Reading is a Vice (msn.com)
- Reference: 0180502681
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/02/1649208/reading-is-a-vice
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/reading-is-a-vice/ar-AA1Tsp7w
The most recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that less than half of Americans read a single book in 2022, and only 38% read a novel or short story. A University of Florida and University College London study found daily reading for pleasure fell 3% annually from 2003 to 2023. Among 13-year-olds, just 14% read for fun almost every day in 2023, down from 27% a decade earlier.
Kirsch says to stop treating reading as civic medicine. "It would be better to describe reading not as a public duty but as a private pleasure, sometimes even a vice," he writes. When literature was considered transgressive, moralists couldn't stop people from buying dangerous books. Now that books are deemed virtuous, nobody picks them up. He points to Don Quixote and Madame Bovary -- novels whose protagonists are ruined by their reading habits. Great writers, he notes, never idealized literature the way educators do. The pitch to young readers should emphasize staying up late reading under the covers by flashlight, hoping nobody finds out.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/reading-is-a-vice/ar-AA1Tsp7w
I don't understand people who don't enjoy reading (Score:3)
For me, reading for pleasure is one of the best things in life. I live an 8-minute walk from a great public library and I borrow on average about 100 books per year and I read most of them (give up on maybe 5 or 6 a year.)
Reading doesn't hurt my eyes or give me a headache the way sitting in front of a device or TV does. I love just going to random shelves in the library and trying new things; I've discovered many great authors and have read fantastic nonfiction books about subjects that I had no idea were so interesting. And it's all free, or at least already included in my property taxes.
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I used to read about as much too and still enjoy it, but the past two or three years I felt too tired to read and mostly watched anime. I hope this year will be better.
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Try audio books.
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No thanks. Can't stand them.
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Try TTS then. I "read" through my ears at 300-500 words per second, depending on my mood and activities, including falling asleep to books.
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I'm a bit curious how you can read thru your ears, so I interpret that as hearing. How can you hear and distinguish 300 -500 words per second?
what does that mean? also what is TTS?
lets say 500 words/second, therefore, 60 x 500 words/minute = 30,000 words/minute, so you can ear read an average book in 3 minutes?
Yeah, I can't follow that. what?
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I think they mean 500 words per minute, which is a fast but still comprehensible speed.
TTS is text-to-speech, the automatic conversion of text into voice. Essentially having the computer read to you.
Not sure how that's better than audio books though.
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> I used to read about as much too and still enjoy it, but the past two or three years I felt too tired to read and mostly watched anime.
But at least you're still reading the subtitles...
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Yep, and picking up bits and pieces of Japanese along the way, so there is an upside too.
Reading for dummies. (Score:1)
How to read book?
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Step 1: Before starting kindergarten have someone read a bunch of books to you, and keep going for another year or two after that.
Step 2: Read lots of books with someone, asking them for help when needed.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: PROFIT!
All kidding aside, if your parents, big brother or sister, or other person read lots of age-level-or-slightly-above books to you before starting kindergarten you are much more likely to be reading on grade level by 4th grade than if you don't.
Re: Reading for dummies. (Score:2)
Amen to this. My parents were both pretty worthless in most ways but my mother did help instill me with the urge to read early, and that's served me well all my life. I was initially interested in learning to read because of street signs. I could read the paper by the time I was three...
Nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
> It would be better to describe reading not as a public duty but as a private pleasure, sometimes even a vice,
Horsecrap. Reading makes you a better writer. If you need to communicate with other humans, the more you read, the better you are at communicating with them. In general of course. If you read garbage then that's what you are learning from.
[1]https://www.masterclass.com/ar... [masterclass.com]
[1] https://www.masterclass.com/articles/become-a-better-writer-by-reading
Educators (Score:2)
Much of the problem is how they teach reading. I remember suffering through Great Expectations in High School. It is a great book, but it says nothing to a modern teenager. If you want people to read books, you need to give them material that is relevant to their lives, not great literature. If they learn to love reading, their interest in that will come later.
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I suffered through Great Expectations in college. I say "suffered" because feeling Pip's unrequited love and watching Pip's moral downfall were both heart-wrenchingly painful.
That said, it's a horrible book for high-schoolers.
That said, I bet you still love to read, and that overly-mature book did not ruin your love. It just made you understand it better.
