
The myth of the golden age of reading - pepys
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/the-myth-of-the-golden-age-of-reading
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edgarvaldes
My personal experience: I no longer get absorbed for hours reading a book, as
was the case when I was younger. The free time available is no excuse, because
I spend a lot of time in HN and the like. Before, reading was almost
inevitable, I did need to make an effort to put the books apart, nowadays I
need a lot of will to put away the phone to grab the same books that I adored
some years ago.

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d883kd8
I have experienced a similar dip in the level of, uh, retention and engagement
that books can elicit from me. Recently I kind of feel it turning around, and
there seem to be two main causes: using time on airplanes to get deep into a
book, and intentionally seeking out books that would suit my taste.

The airplane thing is a small one and may or may not suit your lifestyle. But
the bigger thing is that as a child or a teen, everything is new to you. There
are some books that are just about guaranteed to suck you in and expand your
worldview if you've never encountered them before. They are the low-hanging-
fruit curriculum books that just about anyone will benefit from. Once you've
exhausted the Catch-22s, the Mark Twains, the Tolkiens or Austens or Heinleins
of the world, you'll have to spend more effort to find books that really
resonate with you.

For me, this meant following sites like The Baffler and Electric Literature. I
hope if you figure out where online people are reviewing and promoting the
books you enjoy, you'll find yourself funneled toward books that are capable
of drawing you in again.

As a concrete recommendation, I just finished The Overstory by Richard Wright,
which won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction this year, and absolutely could not
put it down.

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mikestew
Books not so much, maybe because there are many hundreds of years of output
from which to choose. But, man, movies and TVs are that way for me (ignoring
the obvious reboots from my childhood or teen years). A little from column A,
a sprinkling of column B, and...yeah, I've seen this before, it just had a
different title. What's the saying, nothing new has been written since
Shakespeare?

I'll give the sites you recommend a whirl, thanks.

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ImaCake
I am unapologetic about my embracing of digital reading. I read a lot of
history books and find that access to wikipedia and google earth enhance the
experience. Not only can I enjoy the book, but I can enrich the experience by
taking up extra context from easily available online sources.

If you haven't tried it, pick up the ebook of "Voyage of the Beagle" and trace
Darwin's travels with google earth and wiki. I assure you that the time you
spend "distracted" looking at pictures of Patagonia will be a great time.

~~~
vo2maxer
Your comment illustrates the vast range of reading experiences available now
unlike any time before. The important part is the reading, regardless of the
medium. No apologies needed for those who would question the form. Leah Price
alludes to this in the interview: “Personally, I’m not concerned about the
survival of the object; I am very concerned about the survival of those human
practices or activities.” I try to do as much as possible across all available
reading formats. My requirements are to read, enjoy, and learn.

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coldtea
A, this favorite trope, about how critique of the future, is always based on
some invalid romanticized aspect of the past. Sorry, but this is BS:

"Even before the digital age, book-lovers were always prone to distraction"

Yeah, they were, but not in "the whole world reachable and available for
distraction 24/7 , reading on a web-surfing capable device, in the social-
media era", way...

You might get away with presenting this view 20-30 years into the future, but
as of now, there are lots of us who have lived through both times as adults
and can do the comparison...

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taude
I completely agree with this. Having spent the first half of my professional
life without the always on-internet in my pocket, I couldn't agree more. And
even now, I have to force myslef to distraction free time to try and read, and
it's so much more difficult than it used to be.

In fact, I'm going back to traditional paper books, so that I don't have a
simple swipe to distract me. I started digital reading on a Kindle, but don't
plan on replacing my 6 year old one. And then I tried transitioning to Kindle
on the iPad and my Android phone. Too easy to get distracted.

