In school, we are drilled into thinking reading is an unqualified good thing. Reading programmes exist to boost the amount of reading children do. Parents chastise their kids for watching TV instead of reading a book.
Against this background, we forget that reading is ultimately a form of consumption. It doesn’t inherently make the world a better place. It doesn’t, by itself, produce anything.
It matters a lot what you read. Reading can be a gateway to learning and fulfilment, but it can also be an addictive time-sink that leads nowhere. It’s a particular trap for those with an intellectual or introverted bent.
I fear that the good intentions of teachers trying to get kids to read more at all costs risks only doing half the job, and leaving a population without the media literacy to choose wisely which books to consume, or without the restraint to know when it’s time to stop reading and start acting.
I think you have it right. I study for a lot of certification exams (They are very popular in networking and security), I've found that a lot of content around learning has moved to videos rather than "exam guides" produced by the vendor/company offering the video. It could be styles of learning thing but I much prefer the written content.
It strikes me that one advantage of the written word is that the information density is so much higher than in other mediums. I generally watch the videos at 2x speed and still feel like I'm not learning as much when I read for an equivalent time.
However your point about "what" you read is well taken. Just as in watching youtube or movies you can read trash just as you can watch trash.
>It strikes me that one advantage of the written word is that the information density is so much higher than in other mediums.
This is true, but it also goes beyond density. Long-form written works tend to have more room for breadth, depth and nuance. I find that's where much of the value sometimes comes from, e.g., I didn't get anything much out of the main text of the last non-fiction book I read, but three of the footnotes introduced me to other sources that did turn out to be useful for my work.
The brain is wired with language. Our inner monologues are most commonly speaking to ourselves using words. Reading is similar to meditation in that it's about YOU controlling your thoughts, putting focus into what you're reading. Additionally, the content is the result of a process: some form of author qualification, editing, formatting, publication took place. It's also intimate: just the author and you (although, this is not necessarily true). But on the whole I suspect there's more integrity on the printed page, less "big money" certainly. In summary, there are lots of reasons why reading deserves a privileged place.
However, if you want to learn something, you gotta go at it from every direction: maybe first of all just try head on, try & fail. Then read books if available, of course, but search online, look for YouTube videos, seek out mentors, and so on. Just like everything else you can only read effectively for so many hours per day.
In the end I can only really speak for myself: reading books feels TO ME like one of the best possible uses of time. You would have to pry the books out of my cold dead hands, etc. So just out of fellow feeling I try to encourage others to read more. But whatever works for you!
> Long-form written works tend to have more room for breadth, depth and nuance. I find that's where much of the value sometimes comes from, e.g., I didn't get anything much out of the main text of the last non-fiction book I read, but three of the footnotes introduced me to other sources that did turn out to be useful for my work.
All of this is why I strongly favor reading. Well written books are just so worth sinking the time into, and then you have references/bibliographies. Yeah, you need to do something instead of "reading all the time" (stramwan from the article), but sometimes doing it correctly, or even just better, starts with a good book.
> Sturgeon's law : "ninety percent of everything is crap."
Books are no exception.
I particularly dislike the common belief that nonfiction is inherently superior as a form of media. Most nonfiction reads like an NYT article that ran a little too long. Even worse are pop-nonfiction books that read like a VOX article that ran too long. A lot of fiction captures ideas around antropology, sociology, politics and philosophy better than non-fiction books explicitly abput them.
Even books with good content tend to be either too fictionalized to facilitate readability or drab to the point of becoming a text book. Infact, I'd say that on the balance a random well reviewed fiction novel can be expected to be a lot more intellectually rewarding.
That being said, every once in a while I run into a book like 'why the west rules for now' and it somehow manages to be all of informative, entertaining, relevant and academically rigorous. I wish goodreads had a filter that allowed me exclusively find such books. Talk about pipe dreams.
Yeah, just like eating a lot doesn't make you a gourmand if all you're eating is McDonald's, reading a lot doesn't make you intellectual if all you're reading is mindless pulp.
For instance, watching Cosmos is probably a more intellectual pursuit than reading Twilight.
The other real problem is that even that pulp can sometimes have value above the material itself. Sometimes, even the most mass-marketed media can propose decent hypothetical questions and give cause for self-reflection.
