How much do you really enjoy reading (books)?

For some of us, I think the brain needs a regular change of scenery.

No really, I do want to hear other people's thoughts on their own reading and not just reactions to mine.

Certainly however the fact that there can be written communication online (and here we are!) takes up 'reading time' as much as anything, so there is that. At the same time what I've really noticed is that I don't dip into my collection as much, or limit it to a few favorites, where the majority of what I'm really reading are selections from my local library -- and since my local library is the one I work at at UC Irvine, this tends to mean quite a bit of range to choose from. My sense of having to maintain and expand a personal library as such as dimished as a result, and I don't mind really.

however, i think that there are plenty of other ways for you to be exposed to new ideas and other people's thoughts and opinions... i d don't perceive it as enjoyable to feel 'obliged' to do anything, be it reading books or otherwise. i think the only thing you can do, if you feel you must do anything at all, is continue to start books until you stumble across those you find engrossing.

OTFM

so true, maybe you should just read any old thing till you get back into it! i read a 'young adult' category book on the weekend, it is on yr 10 english booklists here in australia. i loved it, couldn't put it down. i was pretty good at english lit, i won a stack of english prizes at uni and highschool, so it's not as if i feel i don't understand or appreciate 'literature', but i definitely totally enjoy reading all sorts of other stuff too.

But I'm not. I read voraciously, but not books. Websites, magazines, newspapers, the back of cereal boxes, sure: but not novels, or non fiction, all that often now. I think the last new thing I picked up, read and finished was Atwoods "the Handmaids Tale" ages and ages ago.

I feel ashamed that as a supposed writer I havent even read much of the "canon".

it was 'looking for alibrandi' adam. it was a pretty straightforward story, but i loved all the characters.

so true, maybe you should just read any old thing till you get back into it!"

Yeah, I've sometimes suspected this would help. My mom was one of those "Why don't you read a classic instead" people and I think it really made me dislike classics even as I consistently forced myself to read them.

Oh good lord, there's plenty of it I've not read and frankly I don't care as much about that any more. I actually find reading nonfiction is better than fiction when it comes to being a writer, for me at least...

My head hurts like a thousand dogs today, literally and metaphysically, and I'm rather down. I really need to create, but it's all stuck... thats for another thread though.

also, i've always had doubts about whether it's actually possible to 'waste' leisure time.... surely if it's leisure time and you enjoy whatever activity you're doing, it's not a waste?

Behind the sense in your head that you have to keep up. Ditch that and you can relax. The only stance I've had to resist much since then is the idea that because a certain form of mass media exists it must be engaged with at the cost of not fitting in. Tep and I have argued that before many times and I respect his stance but don't accept it.

There's nothing like the feeling you get when you stand back from a massive fuck-off tome of a book and see that you're past the halfway mark. Even more so when it's a book that you can't put down, which in the massive fuck-off tome stakes happens rarely.

The type of books you choose to read should change as your life changes and your needs change. I think it is perfectly fine to halt reading novels at the point where you feel you've 'got' what you could get out of them and, considered as stories, they no longer delight, entertain or amuse you.

There isn't any magic bullet in continuing to read this or that because you're 'supposed' to. Keep looking to improve your mind, improve your life, improve your relationships, by whatever means you can. Don't limit yourself according to some rigid idea of what is supposed to work for you. Go by results.

But don't stop reading, if only because reading gives you intimate access to the knowledge, experiences, inner thoughts and cherished ideas of hundreds of thousands of authors. That's a hell of a resource. Don't trash it, just get down with it for you.

Have you ever explored the wonderful world of cartography? Deep ocean ichthyology? The Mau-mau rebellion? Roman coins? Eygptian gods?
The Marquis de Sade? Francois Villon's poetry?

Get creative, man. Live a little!

And honestly, there are classics I love but still don't exactly enjoy reading for fun, like The Trojan Women or something. I can't finish history books, either - The Black Sea is sitting three feet away, half finished, untouched for three months. I'd rather enjoy books I like than feel guilty about not being well-rounded, though. (The best fun books I've read were Snow Crash and The Sot-Weed Factor, which are both light reading you can't put down but are still also quite good.)

Tho I dont suppose how-to books on photoshop might count ;)

I'm dreadful at study because of this.

When I was at university I was dying to read more fiction but I felt guilty about not reading stuff relevant to my degree (history). Since university I've felt guilty about reading non-fiction cos there's so much fiction out there and I have years to catch up on. It's only in the past couple of years that I've felt no guilty twinges for reading non-fiction.

I only read about half of Tristram Shandy but I felt I got something out of it - and I gave up on it cos I didn't see me getting much more. Once you get the gist of it the conceit gets a bit boring (imo).

I did grow up with books. I was read to as a child, I learned to read very young, I excelled in English, majored in it in college, etc This describes me also. It had been about 4 months since I'd read anything unconnected with my degree work at that point, and all of a sudden I started to read books again...I go through phases also, and since new year have read a book a week at least, including one (Incredible Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) that I'd tried to read a year ago and couldn't get past the first 20 pages...not the book's fault but entirely my attention span (or something) since I really enjoyed it--was the kind of thing where I had to force myself to put it down each night to go to sleep. This is the risk of my reading gluts though--becomes something I can't stop doing once I am in a phase of it again.

I'm pretty picky about the books I read - I have a real problem with anything that will upset or disturb me, as with books I become profoundly moved by such things and can be depressed for days as a result. So I tend to stay within a fairly narrow band, which may be less good for my mental development but it is comforting. I also read about 50% fiction and 50% non-fiction (recent highlights including everything Stephen Jay Gould has ever done, Terry Jones' Who Murdered Chaucer and Michio Kaku's Hyperspace, which encouraged me to start a short course in astrophysics), so that's a nice balance to have.

One reason, I think, why I am still enjoying reading books so much is that I seldom have the occasion to get bored - my main times for reading are on the train (20 mins) and before going to sleep (10-40 mins or so). I also have to read for work, but that tends to be film & TV scripts rather than books, so books are a pleasantly weighty, involving change from lightweight, necessarily swift screenplays.

This happened to me for awhile too, but now I am back to reading at least a couple of books a month. It has to be fun for you -- if it isn't, it's best to take a break from it. If you feel like it's work or that you're forcing yourself to read you should probably be focusing on something else for now.

Indeed! :-) Not only that, the 'truth is stranger than fiction' dictum is demonstrated enough times that you stop worrying about whether you think something in a novel one writes is 'realistic' enough.

Leon's OTM there. That said, as soon as I did quit grad school, I found that my appetite for just simply reading *anything* I wanted to was in full force, and rather than approaching it as work, I was exultant over being able to read something without having to take notes or write a paper on it.

same goes for records.

