Books as a thing people do

[rousseau]

I'm with you on this. Thinking a little more about it, I wonder if the predominant use case of paper and e-books, at least in terms of knowledge acquisition, is to learn a narrow discipline for the purpose of making money. Once you've made it through school and have done a little self-study, you've already arrived at a comfortable life where more knowledge for the sake of knowledge is maybe not that relevant to your bottom line.

That is certainly the ethic of our times, even on university boards and the like. I wish it were not, as I do regard knowledge as inherently valuable, and the private sector as being completely incompetent at assessing the value of knowledge, even situationally.

Speaking for my own discipline and its practical applications, if a company realizes even after the fact that they should perhaps have learned something about the culture of their customers, laborers, or business partners before starting a business venture with them, it's a small miracle. But there are a lot of voluntary fiascos out there that the perusal of a few books could conceivably have prevented.

When you look at it from the perspective of biology it makes some level of sense. Do as much as is necessary, and no more. What differentiates the wise from the foolish is how necessary is defined. I'd think that for the overwhelming amount of people it's not difficult to get away with avoiding books once their career is established.

But I do think most people would be better off if they put a little effort in. It'd be hard to overstate the difference reading has made to my career. It only accounts for a small part of my success, but arguably the most important part. One of the challenging aspects of the business world is knowing why to choose [x] over [y], and I usually know that why.

 

[Playball40]

That's a good point. Computers,video games, 24/7 TV, and the net have reduced attention span.

Are you sure? Or were attention spans always highly variable, but mostly short, with few people having any free time to spend on entertainment anyway?

What you see as shorter attention spans is more plausibly explained as a wider pool of people who have the leisure to have anyone notice their attention spans.

The proportion of people who sit down and enjoy a long novel, as a percentage of people who have the time to do so if they chose, may not have changed one iota.

People enjoy brief entertainments because they have things to do. The idle rich enjoy long winded entertainments because they don’t have things to do.

Free time is a post-industrial novelty for all but a tiny number of aristocrats. And still most of what the workers get is doled out in very small chunks. It’s hardly surprising that most people don’t invest a lot of time in a single long session of constant attention for fun, when that level of attentiveness is demanded of them at work.

If anything, I suspect attention spans are getting longer.

That is an interesting perspective I hadn't considered. Still, I remember when I was young, reading was something I looked forward to doing (elementary school). By the time I got to middle and high school, I hated it (as I was pretty much 'told' what I could read) and lost the love of reading for 'entertainment'. In my 20's I got back into reading (trash novels, but reading nonetheless). There were many I wanted to read but found my ADHD really impaired my ability to FINISH a book. Today, it's the same, but I read more than just the trashy novels of my youth. I love to read but can only do it in short spurts. I either lose interest or fall asleep (grrrr - getting old sucks sometimes).

My children seem to be the same (except my youngest and oldest sons who seem not to enjoy reading at all). Loved reading (and we read to them EVERY NIGHT WITHOUT FAIL) when they were young. Hated it in middle and high school. My 20 year old is at Uni and seems to be coming back to reading for pleasure. My 19 year old twins, not so much.

 

[Playball40]

That's a good point. Computers,video games, 24/7 TV, and the net have reduced attention span.

Are you sure? Or were attention spans always highly variable, but mostly short, with few people having any free time to spend on entertainment anyway?

What you see as shorter attention spans is more plausibly explained as a wider pool of people who have the leisure to have anyone notice their attention spans.

The proportion of people who sit down and enjoy a long novel, as a percentage of people who have the time to do so if they chose, may not have changed one iota.

People enjoy brief entertainments because they have things to do. The idle rich enjoy long winded entertainments because they don’t have things to do.

Free time is a post-industrial novelty for all but a tiny number of aristocrats. And still most of what the workers get is doled out in very small chunks. It’s hardly surprising that most people don’t invest a lot of time in a single long session of constant attention for fun, when that level of attentiveness is demanded of them at work.

