3 ms·

Who reads books anymore?

1 points by adrianwaj 18y ago

Admittedly, I am not into fiction, and I can get magazine quality content on the web, so why read books?

schtog 18y ago
There is much deeper knowledge in books. Just learning from the internets and reading magazine articles will keep you updated but make your knowledge shallow.
- adrianwaj 18y ago
  True, I don't read newspapers either, unless placed in front of me for some reason.
gills 18y ago
Literature is often of higher quality than magazine articles. Non-fiction books often delve more deeply into a subject than a series of articles. Many books are not available online in their entirety; at least not for free. And when I do spend money on a book I expect paper. It also gets your eyes off the monitor. These things can't be healthy to stare at 18 hours per day.
sebg 18y ago
For me, reading non-fiction books allows me to interact with historical figures and understand how they approached problems as well as how they arrived at their solutions. I've been reading many auto/biographies lately and more and more it has helped me realize that most over-night successes are really 20 years in the making. edit: Another thing that has helped me is in learning grammatically correct english and sentence construction. This is something that I have yet to find in abundance on the web.
noodle 18y ago
by not being "into" fiction, you're closing off the vast majority of why you would want to read books. if your only purpose is to simply learn about stuff, you can do a pretty good job of it online. i read books for many reasons: 1) pocket-sized entertainment w/o requiring electricity. 2) reading bulks of text on the computer is hard on the eyes, imo. 3) reading a book exercises the imagination and creativity more than watching or listening to something. 4) writing a book/novel is an art form and skill. supporting it by buying quality works is important, imo. 5) i personally personally know/knew several authors who make their living 100% by writing. i buy and read their stuff to help support them. 6) a typical book has higher quality content and more depth than what you'll typically find online. i'm sure there's plenty more reasons, i just can't think of them right now.
- tom 18y ago
  If I could up-vote you a dozen times, I would. Dead freakin on! I'll add, that I read books BECAUSE I spent so much time on the computer. Books are the cheapest, most engaging form of entertainment that you can do alone. And they last longer ... Running a start-up and on a tight budget? There is no greater deal out there in our world of over-priced, poorly written, 60fps elecrtonic based "entertainment" than books. Books fit in your pocket, in your bag, pretty much anywhere. And when you're done, they can do just as much, or more entertaining for someone else. The are like infinite entertainment and knowledge. They are amazing. Funny (short) story. I used to not read much at all other than what's been described above and computer books. Well, I was out with some friends and brought up a recent episode of a horrid reality show. A very close friend of mine stopped dead, looked me in the eyes and said with just a touch of concern in his voice: "do you know how many good books there are?!" Yeah, I had an idea, but I just didn't read any of them ... Well, the next week, he gave me a copy of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I've been a voracious reader ever since.
- adrianwaj 18y ago
  Computer (with internet) however: - is basically free (or cost of retrieving new content is free) - tabbed browsing makes scanning fast - broadband makes news pages load quicker (or similar) to turning a page - commoditization of blogs and cms via open-source means more noise, but also more signal - instant publishing - large lcd screens can be dimmed, and font sized enlarged There is wisdom on the web, and books are still mobile and reliable. Text books are important, but in my view the case for books is lessening. (unless you like fiction, but much classic literature can be found freely on the web due to copyright expiration anyway).
  - noodle 18y ago
    > Text books are important, but in my view the case for books is lessening. (unless you like fiction, ... making a molehill out of a mountain, aren't we? more specifically, i think, a hasty generalization. just because you don't read fiction or something doesn't mean that others also don't. i'll agree with you if we're talking about the NICHE of instructional/scholastic/informational/reference books. i don't read those types of books. when you use the term "reading a book", though, you're typically referring to reading for recreation/entertainment, which is typically going to be fiction/literature. i do read those, and so do the vast majority of my family and friends.
ph0rque 18y ago
You have a false dichotomy here: I read books (for free) on the internet.
raju 18y ago
I agree with a lot of the other commentators. I am a voracious reader, with normally 3-4 books on my reading stand at any point that I read at different points during the day. Reading provides a very cheap and easily accessible form of entertainment that allows you to exercise your imagination and creativity, and provide a wealth of detailed knowledge (even if it were fiction - a good fictional story can provide an insight into different situations, cultures, even the psyche of people in general) A good book can keep you company at any point in time in a day, and more so, stay with you a lot longer (this is true even with fiction). I have found myself going back to several books over the years, because some are _that_ good. Having said that, there are a lot of crappy books out there (I have commented about that earlier) and invariably you will get one that is despite checking it out (amazon reviews etc). That has not prevented me from continuing to find good books, and it should not deter anyone else either. A quick cursory glance over amazon's best-seller lists will give you a good overview on the types of fictional books, and you will quickly see that almost every kind of curiosity can be satisfied - technical, mystery, espionage, war strategy, sci-fi, you name it... And yes, staring at a tube-light all day cannot be a good thing...

