Re:technology (Score:2, Funny)
Re:technology (Score:2, Funny)
Define 'reading' (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Define 'reading' (Score:5, Insightful)
You could subsist on a nutritious paste, water, and vitamin supplements. You must some kind of food elitist to care about texture and taste.
TV Guide, video game reviews, factoids, and political rants are not as good as an actual book written with thought, research and care. Nothing wrong with reading on the Internet, but most (99.99+%) of it is junk food.
Re:Define 'reading' (Score:5, Insightful)
This should be obvious. One can express many more ideas on one page than one can present in ninety seconds.
Newspapers are 'better' than web pages.
It depends on the newspaper. Some are simply a means of regurgitating the AP feed. But even the AP uses editors and fact checkers. Many webpages are written with little regard for honesty and accuracy.
Glossy magazines are 'better' than pulps.
Hardcover is 'better' than paperback.
Most SF is now published in hardcover, before a rerelease in paperback. And glossy paper is no measure of the quality of the magazine. Archival, Acid Free Paper has been adopted by many literary magazines, though.
Hand-crafted illuminated manuscripts, slaved over by monks, that could only be owned by the Church or a wealthy nobleman, were 'better' than Gutenberg's mass-produced works that the bourgeoise could purchase
Codex Hammer: 30.8 million
Rothschild Prayer Book: 8.58 million
Gutenberg Bible: 5.39 million
Audubon's Birds of America: 8.8 million
First Folio: 6.17 million
source
The Codex Hammer is in Italian (mirrored Italian, no less.) The Gutenberg Bible is Latin. The First Folio would meet with the NEA's approval, and so would the Audubon book, although the latter is nonfiction. But all those are books that will be kept in vaults, and appreciated from a distance.
The NEA wants to encourage the development of literature, not merely functional literacy. Some forms of prose can be appreciated on purely aesthetic grounds and not merely because of the facts such forms may convey.
Slashdot may be fun to read, but very few slashdotters post for the ages, carefully crafting each sentence for maximum effect. Newspapers are often good at telling the reader what happened, but the whys often remain a mystery until a book, collating additional interviews, newspaper accounts and recently declassified archival records, is published years afterwards.
Re:Define 'reading' (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, printing of course make it possible for knowledge to spread more widely, but hand illumnated manuscripts written on parchment were both much more durable and much more beautiful than their printed counterparts. You can't stand in the way of progress, but progress always has its price.
I have an 1846 Leipzig edition of Dickens Christmas stories (A Christmas Carol, The Chimes etc.), I bought at the old Starr book shop years, and years ago. I don't remember whether it was the one in Boston or the one in Harvard square; they were different book stores run by brothers. The Boston Starr has been gone since the late 70s and the Harvard Square Starr passed on to the next generation and developed a well deserved bad tempered customer service. In any case: is this old book it more valuable than a modern paperback edition? Well, it is undoubtedly more beautiful: it has a fine hand tooled leather spine and unusual and marbled endpapers that are unique as fingerprints. It is certainly a more interesting artifact than a modern paperback. The paper in the book is somewhat brittle and has an old library smell of paste, dust with hints of chocolate.
I'm not a bibliophile, I'm not particularly sentinmental about books; what matters to me mainly is what is said in them. I picked this book up because it was about the same price as a new book. I doubt it has any value as a rare book. However the reason for this long winded story is that it is that it certainly very interesting as an artifact that has history. It has passed thorugh I don't know how many hands over its hundred and sixty years, been apprasied by different booksellers, rubbed shoulders with other books, been leafed through by who knows how many generations of people. This is incredibly evocative, if you have a feeling for such things. The feeling I get handling it is like the time I handled a human brain in a neuroscience class. It was just a lump of inert, pickled tissue, but once it held the experiences of a lifetime. I remember wondering whether, if we had the knoweldge, we could recover some of those experiences, perhaps of dust motes in a shaft of sunlight, or the voices of the person's parents.
Imagine what it would be like if science created a single edible substance that supports human nutrtion needs perfectly. It is inexpensive and plentiful, easy to store and transport, satisfies hunger perfecly and when used exclusively it prevents every form of a nutrition related disease from diabetes to obesity. In other words it performs all the bilogical functions of food without being food as we know it. No doubt this would be a huge advance for humanity, but you would lose the culture of preparing food and eating; no more recipes, no more holiday dinners, no dinner dates or midnight snacks. You wouldn't have to be a cook or a gourmand to be profoundly affected.
The death of physical literature, if it happens, will be for many of use like the elimination of food.
It's also interesting to consider that even with no special handing ny Leipzig Dickens volume may well be readable in a hundred and forty years when it has its three hundredth birthday, although it will no doubt be extremely fragile. There is NO copy of this information today that is likely to survive as long.
Re:I read fewer books because (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I read fewer books because (Score:5, Insightful)
Stuff actually happens in A Song of Ice and Fire, and GRRM can tell a damn good story. His characters are believable, deep, and diverse; you'll remember them, unlike in WoT, where you're buried in a mass of minor characters that you're expected to remember if you want to follow the story. I just wish he'd hurry up with book 4.
Re:I read fewer books because (Score:3, Funny)
little joke....
Re:I read fewer books because (Score:4, Interesting)
If we move on into science fiction, there's S.M. Stirling, James Alan Gardner, Vernor Vinger, (who as just posted on slashdot, is coming out with a new book soon) Sheri S. Tepper (if you don't mind a strong feminist slant in your fiction) and Steven Barnes.
I'm sure there are more out there, quite possibly even on my bookshelves, but that's what i can remember at the moment.
lol (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:I read fewer books because (Score:4, Insightful)
Technology is actually increasing my reading. I don't generally get a chance to carry books around with me, but I always have my palm. With a 512M SD card in there, I not only have about 10 hours of NPR programs to listen to, and a couple hundred photos, I've got about 100 books in there as well.
Sure, I prefer paper, though the new 320x320 screens are quite good so I don't care that much either way anymore. But I ALWAYS have 100 books on me, usually 2 or 3 of them in progress, and I can read any of them any time I have to wait 5 or 10 minutes for something.
Re:I read fewer books because (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I read fewer books because (Score:5, Funny)
As a bookstore owner (Score:3, Funny)
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
Re:This just in... (Score:2, Funny)