The problem comes when you are studying something and there are things you have to read. You're never going to enjoy them as much as a book you've chosen for yourself. Being forced to read something is my idea of hell.

There's also the issue with reading things because you feel you should. Reading a book so that you can drop its name into conversation at a later date strikes me as a little childish.

-- dave q (scrape10...), February 22nd, 2005.

I didn't like the superhero stuff either, but it never completely takes over the book. The second half is more about his adult life as a music critic and about attempting to reconcile with his parents -- not as good as the first half but good.

-- Stone Monkey (jason.powel...)

I've never actually read anything with the intention of name-dropping it, but I do think there's this general satisfaction that comes from having read certain books and then knowing what people are talking about and being able to hold your own in certain conversations. I do think that, somewhat unconsciously, this can reinforce one's desire to read classics

I'd never have read Catch 22 if that was the case, and seeing as it's pretty much the best book ever, I call bullshit at Ms Oates.

Intellectually, I agree with all the posters who say this stuff doesn't matter, that not reading lots of challenging books doesn't make you a lesser person, but I just can't integrate this belief into the way I actually approach reading.

Ned (or anyone else who understood Ned's point) - could you explain what you meant when you said the issue of "not being a fully-developed human being with a rich inner life" is "contextual"?

I've been itching to get my nose stuck in a good non-academic read; I've finally wanted to start to want to read novels, six years after all those English and literature classes I took made fiction extremely unpleasant for me.

And I think I just might begin to read fiction for fun again (like I did when I was a little girl) by starting off with the aforementioned F. Scott Fitzgerald, based in part on how much I loved reading The Great Gatsby in spite of the rigorous deadlines imposed upon us when we had to read it for sophomore year HS English class.

It turns out I think novels are generally boring, but it wasn't until my late 20s that I finally figured that out!

novels rule, y'all drule.

(i.e. the Fitzgerald novel in question is not The Great Gatsby, though I own that book too, mostly because we kinda had to purchase our own copies of the novels we read in high school.)

Anyway. I just read this:

im always reading something.

and that's always been true of me, even when I was actively avoiding books of any kind that I didn't have to crack open because of their purely academic merit. I mean, I've always had a love of reading magazines, and before approximately 60% of local voters showed me just what pathetic idiots they are, I used to love to read the editorial section of the newspaper too. And if there's interesting news on the front page of the newspaper, I'll zero in on that.

Hopefully I can read as voraciously as I used to, back when I read books and novels (for fun) on a regular basis. I used to devour whole books in one sitting. Which would normally be construed as something "sad" or "odd", but thankfully in this read-happy environment is probably the norm.

Well, one major reason why English classes (really, when I hit the college-level lit core class I needed to take, I was already burned out) made reading for fun seem so unappealing to me for as long as it did was because of the high-pressure reading deadlines the teachers in HS would set for us. I remember one particularly no-no-notorious (sorry, had to do that) example; in senior year, we were all assigned Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye on a Friday and told that we had to be finished with reading it by the following Monday. Meaning we all had to trek over to the bookstore, pick up the novel, and read the whole thing from cover to cover while also juggling the other subjects' homework assignments for the weekend. Not fun. And it was in that class that we were required to think about things such as the significance of the novel's title, the importance of symbolism in such things as color choices and seemingly casual cast-off utterances, etc., etc., etc. So we were all doing our best to try to analyze every single little thing that came our way in the middle of wolfing down this otherwise moving piece of modern literature.

Presto, instant burnout. Just add water.

i don't consider that to be sad or odd! more 'normal' and 'fun'. except it does always make my eyes hurt

Yeah, if you're reading in an area that's poorly lit, you're bound to suffer from eye strain. ;) No, actually, yeah, the eyes can get fatigued after a long while of reading. All that exercising, you know.

i've met a few people lately who seem proud of not being readers, which is an attitude i found totally normal in high school, but nowadays i find it a little depressing.

are these the same as 'singularity' print-is-dead nu-media dudes or working stiff types?

I find it extremely depressing for my livelihood plus it doesn't bode well for whether I'm going to get along w people. But to be fair, I also see a lot of a very self-conscious definition of being a "reader" in this thread, ie a ton of pressure about WHAT, exactly, one is reading. I mean you know I adore kids' lit and genre stuff, and I think you can love graphic novels and be a "reader" etc so people need to chill.

I've been less and less interested in reading "smart" books as I've gotten older. I read a lot but most of it is newer novels and pop nonfiction (like mostly pop history and science stuff). I almost never read classics or experimental fiction any more, stuff I was willing to challenge myself to read more of in my early to mid 20s. Part of it might be going back to school and having to read a lot of boring stuff for that, but I think also I've just realized that I pretty much only care about reading interesting stories and being entertained at this point. Maybe I'm getting dumber.

that's why they don't teach masturbation in school.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 07:14 (4 years ago)

lol

A very nice coworker who rides the intercampus shuttle with me every morning compliments me every morning when I sit down with my book. "You're such a bookworm! Wow! How many books a week?" He means well, and he's genuinely impressed, but it never fails. I'm finding it disturbing -- as if my habit was a fetish you weren't supposed to exhibit in public.

^ backhand brag

are y'all talkin abt kanye

yeah i'd like to think reading books is normal but i think some people like to frame it as if it's some kind of socially deviant behavior

It's kind of indulgent in the sense that as a modern non-19th century person, you're not supposed to have enough time to read a book.

Having cable has probably cut into my reading volume; also maybe something similar to the effect n/a is talking about, where either brain-aging or just generally being harried makes it harder to find time and space to get immersed in something difficult or demanding. (It's hard to get through experimental lit in 30-minute before-bed installments, especially if you cling to that time as a relaxing/entertaining thing!) My other problem is that ever since I stopped spending all my time in one room and started walking to work, I feel like I wind up with three different books in three different places that I'm allegedly working on -- one by the bed, one in the front room, one in my bag, one I forgot at work, etc. Also I keep having other, non-reading-compatible things I'm trying to focus my time on, like writing or exercise.

I feel like I talk to plenty of people now who, yeah, kinda blow off reading as something they're too busy to do, but then somehow seem to have read every blog on the internet every day, so I don't think this is as big of a gap as they perceive it is; I also keep meeting people who say something I once thought I had made up as a character trait in a college writing class, which is that they don't read fiction at all and hate it and don't see the point of it, because why would you read something that's not true? Which, you know, okay, this seems to work for some people, who I assume know what way more about history or science or whatever than I do.