Kids have learned to hate reading for the past 20 years or so, ever since No Child Left Behind turned reading instruction into test preparation. Read th
Re: Educators (Score:2)
I had to read Catcher in the Rye twice, in 9th and 10th grade, at two different schools. Hated it both times.
I did very much enjoy The Poisonwood Bible though. Finished that well before the class.
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The Catcher in the Rye is a teenager complaining. Holden Caulfield is judgmental, repetitive, moody, obsessed with “phonies”, and often insufferable. If you read it as a plot novel, it feels thin. If you read it at school, when teachers insist it’s “important”, it can feel like being trapped in someone else’s sulk.
What that reading misses is that Holden isn’t just whining, he’s unraveling. The book is one long nervous breakdown told in real time. His sarcasm,
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> I remember suffering through Great Expectations in High School. It is a great book, but it says nothing to a modern teenager. If you want people to read books, you need to give them material that is relevant to their lives, not great literature.
It's not an education if you only assign stuff "relevant to their lives" (which is a crapshoot decision in any case; what books are really going be relevant to modern teenagers?). Part of what you're supposed to be getting in school is knowledge of the foundations of your civilization, which is why colleges have a Great Books program in the first place. High Schools typically don't burden students with all that many difficult old books anyway. I had to suffer through Wuthering Heights but I also got to disc
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If you assign things that have no meaning to them, they will learn nothing. At least give them a choice of what to read. Reading a book so that you can answer test questions about it, is not reading.
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I think it's important for kids to read material that's relevant to their lives and material that is not relevant to their lives. I remember reading "The Tempest" in high school. It's not regarded as one of Shakespeare's best, but I absolutely loved it. It was completely irrelevant to my life, but was a wonderful fantastic tale.
I generally didn't hate any of the books we had to read in school with only one exception: Lord of the Rings. I just could not get into that book and it was a real chore to fin
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Everyone had their tastes. I loved Lord of the Rings, but I understand that it is not for everyone. I think it is important to let students have a choice about what they read. Let them read a book and then write a short (one page or less) report on what they did or did not like about it.
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You'll want to constrain the selection lest they pick something like Morning Glory Milking Farm.
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Certainly, but you can give them a list with enough variety that they can find something.
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We read The Stone Angel in Grade 11 or 12. It had some pretty steamy descriptions of sex in it.
In 1987, a bunch of parents complained about it to a school board in Western Canada, but the board refused to remove it, which was the only correct decision. AFAIK, it's still taught in high school.
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Some choice, sure, but I'd constrain it to a choice amongst a few books. Otherwise, everyone might pick a different book and it'd be hell for the teacher to grade their work because the teacher would have had to read all those books too.
I love books.... (Score:1)
The problem is that I have to reread a page multiple times because my brain will just go blank part way through reading the page.
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Memory issues?
Focus issues?
Reading the wrong books?
Try audio books.
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Smartphone brain damage?
(attention span shrinkage is a real problem we all face nowadays... it's so easy to get hooked to our machines.)
Re: I love books.... (Score:2)
I've mostly switched to audiobooks. I still like reading but my commute is when I have time for it.
I recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl or We Are Legion, We are Bob as good listens.
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I have that problem sometimes. Most often it's because either the material is boring (poorly-written fiction), it's over my head (technical docs I'm under-prepared for), or I'm just tired.
Tired I can fix by setting the book down and reading it another day when I'm more alert.
Another technique that usually works for me is to read a paragraph then stop and think about that paragraph and how it relates to what came before. This technique doesn't always work for me, but it works often enough that I have it in
Nonsense (Score:2)
What kind of garbage article is this? I wouldnt try stop someone from reading any type of book, the same as I wouldnt try to stop someone from watching any type of movie. The point is that you start somewhere and that one is given the ability to understand it. Their whole argument is like saying you cant play an instrument unless youre learning classical music.
My kids (Score:2)
My 3 now adult kids devour novels.
We read them books every night from very young, so they picked up reading themselves by about 5.
Yes, sample size of one family, but I think parents are important to help establish reading.
Twilight Zone already did this episode (Score:3)
[1]The Obsolete Man [wikipedia.org].
Reading is of no use since the state has eliminated books.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Obsolete_Man
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They also did this (perhaps more on topic) episode: [1]Time Enough at Last [wikipedia.org] which, like "The Obsolete Man," starred Burgess Meredith.
