Eccentric Flower:200911/Leviathan

Rhonda:

1. No it's not. It was just resting. I've got a kid who begs to be taken to the library every week. Reading is alive and well among the people who will be adults eventually. 2. True. Because some of us are visual thinkers, and a well-designed graphic is sometimes the best way to communicate an idea. 3. Yep. Also, Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. 4. <lovingly>Get over your insecurities.</lovingly>

-- 17:58, 10 November 2009 (GMT)

Platypus:

I am a highly visual person, but I don't particularly like having my perception of a character or a place in a book nailed down quite as precisely as an illustration will do. The illustrations in that book look nice, except the humans remind me of Lemony Snicket characters, and I think that would end up a bit distracting.

-- 19:37, 10 November 2009 (GMT)

Joy:

I was just telling guppy this weekend that I love stories/accounts of history that imagine what the world would be like today if various events/factors/etc were different. So in theory I should like this book. But. But - I know next to nothing about WWI, which I suspect would be a huge roadblock in my enjoyment of the differences and what-ifs.

-- 20:47, 10 November 2009 (GMT)

Settsimaksimin:

that book looks delightful and i have added it to my very long list.

hopefully the books i've stockpiled will be enough to keep me entertained after they turn off the world's printing presses tomorrow.

-- 21:25, 10 November 2009 (GMT)

Bunny42:

Settsimaksimin, my thought, as well. I can't go anywhere without seeing people reading. Well, or texting, but those are teenagers. I can't imagine books going away. At least, not tomorrow.

-- 21:50, 10 November 2009 (GMT)

Jette:

We watched Ghostbusters a week ago and now I just keep imagining you saying "Print is dead" in a very Harold Ramis way.

-- 05:44, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

Columbina:

While I am always willing to discuss an idea and usually to displace it with another idea, some ideas are heavier stones to move than others. Also, I dislike getting in my friends' faces and saying "you are wrong" - or, in this case, maybe not wrong but misreading data. Either is a mite insulting.

But I hold that among this local peer group there is a very strong selection set issue - that is, most of you are inclined to be readers, most of you are lifelong readers, you tend to consciously or unconsciously choose to be in social contact with other readers, you raise children who are readers, et cetera - and good on you! but it's a bubble. I don't think the world outside the bubble is like that.

I work at a college. I see what's coming through the doors. And what I see is a group of people between the ages of twenty and thirty who have not acquired either the art of, or interest in, absorbing any text content more than a sentence or two long. I also see it, to my great despair, in many of my co-workers and peers who are not students. If it can't be encapsulated in two or three sentences, it simply does not get absorbed. This is a problem because a whole lot of ideas are simply too complex or too nuanced to be expressed that concisely. And Bunny, the "texting" distinction is important. Those teenagers you see texting are teenagers who, I wager, either stopped reading or never picked up the knack in the first place.

I propose that, outside our self-selecting circle, reading - and I don't just mean reading for pleasure, although that was first up against the wall, but also reading for information - is becoming a Dead Skill. I don't know that a dead skill ever truly dies. Sometimes it comes back. We've seen renaissances in several ancient crafts as people decided they'd lost something in forgetting how to do it the old way. There are still operational coopers (although they seem to be all in Portugal)* and fletchers and weavers and so on; there are people who have relearned how to make tools by hand, even though it's less efficient, because ultimately the tools are more satisfying. But these people will never be more than a curiosity to the bulk of the populace now, and that is where I think reading will end up, in that same niche. I envision that before the end of my lifetime, being someone who reads books thick with words on purpose is like someone who has a full-sized eight-pedal loom in their house** - nothing wrong with it, but most people will look at you sideways a little about it.

* There is one Cooper known to me in Minnesota, however.

** I don't, but my aunt did, and I know how to set up and use one, as long as it's straight weave - I never got the hang of reading loom patterns.

-- 16:46, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

Jweader:

Maybe you're just extrapolating from the wrong sample set. I read much more in my mid/late teens (when I had lots more free time) and in my 30's (as a grizzled T commuter) than I did during my 20's. I don't really remember reading much of anything for pleasure when I was in college, or in the following 5-ish years.

My daily commute would suggest that, at least among the working population of this area, reading is alive and well. And I think that counts for a larger cross-section than just the middle-aged professionals who come in on the train; it's a pretty good spread of folks on the subway who are nose-in-book every morning, too.