If anything, I suspect attention spans are getting longer.

You raise some good points, but the internet is (and should be) a major factor in how many of us experience the world now. They don't call it the 'attention' economy for nothing, ubiquitous applications that are specifically designed to grab and keep our attention with an enormous amount of rapid blips and notifications.

Your argument likely holds true for people living in the 50s - 90s, but it's literally a different world now. It takes an act of enormous willpower to resist the internet, and it's been my observation that many in my (and future) generations don't have this willpower. I have a young sister-in-law born in 1994 and it's rare to see her without a smartphone in hand. My brother is a teacher of high-school students and the internet is a (very) serious problem for many of them. They don't know how to sit down and study.

I've seen studies that suggest our attention spans actually are decreasing, but I couldn't really speak to their validity so I won't bother linking them.

My daughter at UNI started tracking her screen time. She realized that TikTok was like crack and has been weaning herself off (and most apps). She's set a goal for reading books again too. I'm hoping her younger siblings follow her lead, but I doubt it.

 

[rousseau]

That's a good point. Computers,video games, 24/7 TV, and the net have reduced attention span.

Are you sure? Or were attention spans always highly variable, but mostly short, with few people having any free time to spend on entertainment anyway?

What you see as shorter attention spans is more plausibly explained as a wider pool of people who have the leisure to have anyone notice their attention spans.

The proportion of people who sit down and enjoy a long novel, as a percentage of people who have the time to do so if they chose, may not have changed one iota.

People enjoy brief entertainments because they have things to do. The idle rich enjoy long winded entertainments because they don’t have things to do.

Free time is a post-industrial novelty for all but a tiny number of aristocrats. And still most of what the workers get is doled out in very small chunks. It’s hardly surprising that most people don’t invest a lot of time in a single long session of constant attention for fun, when that level of attentiveness is demanded of them at work.

If anything, I suspect attention spans are getting longer.

You raise some good points, but the internet is (and should be) a major factor in how many of us experience the world now. They don't call it the 'attention' economy for nothing, ubiquitous applications that are specifically designed to grab and keep our attention with an enormous amount of rapid blips and notifications.

Your argument likely holds true for people living in the 50s - 90s, but it's literally a different world now. It takes an act of enormous willpower to resist the internet, and it's been my observation that many in my (and future) generations don't have this willpower. I have a young sister-in-law born in 1994 and it's rare to see her without a smartphone in hand. My brother is a teacher of high-school students and the internet is a (very) serious problem for many of them. They don't know how to sit down and study.

I've seen studies that suggest our attention spans actually are decreasing, but I couldn't really speak to their validity so I won't bother linking them.

My daughter at UNI started tracking her screen time. She realized that TikTok was like crack and has been weaning herself off (and most apps). She's set a goal for reading books again too. I'm hoping her younger siblings follow her lead, but I doubt it.

My wife and I have many younger friends who use it. I considered signing up recently, then realized I really don't want to go down that rabbit hole.

Apparently China has a version that is kid-friendly, which isn't available in the U.S. One wonders why?

 

[steve_bank]

Yes I am sure.

I am a bay boomer born in 1951.

Kids in my generation figured out how to entertain ourselves, we called it play. We used our imaginations.

There is no imagination needed in video games, it is all stimulus and response. Rapid fire.

It is not just me. I listened to a report by a business owner. He said high school grads entering the work force need more structure and supervise than previous generations. Part of it he attributed to over strutted kids and not enough free play.

Myself and oters in my engineering generation noticed a trend. New grads unable to figure things out without a canned solution or app. There has been talk in the past about relying too much on computer simulations and solutions in engineering education.

If I were interviewing someone today for a job one question I would ask might be what books have you read?

 

[rousseau]

Yes I am sure.

I am a bay boomer born in 1951.

Kids in my generation figured out how to entertain ourselves, we called it play. We used our imaginations.