Finally arriving in the 21st Century and getting the internet connected at home has totally killed my reading (although it has done the same for my tv watching, so there is an upside) I still read a fair bit, and I still enjoy the books I do read as much as I ever did, I'm just not doing as much of it as I used to. Just one more thing for my residual Catholic guilt to latch on to, I suppose.

this seems to work for some people, who I assume know what way more about history or science or whatever than I do.

This is being extremely charitable.

I almost never read classics or experimental fiction any more

the classics I'm dippin into these days aren't fiction (which strike me as increasingly irrelevant/uninteresting) and more on the history end of things. I still have an abiding love for "experimental fiction" but damned if I can find much of it at all these days - every time I go to the bookstore these days 90% of the stuff on the shelves is just completely worthless fiction, niche-marketed to particular demographics and completely comfortable with standard lit conventions. One of my favorite discoveries of recent years was Victor Pelevin, and his stuff is near impossible to find in American stores. Gotta go through Amazon or specialist stores to find him.

i still find fiction pretty relevant and interesting

they don't read fiction at all and hate it and don't see the point of it, because why would you read something that's not true? Which, you know, okay, this seems to work for some people, who I assume know what way more about history or science or whatever than I do.

history (and popular science books too, to a large degree) are pretty much just another form of fiction imho

I mean not to get all philosophy 101 on yr ass but assuming that anyone can point to something as definitively "true" is a deeply suspect position

My other problem is that ever since I stopped spending all my time in one room and started walking to work, I feel like I wind up with three different books in three different places that I'm allegedly working on -- one by the bed, one in the front room, one in my bag, one I forgot at work, etc.

This is me.

I also sympathize with the point about supposedly not having enough time to read a book but at the same time reading 20 blogs a day. I guess it's all about how you prioritize your reading. For me, news come first, followed by environmental/energy news & opinion and then a good amount of music stuff. And that has always been the case, but the difference was that before the internet I would spend 30 minute going through my dad's newspaper, watch Nova and Nature on Tuesdays and read a monthly music magazine when it came in the mail. Now there is an easy option to pursue any of those topics for as long as I want to, and I don't know how to turn it off. I don't read the news once a day, I read an article every 30 minutes or so. Same with music and enviro stuff. There's no clear cut-off point anymore.

And so the three books sit there in separate locations. I get through 9 pages straight on a generous day and then check to see what is new at nytimes.com. I used to think of myself as someone with a good amount of self control, but I really can't seem to get myself back on track.

But like a hopeless addict, I don't WANT to get back on track!

Oh, I'm totally not criticizing the blog-readers -- in fact I think they should step up and claim what they do as a legitimate form of voracious reading! Like it's not "I don't have time to read," it's actually "I read more pages of political opinion pieces and magazine articles on the internet in one day than you read out of a book all week"

history (and popular science books too, to a large degree) are pretty much just another form of fiction imho

― Kool G Lapp (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, June 4, 2009 5:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I mean not to get all philosophy 101 on yr ass but assuming that anyone can point to something as definitively "true" is a deeply suspect position

― Kool G Lapp (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, June 4, 2009 5:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

You're blowing my mind.

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m82/danni2991/BOB04061.jpg

you can rephrase it, if you want, as something like "books most likely to make me know stuff in Jeopardy categories besides literature"

"they don't read fiction at all and hate it and don't see the point of it, because why would you read something that's not true"

this is silly.
you could also say: why would you see a movie, why would you listen to music? why would you go to museum etc..
art isnt (nessecary) about being true, it's about (among other things)different perspectives,aesthetics, and ways of thinking.
it saves our lifes from boredom,destruction and decatence. it also developes our imagination.
so how much do i enjoy reading books? very much, and much more than enjoyment.

though,of course, there are periods of more and periods of less readings.
life needs deversity and sometimes you need to stop reading for a while just to miss it again, and return to it with greater pleasure...

they don't read fiction at all and hate it and don't see the point of it, because why would you read something that's not true

Similar-ish in attitude: One of my old art professors wrote a piece in a local newspaper that opened with some anecdote about his old college roommates where he criticized them for bumpin dumb party music. "What's political about that?" And then launched into this crap about his long time love of the Talking Heads. I nearly tore the page in half. Stop POISONING MY MIND old dude! But in fairness, the classes I had with him were for the most part pretty alright, he just sometimes had these tiresome, narrow views, that were especially grating when he was pushing you to like, challenge your preconceptions and all that.

But anyway, there was a brief time when I only read non-fiction, which isn't to say I dismissed or hated fiction at all. The interest just wasn't there. Also started reading pretty late in life and hadn't discovered any fiction I really liked just yet. I came around though.

Talk to my dad then.

I have two hours total commute daily, so I have no choice but to read and listen to the iPod (I hate talking loudly over cellphones in public transportation). I understand the complaint that blogs contribute to reading fatigue, but, actually, it's the opposite: being more interested in politics means I want to read more history, all the time.

(xpost)

My attitude has kind of changed since I posted this. I think a year of massive force-fed reading of material that was often challenging and dull at the same time has increased my attention span and reading speed and made me appreciate more having the time to read books I enjoy. But I'm skewing toward non-fiction -- one of my favorite reasons to read is to have something to talk about, and non-fiction lends itself better to this. Plus good non-fiction often has some of the narrative thrills of fiction combined with the feeling of "learning something." Obviously one could argue that fiction satisfies these needs, but I'm feeling an irrational pull away from it lately.

I read much less then I used to. This is not something I'm proud of at all and trying to change but I just find myself really easily distracted these days and find it difficult to sit with a book for long periods of time. My commute is to short to read and if I try to do so before bed I just end up falling asleep. I also have this thing where I can't force myself to read something I don't enjoy so if I book doesn't grab me pretty close to he beginning then I'm likely to abandon it. Maybe part of this is burnout from my days studying lit when it felt like all I did was read, I don't know. I think I'm going to set some kind of monthly book goal or set aside some time specifically dedicated to reading so that I can change this pattern.

Also, I spent the better part of the last two years reading tons for grad school which left me little time to read on my own for pleasure. Now that that is finished maybe I'll pick it up again.

books are pretty rad and i read all the time rare for me to go even a week w/o picking something up i enjoy it quite a bit, thank you. also books esp fiction is probably still the main way i construct my understanding of the world so theres that.

but i dont care if any1 else reads books

ok i guess i care that some1 reads book otherwise publishers wouldnt print them anymore but i dont care u do it doesnt depress me

"The only book I can remember finishing in the past few months is Jonathan Lethem's "The Fortress of Solitude" -- which I actually did like very much."

ugh, i would never be able to read this whole book. same with the corrections, middlesex, and cavaliar and clay. i've looked at them all a bunch, but i think i'm too much of an old lady for them. i like to read though.

