3 ms·

If all you care about are plot details, maybe. But you're missing out on a person's voice. Prose can be as beautiful as any piece of visual art in a gallery. N

If all you care about are plot details, maybe. But you're missing out on a person's voice. Prose can be as beautiful as any piece of visual art in a gallery. Not only are you depriving yourself of an aesthetic experience, but also a learning experience. Reading will boost your vocabulary and help your writing and give you more cultural references to pull from (and recognize, when they come up in another's work). But...if you can't be assed, you can't be assed, I suppose.

rayiner 8y ago
> But you're missing out on a person's voice. Prose can be as beautiful as any piece of visual art in a gallery. Not only are you depriving yourself of an aesthetic experience... Sure, but people who enjoy art don't write high-and-mighty articles titled "Just Go to MOMA Already." "Readers" act like these aesthetic experiences are something that are universally important. > Reading will boost your vocabulary and help your writing and give you more cultural references to pull from But this is only valuable if you're writing for other "readers" (which typically you're not).
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  Literacy is universally considered an important indicator of human development.
wilsonnb3 8y ago
> Prose can be as beautiful as any piece of visual art in a gallery For many people, "prose" is just what you have to get through to find out what happens in the plot or to the characters. A lot of people have a minimal appreciation for most forms of art and literature is far more subtle and unappreciated than visual and auditory forms of art. > Not only are you depriving yourself of an aesthetic experience, but also a learning experience. Reading will boost your vocabulary and help your writing and give you more cultural references to pull from (and recognize, when they come up in another's work). I'm not sure what the inherent merit you see in boosting one's vocabulary is. I know a lot of words that I never use and no one I know ever uses. If I didn't know them, my life wouldn't be any different. Reading is important for writers but most of us aren't writers. The vast majority of us that are writers write things like emails, internet comments, and work related documents. Not the kind of thing that reading fiction is going to help with. As for cultural references, culture has been trending away from literature and towards movies and television for a very long time. I'd go so far as to say that in modern American culture, you're not going to be missing anything by not reading books. Anyways, it's not that people "can't be assed", it's that books don't hold the same value for them that they hold for you. There's nothing wrong with that.
- byproxy 8y ago
  That last statement was me resigning myself to that fact. Slightly vulgar phrasing to contrast previous phrasing, which I find slightly humorous. can't be assed -> can't be bothered -> doesn't hold literature in high-regard -> I suppose - > okay. Anyway, spice-of-life, and all that. To each, their own. Etc.
- mcguire 8y ago
  I, too, preferred the animated, stick-figure version of Lawrence of Arabia.

rayiner 8y ago

> But you're missing out on a person's voice. Prose can be as beautiful as any piece of visual art in a gallery. Not only are you depriving yourself of an aesthetic experience... Sure, but people who enjoy art don't write high-and-mighty articles titled "Just Go to MOMA Already." "Readers" act like these aesthetic experiences are something that are universally important. > Reading will boost your vocabulary and help your writing and give you more cultural references to pull from But this is only valuable if you're writing for other "readers" (which typically you're not).

Apocryphon 8y ago
Literacy is universally considered an important indicator of human development.

wilsonnb3 8y ago

> Prose can be as beautiful as any piece of visual art in a gallery For many people, "prose" is just what you have to get through to find out what happens in the plot or to the characters. A lot of people have a minimal appreciation for most forms of art and literature is far more subtle and unappreciated than visual and auditory forms of art. > Not only are you depriving yourself of an aesthetic experience, but also a learning experience. Reading will boost your vocabulary and help your writing and give you more cultural references to pull from (and recognize, when they come up in another's work). I'm not sure what the inherent merit you see in boosting one's vocabulary is. I know a lot of words that I never use and no one I know ever uses. If I didn't know them, my life wouldn't be any different. Reading is important for writers but most of us aren't writers. The vast majority of us that are writers write things like emails, internet comments, and work related documents. Not the kind of thing that reading fiction is going to help with. As for cultural references, culture has been trending away from literature and towards movies and television for a very long time. I'd go so far as to say that in modern American culture, you're not going to be missing anything by not reading books. Anyways, it's not that people "can't be assed", it's that books don't hold the same value for them that they hold for you. There's nothing wrong with that.

byproxy 8y ago
That last statement was me resigning myself to that fact. Slightly vulgar phrasing to contrast previous phrasing, which I find slightly humorous. can't be assed -> can't be bothered -> doesn't hold literature in high-regard -> I suppose - > okay. Anyway, spice-of-life, and all that. To each, their own. Etc.
mcguire 8y ago
I, too, preferred the animated, stick-figure version of Lawrence of Arabia.