There is no imagination needed in video games, it is all stimulus and response. Rapid fire.

It is not just me. I listened to a report by a business owner. He said high school grads entering the work force need more structure and supervise than previous generations. Part of it he attributed to over strutted kids and not enough free play.

Myself and oters in my engineering generation noticed a trend. New grads unable to figure things out without a canned solution or app. There has been talk in the past about relying too much on computer simulations and solutions in engineering education.

If I were interviewing someone today for a job one question I would ask might be what books have you read?

We're keeping a lot of this in mind as we raise our boys. No screens until they're two. Now we limit our toddler to 30 minutes of TV per day. We'll never buy them tablets or modern gaming systems.

I hate to be the old guy shouting at a cloud, but we've been to a number of gatherings with my niece and nephew and their cousins, and these kids spend most of their time on devices. As you mention, you're just not learning any meaningful skills with your head buried in a device.

 

[southernhybrid]

I'm a boomer and I'm a little older than Steve. It's true that we did play and walk a lot when we were children, but we did a lot of reading too. I know I did. I started reading adult novels by the time I was 11, not porn, just novels that were written for grownups. I was forced to read the Bible but never really enjoyed it. Oddly enough I loved poetry and memorized a shit load of it. I say odd because I dislike poetry now, unless it sends an emotional message and is short. The long tedious stuff just doesn't do it for me anymore. Blah...

I made the mistake of majoring in English for 3 years before I decided to learn something that would help me have a career. I could have easily learned all that I learned in my English classes without going to college. I also had loans, and it was fun having a radical leftist Western Civ teacher. During my early adulthood, I read lots of books when I had the time. If I didn't like a novel, I wouldn't bother to waste my time finishing it. Suddenly around the age of 50, I started to despise fiction books so I switched to non fiction. I can't explain it. I guess I was tired of reading about the lives and problems of fictional people. I had patients with all kinds of interesting stories to tell, and while my job was often very stressful, it was always interesting, and challenging far more so than fiction.

So... I read books on atheism, anthropology, history, sociology, aging etc. and I developed a special love for reading about our brains. I mean.....what are we but our brains? I read books that reinforced my belief that there was no such thing as free will, at least not in the purist sense. I think that basically we are all the benefactors or victims of our genetic and environmental heritage. We can't help who we are, although new environmental influences can sometimes change humans for better or worse.

Eventually, I bought a kindle and started to hate dead tree books, as the late DMB often referred to them. I'm not a fast reader anymore, so I probably only read about 5 or 5 books a year. But, I read a lot. I read WaPo, the NYT, the AJC, and lots of medical and science articles. It's so much fun to look up things on the Internet on any subject in the world. Of course, I'm careful not to read junk sites, so I always check the credentials of the writer etc. This week I'm reading about gender as a social construct, along with reading the narratives of people who see themselves as nonbinary or gender fluid etc. Without the internet, think of how much trouble it would take to learn about any variety of subjects. I like this new world that allows us to read a lot with or without books. In fact, I'm beginning to see books as simply projects that are important to authors. There are so many ways of learning without books. It's getting hard for me to find a new book that I really like although I could probably find a half a dozen that I've read over the past decade that were meaningful and enjoyable enough to read twice or plan to read twice.

Those of us on IIDB probably read a lot more than the average person. A lot of people only read misinformation, so of course there is a down side to the internet, considering that along with the enlightening parts, there are the parts that spread false information, including harmful conspiracy theories etc. When it comes to humans, it seems there is always something negative along with the positive

But, can we help who we are? I doubt it.

So, what kind of books do you guys like to read? Do you have favorite authors? Do you like dead tree books? I promise I'll read your replies.

 

[James Brown]

I thought this was relevant for this discussion:

The Need for Cultural Literacy

Cultural literacy is the broad network of contextual information that helps us understand not only books but all media, from music to podcasts to movies. It allows us to dialogue with these mediums, and with each other. It allows culture to function, and if the literacy level is high enough, to thrive.

