The uses of literary

[Lark]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this but it is were people are discussing what they are reading.

I was reading about a book by a US social critic Chris Hedges in which he discusses the fact that some college graduates do not read books again in their lives and those that do restrict themselves to popular fiction (based upon book sales from the top retailers).

What do you think about this? Does it matter? Do you think your reading habits are the same or any different and does that matter to you or have any wider social implications or do you think that matters?

 

[Cygnus]

Few weeks ago I took out a simple reference book on the Crusades, as well as a translation of the Aeneid, from the local library. Never finished the crusade book and I didn't even get on to the Aeneid. Though I probably wouldn't have understood the epic's nuances anyway.


All my college work is submitted online so I'm glued to my laptop. And of course my computer distracts me easily so I'm still not very productive.

 

[Lark]

I had planned to read Theodore Adorno's book no the culture industry when I got back from the states too but its mislaid some place, anyway, he is supposed to engage on this long winded bitch about how with the leisure time afforded by modern working, he's writing I presume about people who arent holding down multiple jobs or working unsocial hours or things like that but anyway, he would expect that Americans would be among the most talented, most cultured and most fit people in the world but in fact this wasnt the case and so he supposed there was a villainous trend stoked by marketeers and ad men and television to divert people to trivial and trivialising things.

This is sort of the same topic, although I might post another about how people use their free time or if they've thought about it, I think Neil Postman writes some similar stuff in Amusing Ourselves to Death about TV and a sequel Remotely Controlled, so screen time and thinking about how best to use free time hasnt gone away.

I kind of wonder about it though because from the stand point of someone interested in moral philosophy a lot of unlikely mediums like childrens cartoons or sci fi TV shows are great and actually are mass mediums too. Perhaps its reality TV or celebrity TV which is the real trouble for these thinkers.

 

[Galena]

I have read very little since leaving school, and read as little as I could scrape by with for school. I'm not poor at reading, though, as I was actually a voracious reader as a child. However, this inclination died down in adolescence for reasons I still don't know. Here is my experience with the OP.

Fiction is what I read the least of - I haven't finished even one fictional book in a few years now. Again, I don't understand what the aversion is truly about, which is why I'm putting my fractured stabs at it out here.

For one thing, reading a story is an emotional commitment. If I put down a book when I am in the middle of it, the mood of the unresolved conflicts will color the rest of my day. This leads me to be choosy to the point of avoidant tendencies when approaching fiction. Perhaps this is an emotional regulation issue. Or hyperfocusing - switching gears between activities has always been an ordeal for me. Due to this, the restriction to popular fiction doesn't apply to me - it would be the very last thing I'd invest this kind of energy into.

Another difficulty is feeling like I've gotten nothing done if I spend my time reading fiction. That it is impractical. When I close the book, I don't see what I have to show for it. Nothing new has been created, for all those hours. But then again, I hardly do anything more productive with my days anyway - I've come to the conclusion that although I am not literally a substance of gambling addict, there is very little that I do, ever, without an element of self-medication to it these days. Unless my material survival depends on it, I don't ever finish things - I just suck a hit of something out of their novel colors and leave them behind for the next thing, unfinished and dry. It's disappointing to realize I don't know what the something is, but that's the truth - and books do not have it. Everything is a distraction from something else. Books are perhaps the most concrete example, as between loving them and forgetting them, I spent time in an intermediate stage where I picked up a ton of books I didn't finish or, in the case of some, even start. Eventually, I stopped trusting myself with these purchases at all.

If one thing can be distilled from my anecdote, it's that the books aren't the one with the problem.

Occasionally I read nonfiction, but am very picky about that - with a lot of those books, I feel like they would be 80% shorter if the irrelevant information and anecdotes were taken out. It has to be extremely to the point and relevant to a pressing personal issue or interest. In a way, I guess textbooks are my ideal nonfiction reading.