I am on a Bolano-kick right now. I always read more fiction in the summer. I find poetry impossible, even though I mostly write poetry and essays.

Anyway, I really enjoy reading books. All kinds of books. All the time. Always have.

i used to read a lot of fiction, was a history major so i felt i had a lot of catching up to do in a way. about 10 years ago the internet started taking away from my reading and then once the kids came, just didn't have the concentration. also, i drive in la so commuting reading is out. but once the kids get beyond the labor-intensive early years i'm sure i'll pick it up again. i do about 2/3 "classics" and 1/3 more contemp and i have zero interest in graphic novels because i'm old.

i said it in the other thread:

Kindle app on my iphone has totally increased my reading 10-fold

I've been less and less interested in reading "smart" books as I've gotten older.

This is interesting to me, because I don't relate to it at all. Not that I avoid books written in my own alphabet or anything -- I don't like to be intimidated by a book any more than anyone else does. Just that I can't imagine sticking with a book that I didn't feel I was taking something new away from. This not a value judgment on anyone's preferred reading material, it's totally not. I think it's a matter of process and not result. I've been so severely addled with ADD for my whole life that curling up with a book and enjoying the (reputedly) simple act of just READING for its own sake is completely alien to me. I've never really done that. I mean, I've read books, don't get me wrong, but I don't have a lot of "beach reads" under my belt. I have trouble sitting the fuck still for very long for any reason, so whatever I'm reading better have some kind of gravity (or at least convince me that it does). I love the high I get from understanding a concept that I didn't understand a moment ago (I dig non-fiction, especially science stuff), or from solving a little word puzzle disguised as a paragraph (favorite fiction writer: Nabokov, no contest), or from gaining a perspective that I didn't know existed. I guess what I mean is, I enjoy learning for its own sake, but I don't much enjoy reading for its own sake. If that makes sense.

I'm a lot better medicated than I once was, so I can now sit still for far longer than I once could, but it's almost too late. I never developed the habit of reading for pleasure, and at this point it would require me training myself to do it, like a whole new skill. And frankly, it's not a terribly useful new skill to me. If I need to kill some time, I have my own strategies firmly in place. For instance, I like to rattle on about myself on ILX. :)

tl;dr

^ feeling that

Lately I'm missing having a workday commute, because that's where almost all of my book reading gets done. now I take the train somewhere maybe twice a week, and my book queue is... well, a complete non-issue, honestly.

i love to read books! but reading them casually (like in 10-15 minute stretches when i'm on the train) feels less satisfying to me than it used to. i get very engrossed, so when i have to put the book down, it's like the literary equivalent of blue balls.

fun fact: tonight my man and i read passages from the mixerman book out loud to each other.

I'm looking at moving closer to work but concerned that without spending 1.5 hours on the bus every day I won't make time to read any books at all. When I'm at home I seem to be one of those 20-blogs-but-no-books (OK, maybe 200 ILX refreshes) people.

I read a lot of SF and YA books as a kid but then I discovered computer geekdom and music magazines and my book-reading has been pretty minimal since then. Plus up to age 12 or so reading for pleasure was seen as a good thing no matter what it was, and then suddenly you were expected to spend all yr reading time wading through 700-page Victorian novels, which was really offputting to me. I feel bad about not reading, so it was kind of exciting to get back into it on my commute, but all my good intentions about reading at home too have pretty much just led to having a stack of books I've stopped reading at page 30 and never come back to.

(My father is one of those fiction-isn't-true types. I don't know how much he's kidding about that, but he never reads any. He'll occasionally read some non-fiction but mostly spends all his free time watching news and documentaries on TV.)

fun fact: tonight my man and i read passages from the mixerman book out loud to each other.

That really is a fun fact.

Reading aloud is totally fun. Way back in the day my friend and I used to read aloud to each other all the time. (For instance, Anais Nin in the voice of Buckwheat.)

Some friends back in Austin had a small party every New Year's where they'd stack books on the table, and of course you could bring your own, and we'd sit around and quaff exotic spirits and flip through the books and read poetry and favorite passages aloud in the round. It was great. The evening always ended up having an unplanned theme -- one year it was God, one year it was cars, etc. I'd love to start that up again.

i want to get back into reading fiction -- i used to read a lot of it, but for the past few years i've been on a prolonged nonfiction kick, which is an easy habit to fall into in grad school. i've been getting most of my fiction from tv shows and movies.

No shame in that. "The Wire" is like the best book I've read in years. "Novelistic television" is a great thing.

I was a literary editor for the best part of a decade and gave it up so I had time to write a book of my own (or three). Nevertheless, I manage about four books a week with a half-fiction, half-non split (reading a lot of memoir/autobiography too). This week's are The American Way of Death/Mitford; Portrait of a Lady/James; Black Gold of the Sun/Eshun; From the Beast to the Blonde/Warner with dips into others. I read VERY quickly...

My father is one of those fiction-isn't-true types.

I didn't know that was a type. Does he imagine that people who avoid fiction are smarter? Because that's kinda dumb. The best non-fiction is about amazing things, but the best fiction is about YOU. Never reading fiction at all almost seems like a fear of thinking about things that are bigger than factoids.

My partner's dad is a "fiction-isn't-true-type" as well, but it is just a front since he spends hours watching Sopranos, 24 etc. He just doesn't enjoy sitting down and reading - not sure why he can't just acknowledge this.

I find it kind of amusing how much angst there is on this thread and from people in general regarding reading - why do people feel bad or guilty if they don't have the time to read? Why privilege reading over other forms of cultural consumption? That is the problem right there - if you feel guilty about not reading then you probably see it as a chore in the first place, so why do it? If you are outside of your late teens/maybe early twenties, I can promise you you aren't going to get any wild insights or massive revelations about the human condition by struggling through Ulysses or whatever. And it is a sign of the times that people feel like they have "achieved" something because they managed to tear themselves away from the Internet long enough to finish a book.

As an analogy, I'm not a huge fan of films (although I like going to the cinema), in the sense that although I watch and enjoy a lot of films, I am not a connoisseur - I don't feel the need to watch every film in the "canon", I don't read any serious criticism on the subject, films come way behind novels, comics, music, television, when it comes to my leisure time. Yet I don't feel guilty that I haven't seen all of Godard's oeuvre say - why is there a perceived social pressure for reading that, IMO, does not exist for other forms of culture? People never say "I feel bad about not watching more films". And yet I don't particularly understand how reading a novel "enriches" you anymore than watching a Herzog film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-8f_kqmwmU

what an angry dwarf!

I think I like that guy. But we would have words about orange popsicles. They're my favorite.

But we could bond over butter. If you're afraid of butter don't ever let me cook breakfast for you.