It doesn't help that "reading" is a whole bunch of things (some of which may be performed in the absence of written words!) most of which build on elementary levels and continue upwards, like most any skill or field. I don't think this is well-enough communicated to students, because it seems like an awful lot make it all the way through graduate school thinking they can read, and, oh my, no they cannot. They can read like a middle schooler can "do math". Worse—especially for the ones who make it that far—they typically don't realize that they don't read well.
Like many things, it's largely practice. Adler's How to Read a Book is an accessible and well-regarded work on the topic, and its "three readings" framework, if not to be taken as an exhaustive gospel on the ways of reading—some people "can read" while failing to consistently achieve Adler's first reading, so there's plainly more that could be explored, and the book's not intended as an academic treatise on all the components of reading—is, at least, a solid practical guide.
I think the best explanation of how this all works is to liken it to listening to music: everyone can listen to music. Not everyone understands or appreciates a wide variety of music, or gets as much out of it as some do. One encounters "jazz is just noise" or "hip-hop is just noise", et c., opinions with some frequency—much as one encounters "the 'classics' are overrated, boring crap", when it comes to fiction, for example. A major part of learning to read well is internalizing the process of experiencing new genres or ways of expression, which one may not enjoy at first, just as many experience some discomfort and very little pleasure the first time they deliberately try to broaden their musical-appreciation horizons. This may mean reading texts about the texts to better understand them, or watching lectures, but it also means a whole lot of sheer exposure to the works themselves, just as it does with music.
If there's a single piece of advice I could give, it'd be to ask more questions, more often. Interrogate the text. What's wrong with this assertion, if anything? Does the text go on to address any problems I can see? If it does, is that satisfying? Do others see this problem? If not, what did I miss? Is this confidently-stated premise or postulate reasonable? If not, can the argument stand without it? Why is this character in this story? What's the structural reason this scene exists? If it seems pointless, but this work is very well-regarded, I'm probably missing something—what might that be? Does it have thematic or textural import that I'm failing to spot, and so, perhaps, missing much of the message of the work? Et c.
However, a lot of reading failures I see among Web posters are so basic that all the above is almost too advanced, and I don't know exactly how to address those problems. Simple reading comprehension failures that, incredibly, persist even when pointed out; misunderstanding how human language works, often taking the form of excessively literal readings that become weirdly and unhelpfully adversarial while failing to engage what the text was actually expressing; that kind of thing. This is part of what's behind the extreme over-explaining and frequent shouldn't-be-necessary disclaimers in writing by seasoned Web forum posters—I have a suspicion that readers who are that bad are not, in fact, extremely common, but are just, for whatever reason, unusually likely to engage in Web discussions, leading to the standard, gratingly-poor writing style of Web forums, aimed at pre-empting bad readers from posting useless flames or diversions from the topic, which efforts are still, often, insufficient.
> often taking the form of excessively literal readings that become weirdly and unhelpfully adversarial while failing to engage what the text was actually expressing
I see you, too, have seen people not understanding that Humbert Humbert is not supposed to be liked, and that the whole book is him trying to justify his actions. God, the number of people who misunderstand Lolita because they can't accept anything about it except at face value is way too high.
> I have a suspicion that readers who are that bad are not, in fact, extremely common, but are just, for whatever reason, unusually likely to engage in Web discussions
Sadly, bad readers are that common. I taught at a high school, and even some of the other teachers were bad readers, and most the students couldn't get anything but a very literal interpretation out of any text they read.
It reminds me of those campaigns that tell people to just go out there and vote. Reading and voting are means, not ends. It's a disservice to teach children not to be particular about such choices.
It's illegal for certain types of non-profit organizations to advocate for a particular candidate, but it's not illegal for them to "get out the vote" to particular demographics and locations that tend to vote a particular way.
Against this background, we forget that reading is ultimately a form of consumption. It doesn’t inherently make the world a better place. It doesn’t, by itself, produce anything.
It matters a lot what you read. Reading can be a gateway to learning and fulfilment, but it can also be an addictive time-sink that leads nowhere. It’s a particular trap for those with an intellectual or introverted bent.
I fear that the good intentions of teachers trying to get kids to read more at all costs risks only doing half the job, and leaving a population without the media literacy to choose wisely which books to consume, or without the restraint to know when it’s time to stop reading and start acting.