~~~
milesvp
I don't know which kindle you have, but I wanted to say, that I finally bought
a kindle (paper white) and it has been a breath of fresh air. It's possibly my
best purchase this year. I use it when I want escapism without the noise that
is my phone. For me it's turned into a good medium ground even though I prefer
a book's aesthetics. The last book I tried to read, I literally could only
make it 2/3 of the way before it was impractical to hold one handed, a
limitation of reading while holding twins until they fall asleep. Also the
backlight. I can read a book without having to turn on a light when dealing
with said twins in the middle of the night.

~~~
taude
I have a five year old Kindle White, which I really like. I'm a little nervous
about the white/blue light affecting my sleep, though....

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gnicholas
> _If you asked people in Britain or in the US a generation ago what book they
> had in their house, the most common answers would have been a Bible and a
> telephone book. So when we blame the absence of printed books for the
> distraction and the impatience and superficiality of the digital world, it’s
> unfair. We’re comparing an ideal scenario of print reading with a more
> realistic assessment of digital reading._

Sure, those might have been the most common answer to the question of "what
books do you have in your home?", but that does not mean that people didn't
also have/read other books. It just means that the n-dimensional venn diagram
of book ownership centered around the Bible and the phone book. It's obvious
that most of the books that I own are not the same as most of the books that
my neighbors own, so those (more traditional) "books" wouldn't be the most
common answers to this particular question.

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zarro
No doubt today we have more tools at our disposal to distract ourselves but
regardless reading is still the highest bandwidth method of transmitting and
retaining information and its not going away until a better method is found.

The proposition I disagree with is the idea that people don't read as much or
to the same extent as the "good ol days", which I think is false. There are a
lot more people now, maybe the frequency as a percent of the total population
is lower, but in aggregate numbers there are more people reading to a greater
extent than ever before living right now and the demand for books/reading
material has never been higher in the history of mankind.

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gnicholas
My reading-related startup recently did a study to assess the current status
of the digital-versus-print debate. Even though our respondents were pretty
tech savvy (they use our Chrome extension), the preference in favor of paper
over screen was surprising. I did not expect it to be so much of a landslide,
especially given how tech savvy the respondents were.

[https://medium.com/@BeeLineReader/even-for-ebook-readers-
the...](https://medium.com/@BeeLineReader/even-for-ebook-readers-the-
preference-for-paper-remains-strong-3fc5cd0d6245)

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Isamu
My experience is that the internet has drastically increased my use of the
library, since now they are all networked (in my region) and affiliated with
combined catalogs into a mega-library.

It is easier than ever before to borrow. I see a book recommendation e.g. on
HN and I can immediately find it and request it to be delivered to the closest
branch.

Since it is just as easy to request several, I'll order an assortment of books
on the same topic from as many libraries and they show up in roughly the same
time if they are available. Perfect for "syntopical reading" as Mortimer Adler
calls it.

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scarejunba
Having a Kindle and the associated apps is wild for reading. Now I do it way
more than I used to. I remember one of the downsides of switching to a fifteen
minute commute for me was that I couldn't reasonably get into a book before I
got to work and so the overhead of physical management dominated the reading
experience. With Kindle, no overhead, I have it on my phone and it integrates
with my other devices (Voyage, iPad) to keep my position synced.

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mruts
I find this romanticism of reading a little odd. When I was a kid and teenager
I was a voracious fiction reader, finishing a couple fantasy or sci-fi novels
a week. My parents always thought I was involved in some virtious activity
that was a clear sign of how “gifted” and mature I was. In reality, all I was
doing was passively consuming. Reading books like that is most certainly a
vice, and while not especially bad for you, isn’t especially worthwhile
either.

~~~
dawg-
That may be how you tell yourself the story of your old reading habit, but as
a fellow voracious childhood reader I would disagree completely. I think
reading is a very active process of imagination, analyzing characters and
plots, and forming opinions for oneself. My reading habit I picked up as a
child is one of my most cherished possessions and an essential part of who I
am.

As vices go, reading is surely not a bad one to get caught up in :)

~~~
Hitton
That's interesting point of view. We are probably different, but as as a kid
and young teen I didn't really analyze characters and plots much (different
education system) and although I noticed some references and allusions, I
didn't think about it deeper. When I later discovered "Tv Tropes" it opened my
eyes and in way sucked lot of enjoyment from reading. I started noticing
various plot devices much more and realized how much of what I read is
derivative. Really ignorance is bliss.

I can't even say it has significantly benefited me. Most of what I read was
rather trivial literature and even though it gave me good reading
comprehension, I can't stop to wonder if it wouldn't have been better to for
instance play sports and cultivate interpersonal skills, teamwork, discipline
and hard work.

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andywenkhh
I still prefer paper books over digital reading. As a CTO I have to finde some
digital and online free time. That gives me the freedom to not be distracted
and read.

~~~
magic_beans
Simple: don't allow yourself to be distracted. Even with a paper book,
distractions abound if you allow them.

~~~
andywenkhh
Thanks for your comment. Fair enough. Maybe I should have said "gives me the
freedom to be offline". To not be distracted is requiring a big amount of self
discipline.