The secret to good cooking is to look at how much butter a recipe calls for, and then add too much butter.

I kinda like that guy, too, in spite of my instincts telling me to hate him. He kinda reminds of me dudes who would hang out with my brother, just regular dudes but w/ a sense of humor.

It's all about the delivery

Totally. Did that clip have the bit about getting attacked by a swan? That was the one that always got me.

No that's in this clip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAOBLpSIRkk

Can we have a thread where people post clips of stand-up comedy sketches? (Does such a thread already exist?)

I started one about stand-up in New Zealand cuz everything I'd heard here so far was total grade F, but it didn't go anywhere. I was hoping that if no one really turned up anything good that it would just get tube-bombed with tons of shit Kiwi comedians, but the thread just bobbed once or twice and dropped off of new answers.

Still might tube bomb it one of these days, I am unemployed still.

I love reading. I do have a bit of a short attention span so I need to be in the right frame of mind to settle down to read, but once I'm comfortable and have gotten into my rhythm I can easily read a 300 or 400 page book in one sitting. I find it harder to consume just about any other cultural product - films, tv, computer games - for that length of time while still being fully concentrated and not starting to feel a bit listless or fatigued.

Also books are really helpful to me for keeping up with my Spanish. I never speak it so reading novels makes sure I don't lose my familiarity and start to forget vocabulary and stuff.

this thread =
http://www.kcts9.org/files/program_previews/readingRainbowLogo247px.jpg

why do people feel bad or guilty if they don't have the time to read?

Well, for most people I think it's the equivalent of feeling guilty that you don't make time to exercise, or take a cooking class, or see more plays, or any number of things you're willing to believe are life-enriching but you just don't have the time/energy to do more often.

For committed reading types -- for me, anyway -- it involves thinking back to times when I got a lot of my life's pleasure from immersion in books, and regretting not being able to keep that up, or worrying that it could slip farther out of your habits than you'd like -- i.e., the normal way you feel about anything you had more time for as a young person and now have to fit into a busier adult schedule. (My other issue is that I studied lit/writing and write now, so when my reading slows too far down it feels like a greater goal-in-life failure.)

one of my favorite reasons to read is to have something to talk about, and non-fiction lends itself better to this. Plus good non-fiction often has some of the narrative thrills of fiction combined with the feeling of "learning something."

Yes, exactly -- and it is so completely normal that there would be voracious readers in the world who read not out of any interest in the aesthetics of fiction, but as a way of acquiring concrete information and opinions about the world itself ... I mean, this is sorta one of the main traditional purposes of reading; prose fiction and its aesthetics are technically a recent(ish) development that piggybacked onto the form. The reason I mentioned the "fiction isn't true!" camp is because there are those rare people who will profess to be actively mystified by the idea of reading made-up narratives, which is sort of funny and fascinating.

BTW it might be kind of relevant here that so much of the market for novels makes a point of splitting the difference between these things, and readers turn to them in a difference-splitting way -- i.e., people will go pick up a novel set in a particular time period or country, or that involves a specific type of knowledge, with this explicit agenda that they'll learn something real-world and useful about whatever that stuff is. So with a lot of reading there's not even that much of a line between Just Fact and Just Fiction.

Very true, and equally true that non-fiction can sometimes be edge-of-your-seat, up-all-night reading. I was amazed at how absolutely thrilling a well-written narrative of the details of the decomposition of the human body can be. (Though I doubt anyone is working in the screen treatment of that one.)

^ you are toying with the emotions of Nicole Kidman's agent

I loved reading but fuck if I ever have any time at all to read these days.

I imagine that for the people who self-identify as big readers, at some point it's not just an activity, it's a value.

I was raised with a Jewish mother who's a librarian so if I'm not reading I pretty much just feel guilty

ha!

raised with or raised by?

cause it would be pretty funny if you were raised with someone else's jewish mother

being a Jewish uncle wouldn't be that funny

The main times in my life I read voraciously were my loneliest times. ie I lived alone in SLC for eight months with no friends (& no internet, ha). So all I did in my free time was read. So memories of that make part of me feel like reading is the Plan Z of lonely times.

All I read lately (all of 2k9 so far) is how-to books. I don't even read my magazines, even tho 'Wired' isn't really that challenging.

Twitter has been great for helping me decide which articles to read in which magazines (and news sites, etc). I follow a bunch of 'em; they have RSS feeds of their headlines.

I really do enjoy reading books, to the extent that I think when I could be living I am reading. I wonder if reading is to me like a narcotic or a calmer. I did recently fall out with literary fiction for the past five or so years, but replaced it with nonfiction and children's literature. Lately, I've returned to fiction with a vengeance, and was recently on a Fitzgerald binge (life and letters), but in the middle of that, have returned to Dickens, and also nonfiction about London. My current workplace is a central library that is extremely well equipped, so I am never stretched for material. I do feel guilty about giving up on Fitzgerald in the middle, but have to remind myself that I am reading for pleasure and interest, not for any other reason. The only time I've not been a reader is after periods of time like final exams, where for a week or so after I would float numbly in a burnt-out non-reading haze. Unfortunatly I forget a ton of what I read, but the bonus is I can reread books and always be surprised anew.

One should only read for pleasure, no?

Late Henry James made reading no fun for me. :)

Re: people who claim they don't like fiction because it isn't true, the TA I had for Romantic Poetry I had in college was perversely proud of the fact that he never read novels because they were about "characters who didn't exist." Incidentally, he was probably the smartest TA I ever had, and taught me how to 1. read poetry and 2. appreciate poetry, so go figure.

Late Henry James made reading no fun for me. :)

The Ambassadors is great!

Re: people who claim they don't like fiction because it isn't true, the TA I had for Romantic Poetry I had in college was perversely proud of the fact that he never read novels because they were about "characters who didn't exist." Incidentally, he was probably the smartest TA I ever had, and taught me how to 1. read poetry and 2. appreciate poetry, so go figure.

and he was getting a graduate degree in english? he'll go far with that attitude.