 

[Politesse]

Apparently China has a version that is kid-friendly, which isn't available in the U.S. One wonders why?

At a guess: a well intentioned law, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) has made publishing any child-oriented content potentially litigious and expensive, particularly for sites that allow un-curated user contributions. China would not hesitate to simply throw the book at any site with content they consider inappropriate, the determination which is all handled by the same government office worth near total discretion over its judgement. Trim, efficient, nearly if not wholly beyond appeal. Here, removing contested content from social media sites is a much more drawn out process involving many parties with conflicting interests, which a Chinese company would find annoying at best to navigate. There are costs and benefits to any social system. It's much easier to publish books in China, too, bur you are not at liberty to include whatever content you like. The pros, the cons.

 

[bilby]

I'm not a fast reader anymore, so I probably only read about 5 or 5 books a year.

Well, which is it, 5 or 5?

I need to know!!!

 

[bilby]

So, what kind of books do you guys like to read? Do you have favorite authors? Do you like dead tree books?

I read a lot, mostly science fiction (but very rarely fantasy), some historical fiction, lots of history non-fiction, particularly Seventeenth century Europe (Thirty Years War, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the Enlightenment, etc.) some alternate history stuff (which pretty much combines the others). A lot of science non-fiction when I was younger, and the odd classic or romance. I went through a Shakespeare phase in my teens, helped by the fact that (unlike my sister) I didn't have any obligation from school to read it.

I tend to buy a stack of works by different authors I don't know, until I find something that I really love, and then I buy everything by that author until I have read the lot. Typically I will have more than one marquee author at a time, and swap between them depending on my mood - some writers require more brainpower than others.

Mostly these days I buy Kindle books, though I do love dead trees. Kindle had the advantage of portability, and of allowing me to buy when and where I like, rather than having to wait for the bookstores to open.

Right now I have recently exhausted the works of Adrian Tchaikovsky and Neal Stevenson, and am working my way through Greg Egan, Sean McMullen, and most recently, Alistair Reynolds. For something easier, John Birmingham is good, and doesn't tie your brain in multidimensional knots like Egan does. Reading Greg Egan is like touring a gallery of Escher paintings, if the gallery itself had an impossible topography.

As a kid, I did much the same with the classic sci-fi authors (Asimov, Clarke et al.), but using dead tree books in the local libraries, due to eReaders being common at the time only as fictional devices, and to being too poor to buy many real books for myself.

I have always been a voracious reader, and would read anything that was available. Unlike my contemporaries at school, I never saw reading as a chore, and I was never put off by genres or guidelines - I read books for girls, and books for grownups, as well as books for boys, and still don't really get why people feel the need to divide them in this way - if something is well written, anyone can enjoy reading it. But that's probably because I'm weird.

Ir maybe it's why I am weird.

Anyway, growing up with an older sister and a very catholic taste in reading, meant that I read plenty of stuff set in girls boarding schools wherein the protagonists solved crimes in between lacrosse and hockey games. Apparently the boarding school system was the chief provider of criminal investigations in England in the 1950s, and the main difference between boys' schools and girls' was that boys played cricket and rugby in the breaks between their murder cases, and were more likely to physically restrain their arrestees, while the girls typically enlisted the village bobby for any rough stuff (despite their extensive training in the use of force on the hockey fields).

These days I don't have much time for reading, so I only get through two or three books a week. It wasn't until I left studying for working that I realised you could stop reading a book before you finished it, and pick it up again the next day. I mean, I knew it was possible, but not why anyone would actually do it.

 

[southernhybrid]

I'm not a fast reader anymore, so I probably only read about 5 or 5 books a year.

Well, which is it, 5 or 5?

I need to know!!!

Damn my aging eyes. It's 5, I tell you. 5! Or maybe 6. Did I get that right?