-- 17:14, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

Mmancuso:

Just curious, C-- Are we talking about any kind of reading? To whom are all the NYT bestsellers going to, all the Amazon books going to? (I know the numbers that are counted and then tallied into those lists do not always correspond directly to actual people actually reading the books all the way thru.) Who reads all the books that are selling from the bookstores?

What would you see that would make you stop and think, "Well, I see reading's coming back." Higher numbers of library card issuances, higher amazon sales, etc etc? I don't mind that you think reading is a dying art --perhaps it is-- but I wonder what you would see that might convince you otherwise?

-- 20:37, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

Mmancuso:

Regarding text/reading within visual art: I wonder what would happen if I slathered print all over a large sculpture, or series of paintings or vessels... Nothing obnoxiously convoluted in terms of form, which would play with the idea of the act of reading. The art would ask the question: How many formats trigger the reading response? Is the book the clear winner in terms of familiarity? The experience of reading a lot of non-book format text would be agonizing, mostly because people don't read while standing. (I shudder to think that even in a predominantly visual medium like film, people will avoid subtitles.) Nevertheless, despite the difficulties, I have thought of laying out very pretty typography on the surfaces of dimensional objects. Somehow I don't think this will appease you as a way to trap into reading those more attracted to visual art

I wonder if the black-and-white photo folks grumble similarly about that new-fangled color stuff. Color is more important than content in many cases, yet, of course, its purity secures its value to those it attracts. Would it help you to hear that I think that while visual art may have greater pull with the general audience, 80% of it is crap anyway, just as similar proportions may exist in writing?

-- 20:48, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

ProfRobert:

Mark, I'll confess that when in a museum, I'll look at a piece of art for a moment, and then make a beeline for the card on the wall next to it so I can read what I'm looking at.

-- 22:26, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

Bunny42:

Knitting is making a huge comeback. Admittedly, it seems to be the yuppie thing to do, but, for whatever reason, more and more people are learning, or, as in my case, dragging out the ole needles and getting busy. It was thought to be a dying skill, so there's some hope there, too.

I have to admit that Roy Underhill the Woodwright makes me nervous and edgy. There's no way I would process wood with those antiquated tools when there are modern alternatives, but to each his own. If I had to take as much time as he does, I'd never get anything done.

-- 22:27, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

Jweader:

What counts as "reading", anyway? Newspaper and magazine circulations are way down in the last decade. Book sales have been actually pretty flat on average over the last 8-10 years. But the amount of reading done online has definitely increased since 2000 (though I can't find any real numbers about how much people are viewing news, commentary, blogs, etc.)

I expect you're meaning just the traditional book, and the sales figures don't seem to support your accusation. I don't have a good feel for whether the newspaper/magazine readers have all just gone online, have switched to tv news, or gave up altogether.

-- 14:17, 12 November 2009 (GMT)

Peebles:

The devil's advocate in my head wants to know: "So what if reading goes the way of the dodo? Civilization persisted for millennia before there was widespread literacy or the concept of pleasure reading; civilization will survive without it again."

-- 14:54, 12 November 2009 (GMT)

Columbina:

Peebles: No argument here. That doesn't mean civilization may not be poorer for the loss, though.

Marc: Book sales are pretty flat, as has been noted elsewhere above, and I expect them to be showing signs of decline soon. There will always be a best-seller list (and it will always be full of veriest crap), but the numbers over the long term don't seem to be increasing. "Best-seller" is a relative term. It can mean you sold ten copies and all your rivals sold one.

Yes, I was focusing primarily on traditional books. (Periodicals are already gone.) I'm not excluding the web and other new media out of any Luddite tendencies, not exactly - but we don't have enough information yet to see where that trend is going, and I for one am not optimistic, since it strikes me that everything about the web encourages reading things in short, ADD-like bursts.

I admit readily that my own failure at reading large amounts of electronic text onscreen (it is simply neither a pleasant medium nor posture for long reading, to me) doesn't necessarily carry over to other people, but still, I find it difficult to envision anyone reading long-form prose on a web page - or, until they get considerably better, an e-book.

I think it's difficult enough to get people to sit still to read short essays and stories on the web, so longer prose strikes me as doomed there. If I routinely see people complaining that they don't have enough time to read two thousand words - and I'm not just talking my own stuff here, folks, this is the trend everywhere I see - they're not going to be too interested in a full-length electronic novel.

-- 16:20, 12 November 2009 (GMT)