Alfred - Hah, a friend of mine also claims that The Ambassadors is the best of the big three late James, and perhaps the best James ever. The Wings of the Dove was the final book I had to read for college, and I couldn't be arsed to revel and romp in all those latent ambiguities and vagueness present in those page long sentences. Have always felt that if I returned to Wings or any late James it would only be after locking myself in an austere room with a pot of coffee and a dictionary.

bug - The man could dissect a Wordsworth poem like no other, and I imagine he never had to venture far from the sphere of 19th century romantic poetry to complete his dissertation. There are academics who have gotten by on worse credentials.

i take a book or two with me pretty much anywhere i go. it's more or less a prerequisite for being happy for me.

i read the first 20 pages of the ambassadors and found it kind of infuriating - it was among the contents of my bag when it got stolen at a bar so i haven't returned to it since

those late james take a while to get the flow, i remember struggling with the amabassadors too but then totally got it. the golden bowl was especially tough but also worth it

I get reader's block the way I get writer's block. It's just prevarication when faced with a task, the same as I'll do over virtually anything, whether I like it or not - even perhaps more so with things I do like, maybe as a way of stretching out the anticipation. I do love reading, but it takes a little bit of work to get into the flow and I often don't make that effort. It makes me feel guilty, realising another evening has reached its end and I've done something easy like slump in front of the telly or fanny about on here instead of making that little bit of effort

There's a bit in Franzen's Harper's essay which diagnoses the avid reader as someone who either has acquired the habit, or has a deep-seated need to engage with an imaginary world. I definitely used to be the latter and probably still am, but I suspect that ILX and the internet more generally meets that need a lot (plus it's reading too, obviously)

I'm sort of ashamed that I've only finished one book this year -- Nixonland -- although given its length, I'd like to think that it counted for two or three books. Most of my reading time takes place on my commute (30 minutes each way) -- but I'm as likely to read The New Yorker or a newspaper as I am a book, and then sometimes I'd rather do a crossword puzzle or work on something I'm writing. And then at home, there's the Internet, the TV, meals to prepare, etc.

Probably the best way to motivate myself to read more would be to regularly go out to a cafe or other public place with a book in hand -- though this won't make me instantly like the classics I've tried to read in the last few years and given up on.

^ That's a big thing -- it's amazing to me to think about how much time I used to spend reading just based on finding myself sitting somewhere killing time, or going out for dinner alone, or waking up on a weekend and reading for three hours before I felt like getting out of bed ... all efforts to be more productive and efficient and adult just kill this time dead, and it feels odd and difficult to schedule one's reading. Not so long ago, I would go out to get coffee and read as a form of activity, just to pass the time! So yeah, I think going out somewhere with a book is a good plan -- setting yourself up to be in situations where you're just sitting around and have a book in your bag.

I am going to try this too.

haha that exclamation point is not supposed to communicate that reading at a cafe is weird or amazing, just that it seems ridiculously distant that I'd be sitting around on a weekend afternoon and go "eh, I guess I'll go read for a few hours" -- I don't know what happened

basically, if I go somewhere without a book that is not a nightclub, I am doing something wrong

It's hard to read at home: I have to be somewhere else. At home there's too many distractions (i.e. Internet).

A lot of my reading time is exactly that - cafe with a book. I got an iPhone recently, though, so even that is now under threat

ugh, this^^. i went to a cafe yesterday to read for an hour or two and still managed to check my mail about five times

yeah people always ask me how i can read or write while sitting out in public, and i always say it's great for focusing because you can't really just sit there and surf the web or watch tv (which is why i prefer places that have no internet access.) i think there's this notion that people who are doing those things in public are showing off or are hoping to passively meet someone (some of them probably are), but it's totally understandable why people do it to get work done.

I got an iPhone recently, though, so even that is now under threat

That is in fact a big reason why I'm not particularly intent on getting an iPhone.

i think there's this notion that people who are doing those things in public are showing off or are hoping to passively meet someone (some of them probably are)

ugh on the latter. I've never met such a person.

I mean, guys sitting in Starbucks with a copy of Gravity's Rainbow hoping a chick will notice them? Lame.

"Hey baby, can I stream across your sky?"

"I mean can I scream across your sky?"

there was this one guy who i saw constantly at one of my local coffee joints, and he always brought in 'infinite jest' and sat it on his table. never read it, just surfed the web. maybe he was just slowly working up to reading it, i dunno.

maybe the table was wobbly and he needed something to weight it down

maybe he kept his drugs in it

maybe he was trying to get a lit-chick and/or lit-dude to sleep with him

seems implausible 2 me

I carried IJ with me everywhere I went when I first read it, but I kept it in my backpack when I wasn't reading.

maybe it was his own sort of "infinite jest." or maybe he was using it to keep his power cord plugged into his laptop.

ugh on the latter. I've never met such a person.

oh c'mon now. i mean, reading by yourself with the main idea of meeting people would be super lame and weird, but who hasn't been studying or reading in a coffee shop and thought "hey, it would be cool if that hot chick loves infinite jest too and wants to talk about it."

uh, me?

Every time I bring Henry James into the coffee shop customers pull their children close and whisper about me.

btw i spent most of dec/jan in coffeeshops by myself, reading infinite jest and drinking hot chocolate. it was really nice but i did not have any conversations with random people about it.

"hey wouldn't it be call of that hot chick loves the novelization of X-Com: UFO Defense and wants to talk about it"

okay now yr talkin

i got funny looks on the bus when i read a book about the assassination attempt on Pinochet, the cover had some of the gunmen standing in front of a flag with this logo on it:

http://www.cedema.org/uploads/chile-fpmr.jpeg

no hot girls in to terrorism talked to me tho.

dan, u are married. maybe this should be expanded to 'what single person hasn't been out in public and thought, "hey, it would be cool if i had a way to start up a conversation with that hot chick/dude."'

i've seen plenty of dudes in coffee shops use books girls are reading as openings into conversation, so it stands to reason that they might assume the reverse would work as well.

also my copy of William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich has no dust cover so reading it on the bus it was a big brown tomb with a swastika embossed in the cover :/

again no hot nazi girls talked to me.

"hey wouldn't it be cool if that chick loves vin diesel and/or his biography .44 desert eagle too and wants to talk about it"

http://images.allmoviephoto.com/1989_Indiana_Jones_and_the_Last_Crusade/1989_the_last_crusade_011.jpg

"sooooo, whatcha reading there?"

Every time I bring Henry James into the coffee shop customers pull their children close and whisper about me.

― Bud Huxtable (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 8, 2009 3:29 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

aw

i've seen plenty of dudes in coffee shops use books girls are reading as openings into conversation, so it stands to reason that they might assume the reverse would work as well.

haha, i don't remember this ever happening to me. the few times i've described a book i was reading to a stranger, that person got bored and changed the subject.

Oh, I dunno: there have been loads of times in my life I've spent a few hours at home reading and then figured hey, why not continue at the cafe or the bar, there'll be people to look at and maybe I'll wind up chatting with someone -- in fact I think most times I've moved this has been one of the first ways I've met people around the neighborhood. (If nothing else you get to know the staff at these places, which ... it's nice to have people someplace who know who you are.)