I enjoyed reading your reply about the books you've enjoyed and still enjoy reading. Other atheists think I'm weird because I've never liked science fiction. I've always been more interested in realism, even when it comes to fiction. I think it's interesting how individuals develop different tastes when it comes to reading.

 

[lpetrich]

I've given away most of my dead-tree books, because they are bulky and heavy. I prefer to get e-books instead, because they are much less bulky -- and much easier to search. The only ones that I'm keeping are those that I can't find online.

Asimov wrote an essay in 1973 "The Ancient and the Ultimate" about a portable re... | Hacker News - About Isaac Asimov's description of a good information-display device:

You'll have to admit that such a cassette would be a perfect futuristic dream: self-contained, mobile, non-energy-consuming, perfectly private, and largely under the control of the will.

Ah, but dreams are cheap so let's get practical. Can such a cassette possibly exist? To this, my answer is Yes, of course. The next question is: How many years will we have to wait for such a deliriously perfect cassette?

I have an answer for that, too, and a quite definite one. We will have it in minus five thousand years--because what I have been describing...is a book!

Yes, dead-tree books have that advantage of simplicity, along with dead-sheep ones (parchment), dead-reed ones (papyrus), and dead-mountain ones (clay tablets).

But such books are not very easily searchable, and searchability has been a part of computer software for over half a century. It has been a part of interactive text editors for over half a century, and a part of file-management software for almost as long. Internet search engines go back to 1990, one called Archie. Many Internet sites are searchable, like messageboard sites, like this one.

 

[lpetrich]

About searchability, Isaac Asimov wrote an essay, "The Sound of Panting" (Astounding Science Fiction, now Analog, 1955), collected in "Only a Trillion". It was about him having to keep up with the research in his professional field, biochemistry.

Asimov Suggests Science of Data | News | The Harvard Crimson - 1964

Science's rapid accumulation of data, Asimov said, has created the need for a new branch of science, information retrieval. The new field, he said, should attempt to make the data scientists need available to them simply "by pushing the right button."

Regaling his audience with a Jackie Masonesque style, Asimov then launched into a lengthy example of how Mendel's theories of heredity were overlooked for a generation, the delay producing misconceptions that may ultimately have led to two world wars.

That problem is now solved, happy to say, with computer-software search capability. Not only Internet search engines, but also archives of abstracts and preprints like PubMed and ArXiv.

 

[southernhybrid]

Another thing I hate about the dead tree books is that with age, they have become almost impossible for me to read. They are difficult to hold in my small, arthritic. hands and some of them have such tiny font size that I can barely read them. And, as Lpetrich said, they are bulky. I like being able to take my little kindle library wherever I go. I can read from one book and then switch to another one if I want to read something different. Additionally,, there are many free kindle or online books, especially classics.

I've given most of my books away, although I do still have a couple of shelves of them. The one that I will probably keep for sentimental reasons is "Women Without Superstition". It's a compilation of freethinking women and the contributions they've made to society.

 

[bigfield]

Yes I am sure.

I am a bay boomer born in 1951.

Kids in my generation figured out how to entertain ourselves, we called it play. We used our imaginations.

There is no imagination needed in video games, it is all stimulus and response. Rapid fire.

It is not just me. I listened to a report by a business owner. He said high school grads entering the work force need more structure and supervise than previous generations. Part of it he attributed to over strutted kids and not enough free play.

Myself and oters in my engineering generation noticed a trend. New grads unable to figure things out without a canned solution or app. There has been talk in the past about relying too much on computer simulations and solutions in engineering education.

If I were interviewing someone today for a job one question I would ask might be what books have you read?

People who don't play video games like to criticise it as unhealthy and brainless, but I can't think of any widespread activity more brain-rotting than watching TV, the quintessential boomer tradition. Unlike video games, TV is a utterly passive activity that requires minimal imagination or critical thinking.