1 points by adrianwaj 18y ago

Admittedly, I am not into fiction, and I can get magazine quality content on the web, so why read books?

There is much deeper knowledge in books. Just learning from the internets and reading magazine articles will keep you updated but make your knowledge shallow.

adrianwaj 18y ago
True, I don't read newspapers either, unless placed in front of me for some reason.

gills 18y ago

Literature is often of higher quality than magazine articles. Non-fiction books often delve more deeply into a subject than a series of articles. Many books are not available online in their entirety; at least not for free. And when I do spend money on a book I expect paper. It also gets your eyes off the monitor. These things can't be healthy to stare at 18 hours per day.

sebg 18y ago

For me, reading non-fiction books allows me to interact with historical figures and understand how they approached problems as well as how they arrived at their solutions. I've been reading many auto/biographies lately and more and more it has helped me realize that most over-night successes are really 20 years in the making. edit: Another thing that has helped me is in learning grammatically correct english and sentence construction. This is something that I have yet to find in abundance on the web.

noodle 18y ago

by not being "into" fiction, you're closing off the vast majority of why you would want to read books. if your only purpose is to simply learn about stuff, you can do a pretty good job of it online. i read books for many reasons: 1) pocket-sized entertainment w/o requiring electricity. 2) reading bulks of text on the computer is hard on the eyes, imo. 3) reading a book exercises the imagination and creativity more than watching or listening to something. 4) writing a book/novel is an art form and skill. supporting it by buying quality works is important, imo. 5) i personally personally know/knew several authors who make their living 100% by writing. i buy and read their stuff to help support them. 6) a typical book has higher quality content and more depth than what you'll typically find online. i'm sure there's plenty more reasons, i just can't think of them right now.

tom 18y ago
If I could up-vote you a dozen times, I would. Dead freakin on! I'll add, that I read books BECAUSE I spent so much time on the computer. Books are the cheapest, most engaging form of entertainment that you can do alone. And they last longer ... Running a start-up and on a tight budget? There is no greater deal out there in our world of over-priced, poorly written, 60fps elecrtonic based "entertainment" than books. Books fit in your pocket, in your bag, pretty much anywhere. And when you're done, they can do just as much, or more entertaining for someone else. The are like infinite entertainment and knowledge. They are amazing. Funny (short) story. I used to not read much at all other than what's been described above and computer books. Well, I was out with some friends and brought up a recent episode of a horrid reality show. A very close friend of mine stopped dead, looked me in the eyes and said with just a touch of concern in his voice: "do you know how many good books there are?!" Yeah, I had an idea, but I just didn't read any of them ... Well, the next week, he gave me a copy of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I've been a voracious reader ever since.
adrianwaj 18y ago
Computer (with internet) however: - is basically free (or cost of retrieving new content is free) - tabbed browsing makes scanning fast - broadband makes news pages load quicker (or similar) to turning a page - commoditization of blogs and cms via open-source means more noise, but also more signal - instant publishing - large lcd screens can be dimmed, and font sized enlarged There is wisdom on the web, and books are still mobile and reliable. Text books are important, but in my view the case for books is lessening. (unless you like fiction, but much classic literature can be found freely on the web due to copyright expiration anyway).
- noodle 18y ago
  > Text books are important, but in my view the case for books is lessening. (unless you like fiction, ... making a molehill out of a mountain, aren't we? more specifically, i think, a hasty generalization. just because you don't read fiction or something doesn't mean that others also don't. i'll agree with you if we're talking about the NICHE of instructional/scholastic/informational/reference books. i don't read those types of books. when you use the term "reading a book", though, you're typically referring to reading for recreation/entertainment, which is typically going to be fiction/literature. i do read those, and so do the vast majority of my family and friends.

ph0rque 18y ago

You have a false dichotomy here: I read books (for free) on the internet.

raju 18y ago

I agree with a lot of the other commentators. I am a voracious reader, with normally 3-4 books on my reading stand at any point that I read at different points during the day. Reading provides a very cheap and easily accessible form of entertainment that allows you to exercise your imagination and creativity, and provide a wealth of detailed knowledge (even if it were fiction - a good fictional story can provide an insight into different situations, cultures, even the psyche of people in general) A good book can keep you company at any point in time in a day, and more so, stay with you a lot longer (this is true even with fiction). I have found myself going back to several books over the years, because some are _that_ good. Having said that, there are a lot of crappy books out there (I have commented about that earlier) and invariably you will get one that is despite checking it out (amazon reviews etc). That has not prevented me from continuing to find good books, and it should not deter anyone else either. A quick cursory glance over amazon's best-seller lists will give you a good overview on the types of fictional books, and you will quickly see that almost every kind of curiosity can be satisfied - technical, mystery, espionage, war strategy, sci-fi, you name it... And yes, staring at a tube-light all day cannot be a good thing...