Not that I don't recognized the artfully-placed-book lameness we're talking about here, but if some dude is going to be reading anyway, and needs to meet someone, he might as well do all his reading someplace where other people are -- your chances of widening your social sphere are certainly a hell of a lot larger than they are alone in your bedroom.

Also: I don't know how many people here live with others, whether partners or roommates or whatever, but it's a good argument for doing your concentrating in public, because no one in public is going to need to ask you where you left the screwdriver or if you feel like going to that party on Saturday or if you can remember what other show this guy on TV was in.

but if some dude is going to be reading anyway, and needs to meet someone

why you gotta single people out

The only time anyone commented on my book I got "that book looks weird, why are you reading it? I like Stephen King, you should read Stephen King" for about ten minutes. But then I'm not exactly the kind of woman that strangers try to pick up.

reading at bars is a great way to make everyone hate you, but when i read at coffeeshops (with a coffee) i get too wired to concentrate, whereas if i read while drinking (not too much) its a lot easier to get into a book

but who hasn't been studying or reading in a coffee shop and thought "hey, it would be cool if that hot chick loves infinite jest too and wants to talk about it."

Fact.

i mean, reading by yourself with the main idea of meeting people would be super lame and weird,

There was a guy around town where I used to live who did this. Only replace "reading" with "juggling". And expand the definition of "public" to also include your house parties.

reading at bars is a great way to make everyone hate you

uh, what?

i'm amazed at how i can come home drunk and be pretty useless at basic tasks (except maybe making grilled cheese), but once i get in bed and turn on the light i'm suddenly lucid enough to read. drunk reading is underrated.

I'd hate them if they spilled my G&T on my book.

reading at a bar basically gives the signal "fuck you, don't even think about starting a friendly conversation with me because I am killing time, possibly waiting for someone more interesting than you to show up"

at least, I hope it does, otherwise I'll have to find something else to do when waiting at a bar for my wife to meet me

reading at bars is a great way to make everyone hate you

Why? I don't read alone in crowded bars, but I've been known to camp out in a decidedly non-busy bar on an afternoon and nurse a couple drinks while reading. It's kind of nice.

i read at bars. if you're not meeting someone, it sure beats staring at your drink.

I will read in a crowded bar if I am by myself at the drop of a hat.

i read at bars too but usually when im meeting ppl and theyre l8. really ill read pretty much everywhere. i read when i get my haircut which is great becuz then they wont talk 2 u.

ooh, pro-tip; that might get me back in a barber's chair

Well, yeah, if I'm at a crowded bar by myself, then I'm probably going to pull out some reading material, if I've got it. But I wouldn't typically go to a crowded bar by myself.

i read at bars but as a rule i hate people who read at bars because they are thinking "i am so cool, with my book, at a bar, i am basically dylan thomas/charles bukowski, everyone is so impressed, with my newsboy cap, and my well-thumbed copy of man without qualities, and how i am drinking a scotch on the rocks"

wtf how would that work. do you hold the book up in front of your face or something? that seems like a fuck you to your barber for sure.

wearing a newsboy cap is grounds for death anyway, you don't need to add reading on top of it

i'm kinda with max here, also, i prefer really dark bars so wtf i can't read shit anyway.

no i just hold the book in my lap? when they drape the sheet over u i just let my arms not get covered and then when i have to 2 do the held tilts up and down i just kind of rearrange my line of sight? it is a fuck u but i tip well and h8 talking to barbers so

fyi i have never been @ a bar and tht i am so cool, with my copy of an x-files novel, &c ever

I was reading The Recognitions on the train once - this edition:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61u1kLhivNL.jpg

And some bloke shouted out as I was getting off, 'Look at that wanker with his big pink dictionary!'

He sort of had a point, really.

I'll read in crowded pubs as well, but it has it's downside, most recently a girl who seemed too pissed to even be conscious, was trying insistently to talk to me about doing Shakespeare at University - some wildly improbable theory about how all Shakespeare's main characters were really women or something. And another time I got told I was gay for reading and a rather large girl nearby said I she DIDN'T think I was gay and that 'people who read are quite cute'. It just gets rather tiring after a while, but I suppose you're sort of arxing for it.

I have often busted out Doctor Who novels in bars. I just don't give a fuck.

And some bloke shouted out as I was getting off, 'Look at that wanker with his big pink dictionary!'

Sounds like a piece of dialog from The Recognitions!

'Look at that wanker with his big pink dictionary!'

^^^A+ trolling

yeah there are only a couple bars around that are both well-lit and uncrowded enough for reading. i just realized that i read infinite jest in coffee shops but read most of savage detectives in bars.

The only bars I've seen that have not been lit well enough for me to read in them have been in nightclubs.

damn boston sounds like it sucks

i usually don't feel comfortable by myself in bars (a "lady" doesn't spend time in bars alone), but when the occasion arises i'm always grateful to have a book to focus my attention on. it sends out a "leave me alone" signal.

a good female friend of mine often goes out to bars alone to read and pick up dudes

max have you like never read any of my posts re: Boston

(although I am including NYC, DC, LA, SF, LV and MSP places in that statement, but then again I can read in almost total darkness)

http://www.calvintang.com/albums/Philippines/lg/big%20eyes4s.jpg

(dan going out for a night of readin')

xpost

Drinking at Bars (Male Version): I will totally do this at the right kind of bar, because (a) sometimes I want to drink and read at the same time, plus (b) bars are open later than cafes, but yeah, you have to accept that it's unusual. If the place serves any kind of food whatsoever, you are better off getting a plate and leaving it in front of you, cause then evidently it's normal. Otherwise you just have to adopt a generous and patient attitude w/r/t people talking to you or asking questions, because it is a social environment, so people are kinda ... within their rights to talk to you. (Even if some of them do adopt this seriously aggressive/defensive knock-you-down-a-peg tone about the possibility that you'd find printed matter more interesting than whatever wall they're staring at.)