In comparison, video games often require you to actively engage in problem solving, creativity, and deep focus. Many video games also have rich storytelling that inspires that imagination just as effectively as a novel or a movie.

A few video games are very difficult to play and require exceptional cognitive and motor skills that take a lot of time to develop. They require impressive feats of analysis, memorisation, rapid recall, decision making under pressure, and long term skills such as the discipline and focus required to get good in the first place.

And social media may be poison, but it's just a substitute for TV, that more familiar poison that boomers take for granted like the smoke-filled air of a 20th century restaurant.

So I'm unconvinced that younger generations, Millennials and beyond have suffered at all in their development as a result of video games. If anything it's probably made them smarter.

Baby Boomers were the pioneers of the couch potato lifestyle. Yet there are still a minority of boomers who enjoy reading and other quiet intellectual pursuits. Nothing has changed as the generations have rolled by: you will still find that bookish minority among Gen X, Millennials and Zoomers. And before Boomers, you would find merely a bookish minority among the Silent, Greatest, and Lost Generations.

Kids in my generation figured out how to entertain ourselves, we called it play. We used our imaginations.

Children still do that. Maybe you should pick up a book on children's neurodevelopment or early childhood education? You know, practice what you're preaching?

 

[steve_bank]

Other than chess I vace not palyed a video game since around 1984. Aracde games.

I once heard it said the best entertainment is learning something new.

Video games are boring and mind numbing. Little thought and imagination are required.

Kids and young adults are said to be manifesting increased mental issue including suicide. I don't drive anymore, I walk and take public transit. People walking around head down in a wireless device are common. oblivious to what is around them. Emersion in a digital 'Matrix' would be another thread.

I look at pop culture much the same way I look at religion. Both have positives and negatives.

 

[bigfield]

Other than chess I vace not palyed a video game since around 1984. Aracde games.

I once heard it said the best entertainment is learning something new.

Video games are boring and mind numbing. Little thought and imagination are required.

You have no experience of 99.99% of video games, and your only experience with video games is with an extremely primitive format from which you cannot possibly say anything meaningful about the decades of video games, across various platforms, many genres and several decades of technological and artistic growth, that have been made since 1984.

Therefore, who are you to say tbat video games are mind numbing and boring? You are talking like the fox who claims the grapes are sour because he cannot reach them.

 

[Politesse]

Other than chess I vace not palyed a video game since around 1984. Aracde games.

I once heard it said the best entertainment is learning something new.

Video games are boring and mind numbing. Little thought and imagination are required.

Kids and young adults are said to be manifesting increased mental issue including suicide. I don't drive anymore, I walk and take public transit. People walking around head down in a wireless device are common. oblivious to what is around them. Emersion in a digital 'Matrix' would be another thread.

I look at pop culture much the same way I look at religion. Both have positives and negatives.

Your memories of playing Pac-Man are not preparing you adequately to understand the experience of playing, say, Skyrim...

That seems a bit off topic though, so perhaps a standalone thread on "video gaming as a thing people do" would be in order.

Notwithstanding my library in Skyrim is getting pretty impressive. I believe I'm only missing seven book titles at this point, and eight of the spell tomes. Master librarian, me!

 

[southernhybrid]

Can't we discuss books without making stupid stereotypes about different generations? I have two grandchildren, ages 9 and 11. They both love to read books so much that most of the things on their Xmas gift list were books! They also play board games with their parents.Their Gen X dad did love gaming but once the kids were born, he and his wife spent less time playing games. They both love to read books, especially my daughter in law, but since she doesn't work outside of her home, she has a lot more time to read. While I've never been into games, I realize that many of them are very complicated. The research I've read hasn't shown any negative impact on brain development from gaming. We are all influenced by the times in which we grew up, so if boomers had access to video games when we were children, we would have played them too.

So, what type of books do the rest of you like to read? If you don't read books, do you enjoy reading other reading material?