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I agree. The anti-book sentiment has felt quite strong lately, and this article is another example. I think people feel subconsciously guilty that they do not

I agree. The anti-book sentiment has felt quite strong lately, and this article is another example. I think people feel subconsciously guilty that they do not read more. It is thus easier to dismiss books than to acknowledge the fact that most attention spans have been reduced the the granularity of a comment thread. We are all victims to this. Reading a book takes more effort than it used to. I fear that most people have already read the last book they will complete in their lifetime (not that completing a book is necessary in deriving value from it).

ghaff 6y ago
I think that post comes from the same place as comments demanding that longer form articles come with a paragraph abstract and that books should be summarized in a few pages. Because their valuable time is consumed with writing new ad-tech code or whatever. It's an efficiency above all else mindset.
liability 6y ago
> Reading a book takes more effort than it used to. I agree with most of your points but not this one. The proliferation of audio books and text-to-speech (TTS) has made reading books easier than ever. Particularly TTS in my case; I can read an eBook visually for a few hours, then switch to TTS for a while to give my eyes a break, and in this way easily marathon books. Once you are accustomed to TTS you can turn the speed up very fast. I tune the speed on the fly to compensate for mental fatigue to maintain a consistent level of comprehension; when I'm 'in the groove' I can comfortably set TTS to around 750wpm. I can read visually faster than that, but only in a 'sprint', not with endurance. (I find that for finishing a book quick, it's better to be a tortoise than a hare.) I read nonfiction and fiction like this. Math heavy texts aren't well suited for it, nor books with many charts and tables, but except for a few cases like that it's very adaptable. Modern TTS even handles weird names in fantasy novels surprisingly well.
- keenmaster 6y ago
  750 wpm is extremely high. I hit 420 wpm on low complexity texts and slow down to 380 wpm at higher complexity using TTS. However, which TTS voice I use has a huge impact. Are you using one of those fancy AI TTS voices with cloud processing?

ghaff 6y ago

I think that post comes from the same place as comments demanding that longer form articles come with a paragraph abstract and that books should be summarized in a few pages. Because their valuable time is consumed with writing new ad-tech code or whatever. It's an efficiency above all else mindset.

liability 6y ago

> Reading a book takes more effort than it used to. I agree with most of your points but not this one. The proliferation of audio books and text-to-speech (TTS) has made reading books easier than ever. Particularly TTS in my case; I can read an eBook visually for a few hours, then switch to TTS for a while to give my eyes a break, and in this way easily marathon books. Once you are accustomed to TTS you can turn the speed up very fast. I tune the speed on the fly to compensate for mental fatigue to maintain a consistent level of comprehension; when I'm 'in the groove' I can comfortably set TTS to around 750wpm. I can read visually faster than that, but only in a 'sprint', not with endurance. (I find that for finishing a book quick, it's better to be a tortoise than a hare.) I read nonfiction and fiction like this. Math heavy texts aren't well suited for it, nor books with many charts and tables, but except for a few cases like that it's very adaptable. Modern TTS even handles weird names in fantasy novels surprisingly well.

keenmaster 6y ago
750 wpm is extremely high. I hit 420 wpm on low complexity texts and slow down to 380 wpm at higher complexity using TTS. However, which TTS voice I use has a huge impact. Are you using one of those fancy AI TTS voices with cloud processing?