Lol.
America elected a felon rapist pedophile…twice.
Reading isn’t a thing here anymore. Democracy probably won’t be for long either.
P.S. I’m currently reading “The Magic Mountain”.
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I know I have found myself reading less because I spend so much time trying to stay aware of the fuckery, so that when I have time and a logical break to read my books I am too mentally exhausted or disinterested in reading further. I do know that I can and should temper the flow of information, but it’s hard to look away from the fire despite the need to pause the doom for the mind. Balance, diversity and whatnot, right?
Yea I’m reading a book on historical Israel / Palestine relations and it’s so hard to motivate myself to read it because it’s just more madness.
Which book? Do you recommend it?
I would strongly recommend it.
It’s written by Benny Morris, a Zionist who laughs about starving children, but if you acknowledge that bias the book is a tremendous resource. It’s well cited and Benny does not shy away from describing in detail the atrocities his nation has always committed.
I’ve had a similar reaction to Hitlers People. It’s good, it’s informative, it’s just so bleak the reminder that so many people went along with it.
I’ve actually gotten back into reading. It’s a nice escape from the digital world.
My friend recently started reading after seeing me read so often. She kept bragging about how fast she can read pages and I was telling her to relax its not a race just enjoy the book. Fastforward a few days and she got like 30pages in and gave up. It was an ok book, thief of time by Terry Pratchett.
I think for a lot of people reading is so mentally different from what they’re used to that its very hard to do let alone to find pleasure in.
30 pages in a few days… Fast… Wut.
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Just here to object to calling anything by Pratchett just an “ok book”. Sacrilege, I say!
I love reading but I grew up before smart phones. I’m not sure reading and smart phone brain go together.
I sometimes read books on my smartphone.
The porn addicts on TikTok would disagree. Porn books are insanely popular and many people seem to only read those.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss all romance/romantic as porn. Some of them are well written with a touch of the forbidden for an elevated experience.
Not saying there aren’t bad pornographic books but dismissing a whole genre for some puritanical reason also seems ill fitted.
Of course! There are classy romances. However, my understanding is that a lot of these “romantasy” books are exploiting young audiences with graphic sex.
See: Bride
The people simply refused, all these years later, to abolish [the electoral college] that has led to some of the worst presidents in American history.
The EC is enshrined in the Constitution. The only way to “abolish” it would be to pass a constitutional amendment. That would have to first pass Congress, then be ratified by the states’ legislatures. All of that is so far away from “the people” that it’s disingenuous to blame “the people” for its still being in place.
Alternatively, there’s also the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would not amend the constitution, but bypass its restrictions through agreement by signatory states. This has a much better chance of taking effect than a proper amendment. While this is a bit closer to “the people,” it’s still pretty far away.
e: I don’t know where the parent comment this was a reply to went, but I’m leaving it anyway.
I now prefer audiobooks myself. I don’t know if this counts as reading though
Article is counting audiobooks:
For the purposes of the study, it was considered reading for pleasure if participants read a book, magazine, newspaper, or e-reader, or listened to an audiobook, for their own personal interest.
Yes I know some people count it as reading ; but I use a few different parts of my brain when listening, instead of seeing words.
So whatever I am doing may be different enough to not be the same.
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I read so much when I was a kid and even through and after high school. Somewhere mid bachelors, I got too busy with my studies and stopped reading for pleasure. When I have attempted to read again, I find myself completely and utterly bored, unengaged, and wanting the experience to end. I stopped buying or checking out books 7 - 8 years ago. I miss it, but I can’t experience pleasure from it anymore.
I hadn’t read for fun for like a decade and a half. But in the last few months, I got myself hooked on yuri manga, and then yuri light novels. I kept hitting a wall whenever a manga wasn’t done yet but the light novels were. I just kept saying “fuck it” and finishing with the novel, rather than waiting forever for the rest.
It happened with Otherside Picnic, it happened with I’m in Love with the Villainess, and a couple of others. Then I started just buying more ebooks, standalone stories without manga adaptations, for the fuck of it. Reading is great.
People should be more open to comics and Mangas. I sincerely hope the new trend among younger kids gets overlooked when looking at teenage reading statistics.
Solo leveling might not be the height of literature but it beats not reading any day.
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The article is counting news and magazines but not social posts. They actually say social posts are part of problem.
Hard to read when they ban the books you’re interested in and cut library services.
I would debate streaming services having that significant of an impact. It’s likely the same impact that traditional TV used to have, especially when VCRs entered the mainstream (into DVDs, Blurays, and around the same time, Streaming).
I think mobile gaming and social media would be more likely to blame. Not to mention algorithms. Maybe it’s only me, but most algorithms rarely pick out things I was interested in (it was very easy to tell that they were just ads). And as the younger generation depends on algorithms, not hard to imagine that they slowly become disenfranchised with what they’re reading if it’s not something they really want to read.
But the real reason behind this is the education system. High schools were effectively turned into diploma mills. There’s also a lot of bullying for teenage boys that like reading in the school system, and many boys do not have a high literacy rate in public schools. Repeated Republican governments in America have decimated the education system as well.
Jack reacher novels are a very easy & fun read. They should try that. Might even help some of the “male crisis” folks. Because the hero is a typical masculine all-American world-saver who is not macho in any way. Now I think of it, I wonder what Lee Child has written since 2016 and how it reflects on Trump1/2.
Audiobooks saved my sanity when I had a 2hr commute at my last job. Highly recommend listening if you don’t have the space (mental or literal) to read books normally!
Hi am a reading expert.
Theyll be four million money now.
Most school systems accidentally make reading a dreadful activity as the texts are tied to rote learning of facts and events for exam purposes
The big five publishers don’t seem to care about declining reading rates and continue to put out the same five or six types of books bc they don’t know how to market anything else
Ebooks don’t retail for competitive prices, both compared to hard copy books and to other media
Agreed, school curriculums are currently designed so teachers have to teach to a test, and are evaluated on how their students score in these standardized tests, so there’s no time to actually dive deep into things or engender a curiosity in reading deeply for pleasure.
Like in this article that explains how high school students these days aren’t even assigned a whole book to read like back in my days, just excerpts to analyze and target specific curriculum standards. It’s so sad and disheartening, they don’t even get time to finish or appreciate a whole book, just a piece of it out of context. And just the barrage of short stories they don’t even get to fully digest before they have to move on to the next one.
And then there’s the rise of digital reading and its effect on comprehension and reading for pleasure. And the rise of book bans driving kids away from the library. It all paints a very depressing picture.