I just saw it again the other day. I had forgotten how utterly mean his wife was -- possibly worse than the totalitarians in the other episode!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_At_Last
The Atlantic has been getting weirder (Score:2)
It's currently the best source of journalism and opinion, but they have posted quite a few odd articles recently. Today I read most of a long one about a newer translation of Dante's Inferno and another about obsession with chatbots.
National Review is also interesting. They are so stupidly wrong about 80% of the time, reasonable about 15% of the time, and perfectly accurate when few else are about 5% of the time. It's useful for understanding crazy world views but also finding blind spots.
Re: The Atlantic has been getting weirder (Score:2)
Not the New Yorker? I'd say the publication schedule gives it a clear advantage over the Atlantic (f.k.a. "Atlantic Monthly"). That also translates to some quantity advantage, of course.
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I preferred Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
yeah (Score:2)
In middle school in the 90's i consumed 1-2 science fiction books per week. Now? I haven't read a book book in years.
Partly, i got more aphantasia as i got older. And compared to the 90's tv/movie media, modern tv/movie adaptations are better than their books, with more vivid CGI etc than my mind can generate, vs, in the 90's cgi was shit and my mind could visualize much nicer scenes.
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I had no idea aphantasia was something that could come later in life. I've had it since birth! But it never prevented me from enjoying a good book :) I just tend to skip descriptions as they make little sense to me, but otherwise I love stories, character interactions, etc.
Now that 1984 has come to pass... (Score:2)
we leave Orwell and continue to the works to Bradbury
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aggghh. ...OF... Bradbury
so say our betters? (Score:1)
"Kirsch says to stop treating reading as civic medicine. "It would be better to describe reading not as a public duty but as a private pleasure, sometimes even a vice,""
Well, I guess I'd start with telling him to stop trying to "trick" people - even kids - into doing what he wants?
It's a routine fault of progressives AND evangelical conservatives: this inherent sense of moral certainty, and the instinctive justification that "pretty much anything goes because I'm doing it to HELP you".
Reading (or more speci
Can't get into most modern books (Score:2)
I used to read a fair amount of books when I was younger. Wide variety of subjects from fiction, science fiction, history and a few biography types. I still have boxes of books I've read in storage. Many others I've redonated to a library for them to sell.
However, within the last decade I haven't bought many books compared to the past. The ones I have bought are mostly history related with only a handful of fiction/science-fiction. When I pick up a new book (new to me) I go to page 100 and start readin
Agree completely (Score:2)
We'll be sending Guy Montag over to your house to correct your crimethink. (Whoops! Wrong book.)
Or just maybe... (Score:2)
Don't pay any heed to sales pitches, critiques, or generally anything said by other people. Just read a book because it's enjoyable and helps break the habit of staring at an electronic device.
Much better than TV (Score:2)
Reading requires effort but the rewards are so much greater because books run on the most powerful rendering engine that's ever existed - imagination.
True (Score:2)
It's a vice. And educational, entertaining, an escape from reality.
I spend most free time as a kid with either books or Lego, now I spend most time writing fiction and programming (in C :-p), before that in IT.
One is either attracted to reading and the kind of imagination it involves, or not. I always thought it meant to be in a kind of niche between the various kinds of media available.
Shoot up with Knowledge (Score:2)
Get your freak on a book Kill everybody around you in your imagination
Because Reverse Always works (Score:2)
What ever you do, please don't eat my broccoli. You can't have it, it's mine. If you buy me ice cream, I will let you do the laundry.
If you want people to read books, you need to introduce them to the good stuff, when they are young.
And when some censoring nut job tries to say ANYTHING, arrest them for child abuse. They are the problem, not the solution.
Here are the books I remember:
Where the Wild Things are
Winnie the Pooh
Harry Potter
A Wrinkle in Time
The Chronicles of Narnia
Charlie and the Chocolate Fact
Eating healthy is also a vice (Score:2)
And everything you thought you knew is wrong.
Hey, the more self-conscious you are, the better. At least that's what some AI probably spewed.
Did you know /. is a vice, too?
Stop reading ... (Score:2)
... The Atlantic.