Drinking at Bars (Female Version): Yeah so my sense if that if you're attractive and try the wrong bar you will get the fuck bothered out of you and then dudes will act like you're a bitch for wanting to read instead of getting bothered? Unless you can establish yourself in a chill local place as someone who reads and that's just how it is. I don't know about if you're unattractive, maybe everyone just ignores you, but I don't think I've ever seen an unattractive girl reading at a bar, or else maybe I just find any girl who reads at a bar automatically attractive

a good female friend of mine often goes out to bars alone to read and pick up dudes

ideal pick up book ime

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n43/n219374.jpg

haha that woman should have a fight with a woman who goes to bars alone to read and wants to be left alone

Drinking at Bars (Female Version): Yeah so my sense if that if you're attractive and try the wrong bar you will get the fuck bothered out of you and then dudes will act like you're a bitch for wanting to read instead of getting bothered?

i don't know if being attractive has anything to do with it? i think some guys will just try their luck with whomever's around.

lolz you don't say...

am i hitting close to home there, shakes?

true, true -- actually I suppose a lot of guys would home in on someone they perceived as unattractive and reading as some sort of easy mark

I don't know about if you're unattractive, maybe everyone just ignores you, but I don't think I've ever seen an unattractive girl reading at a bar, or else maybe I just find any girl who reads at a bar automatically attractive

― nabisco, Monday, 8 June 2009 21:56 (Yesterday)

I feel like bringing a book into bar would be like asking for middle school style nerd-taunting all over again. It might be totally irrational, and I might meet great people who are no longer 12 and stupid, but I absolutely wouldn't have the nerve. Maybe that explains the scarcity.

the older i get, the more my worst fears are confirmed about adults basically still being 12 and stupid. sometimes i have a "please don't be an asshole, please don't be an asshole" mantra that i whisper to myself in anticipation of an encounter with someone who might (or might not) be an asshole.

As an unofficial charter member of I Love Books I hereby declare that I love books! Message sent. Received?

I wasn't reading at a bar, rather an outdoor cafe, but one that is rather breezy and boozy. I was reading the Financier by Theodore Dreiser. I wouldn't even want to talk to me to ask what it was about, and yet, someone tried. He asked what I was reading an that said that he'd read Angels and Demons and The Alchemist. As I smiled weakly he asked if I'd like to get together sometime to talk about books. "No thanks," was my reply.

Was that a short story? Maybe I should print it out and read it in a bar.

Love reading in bars, don't want to be talked to, people who ask "Is that book good?" or "What's it about?" need to die.

Actually sometimes I'll take my most embarrassing books to read in public on purpose, like, no one can accuse me of trying to be cool if I'm reading a giant fantasy novel with a lurid cover while drinking cheap booze somewhere with few people. It's like the anti- anti- anti- of everything that max rounded up and shot a few posts ago.

the fact is i hate people who read at bars because i love to read at bars

Have you tried hitting on them?

How about you just read where you want to read and not give a shit what people think about it?

Well, yes, but what I want to read is usually a silly-looking genre novel.

^^^reminds me of the time some older woman asked me about the PKD novel I was reading ("Galactic Pot Healer") on my lunch break and I couldn't tell if she was hitting on me or not

"that's an interesting title"

what do you say to that

"you got a nice set of pots, baby, can I heal them for you?"

you forgot to type galactic

the conversation was taking place in outerspace, so, no i didn't

One time I was reading in a bar, waiting for Laurel, and this was an actually ridiculous reading in a bar scenario, beacuse it was at Union Pool on a Saturday night, and the place was packed to the gills, still nothing about my reading technique suggested, please ask me what I am reading, and yet someone did. "Did you really come to a bar to read?!" I answered, "I'm waiting for a friend," which was perhaps the wrong answer, because it appeared like somewhat of an opening in retrospect. I think I was reading a children's book.

You just make friends wherever you go, VP. Must be all that smiling you do.

i asked a girl about the mike davis book she was reading on the train a while back and she responded as if to have a conversation-on-the-train, but i really just wanted to know if the book was worth reading. not that she was unattractive or anything.

i've come to enjoy reading fiction the last few years, partly due to sharing the book-reading experience with another(s). but almost everything i've read has been new fiction about characters and/or places i can identify with in some respect and maybe i should branch out more.

i don't read in bars, but i might be comfortable doing so if i were more of a bar person in general. then again, i do my best reading on subways/trains (but not planes - too busy looking out the window or sleeping) - there's something about the movement that helps.

One should only read for pleasure, no?

― Bud Huxtable (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, June 6, 2009 2:36 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is very otm, unless you have to read something for school

Not sure about that, unless you make the concept of pleasure elastic enough to include reading stuff that isn't particularly enjoyable as such, but that you are reading because you are interested in the subject, or feel this particular book fills a lack of knowledge that you want.

Which makes it sort of meaningless.

unless you make the concept of pleasure elastic enough to include reading stuff that isn't particularly enjoyable as such, but that you are reading because you are interested in the subject, or feel this particular book fills a lack of knowledge that you want

yeah, my concept of reading for pleasure includes this kind of stuff

Ok. Often that sort of reading can be agonising tho. I still bear mental scars from an incredibly dull book on medieval Germany. Unnecessarily dull, in fact.

surely the answer to that is "find a better book about medieval Germany"

Quite. But I was just looking at the whole 'reading only for pleasure' thing. I read because I want to most of hte time, but sometimes I read when I don't want to, because I've got out of the habit, because I fancy something mentally punitive (bit fucked up that one - but makes sense to me), sometimes because I feel I ought to read something.

None of those really fit into my idea of reading for pleasure, it's more not being able to stand not reading, if that's not too runic.

because I fancy something mentally punitive

I'm not British, but if you fancy something doesn't that mean that you like it???

True! Although I do wonder about the whole British taste for things which aren't actually pleasant - at least it seems British although it could just be me. Bitter, sour things, physical and mental.

Even so, there's a taste for the idea of something that when it comes down to it isn't actually very pleasurable. I guess, er, that's probably when I put the book down, not always tho.

I hope there aren't any more 'hte' errors in this post - the box goes off the edge of my screen.

"I'm not British, but..."

You just make friends wherever you go, VP. Must be all that smiling you do.

I do not smile when I read! Unless I'm reading Nathaniel West or something.

Last antidote:

I was coming home on the train, and reading a classic children's novel--I forget which one. The guy next to me said, "Why are reading that?!" and I explained that I was a children's librarian etc. People feel the need to interrogate me when I am reading. He then told me about his career as a film writer.

should've answered that you were "into kids"

i would have given him the finger

moving to a city where i hardly know anyone = best thing that's happened to my reading schedule

I feel like bringing a book into bar would be like asking for middle school style nerd-taunting all over again. It might be totally irrational, and I might meet great people who are no longer 12 and stupid, but I absolutely wouldn't have the nerve. Maybe that explains the scarcity.

hahaha last time I read at a bar I got totally taunted by the cocktail waitress of all people. But she asked me 'why are you reading something at a sixth grade reading level?' I was reading this:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n2/n11922.jpg

It was Bizarro-world version of the Bill Hicks bit about the Waffle House waitress.

DP = my hero

He's amazing! Gave me a Dada obsession when I was 14 or 15.

why are you reading something at a sixth grade reading level?'

The funny thing about this--Pinkwater is probably actually on a higher reading level than your garden-variety adult bestseller.

^^^yep

once again, portland gets things right:

http://twitter.com/LibraryHours