Still reading (Score:2)
I am past 60 now, and still (!) reading a lot. When moving to a smaller apartment, I got rid of most of my books, only keeping those that I felt I would want to read again. These days I get almost all of my books from the local library. If I have read a book twice, and think I might read it twice again, I consider buying a copy. But OK, I live in Copenhagen, where we have a great public library system, and the university libraries are available
Discrimination (Score:5, Insightful)
I dislike how most places call out only books as reading. I am voracious reader, but never read books or short stories or poems or any of that. I read scientific docs, technical docs, how to's. I try to learn all the time, usually by reading, but I just don't have care to read books. I even despise training and instructional material in video format. Write it down and I'll read it.
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Says someone so functionally illiterate he fails to understand a very clear post. "Literature" in this context means "fiction", otherwise it would not be describes as "private pleasure". You do not have to read fiction in order to read to to be literate.
Non-fiction can be "private pleasure" (Score:1)
> "Literature" in this context means "fiction", otherwise it would not be describes as "private pleasure"
I for one get some private pleasure by reading technical non-fiction that won't benefit me except by the pleasure it gives me to read, analyze, understand, and privately (in my head) critique it.
Re: Discrimination (Score:3)
He's a functional illiterate because he enjoys reading things you would find confusing?
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> "you're a functional illiterate then. pretty common most people are."
Let's see ... your post has no capitalization, exhibits an inability to punctuate properly, and exposes your complete lack of knowledge as to the definition of the word "illiterate." Clearly you fall into the category of "most people" to which you are referring.
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I agree that you don't have to read "literature". When my youngest daughter was little, she read the most absolutely formulaic and garbage series for kids, but I said "Well, at least she's reading."
As she grew older, she became more discriminating and still loves to read and will graduate as a teacher soon.
I do think that you miss out if you only read one genre or type of writing, though. Trying something outside what you normally read can open you up to great new experiences. (It can also be a dreadfu
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When I was young I read because books were my only escape. If born today I fear I would have vanished into video games, perhaps never to resurface and never even leaving my parent's basement...
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Magazines and blogs are very recent human inventions, it's an insult to suggest that reading magazines is not reading because they aren't books. This ignorance reminds me of a Greek literature prof I had back in college (insisted that you weren't a thinker if you weren't good at appreciating greek literature).
You are what you practice to be, if you want to be more diverse then engage in greater diversity. Reading is part of that.
Is reading a Calculus textbook a "private pleasure" or is it simply not readi
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Look at it this way. Reading literature, books, short stories, and so on is basically akin to reading documentation... about people. Hopes, dreams, aspirations, failures... all that and more.
To quote DPS, "We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."
Technical manuals don't teach critical thinking (Score:2)
That's the problem. You need the humanities to teach critical thinking because you need something that has room for interpretation and room to be wrong. If you're reading technical manuals as your primary source of reading then you're just soaking up facts and that's not going to help you learn to think critically. If you happen to already be able to think critically that's fine but we're talking about the millions and millions of Americans who very very clearly are incapable of it.
That's the reason rea
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> That's the problem. You need the humanities to teach critical thinking because you need something that has room for interpretation and room to be wrong. If you're reading technical manuals as your primary source of reading then you're just soaking up facts and that's not going to help you learn to think critically. If you happen to already be able to think critically that's fine but we're talking about the millions and millions of Americans who very very clearly are incapable of it.
Humanities professors and others have made this claim, but it doesn't match my experience. Now I started out as a double major, BA history & math. I dropped history, because it was NOT about 'critical thinking' but rather about 'parroting what the professor thought.' In one particularly notable example, I started with a well accepted historical hypothesis (which I documented through citations) and then reasoned about the consequences. That paper was marked poorly because the prof didn't agree with
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You know, there's also a huge selection of books called "non-fiction" which you can also read. They cover a variety of topics and can present your technical material in new an interesting ways.
So branch out and look around the library because there are a lot of books that are not necessarily "literature" (face it, the vast majority of people who read books read pulp - it's just like the vast majority of money in movies is blockbusters).
Sometimes it can be interesting background, like learning how WiFi start
Whatever floats your boat? Me? Reading to think (Score:2)
Not disliking your FP, but rejecting your Subject. Care to explain? It is a meaningful word, but I don't get the link with your content as FPed.
On the story, I was just thinking about the topic in terms of individual motivations. Some people are primarily motivated by food and they mostly love to eat, possibly extended to cooking. Some people are mostly into alcohol (or other drugs), and I think most of us would concur with the "vice" label fits well there. Some people are into sex, which can go different w