9 ms·

Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have. I went to a private "college prep" high school,

• gffrd 3y ago
  This was my experience as well. Loved reading when I was younger, but lots of assigned reading from elementary onward poisoned the well, so to speak. In retrospect, it's surprising how rigid the required reading was at my school: no choice in the material whatsoever, so the most important engine that drives reading (curiosity) was held out of the equation.
• bluerooibos 3y ago
  > rediscovered reading Any tips? I didn't, somehow. After leaving high school, then university, my brain went into full on "be productive all the time" mode. My brain somehow doesn't think reading is a good use of my time, so I've settled for audiobooks when falling asleep or on long drives. The last book I was able to devour and actually enjoyed was the Harry Potter series, which ended just before I went to university.
  • big_whack 3y ago
    My reading dropped off for years until I got a kindle. The kindle made reading way more convenient and portable. Totally changed my life.
  • imzadi 3y ago
    Well, first, audiobooks totally count. Have you tried Dungeon Crawler Carl?
    • fullwaza 3y ago
      Crazy timing, I'm listening to that series now, it's great!
      • imzadi 3y ago
        It's my favorite. I've listened to all the books 6+ times.
        • fullwaza 3y ago
          The Bobiverse series ("We are Legion (We Are Bob)") is also very good and kind of along the same style.
          • imzadi 3y ago
            Oh yeah, I've listened to all of this and some of Dennis E. Taylor's other stuff, as well. I've also listened to all of ExFor and everything Andy Weir, almost everything narrated by Travis Baldree, too.
      • scantron4 3y ago
        Its the next blockbuster series. If my mother, who claimed murderbot was too complicated and has never played video games loved it... the series has legs.
  • gknoy 3y ago
    Seconding the "audiobooks count" that Imzadi said, I'd like to note that the Martian audiobook is exceptional, and I've heard that others by Weir are excellent as well. You might enjoy reading _short_ novels. I really liked the "All Systems Red" series, each of them feels short enough to read in a day. If you enjoyed Harry Potter, you might also enjoy the Invisible Library series, or maybe the Harry Dresden novels. They both felt like fun-pulpy romps through magical worlds. Maybe you can convince your brain that reading at bedtime is a good use of time because it promotes healthy sleeping by not being on a screen. ;) (It hasn't worked for me, I still have a backlog two shelves long.)
    • em-bee 3y ago
      i loved Project Hail Mary. read it in a book club where we pick a new book each month. totally helps finding new stuff to read. reading at bedtime doesn't work for me because i fall asleep in the middle and then i have to figure out what i missed.
  • octokatt 3y ago
    It sounds like you enjoy books, the problem is convincing yourself you deserve to take time to read them. To quiet that anxiety: > The habit of reading is a meaningful way to meditatively intake large portions of information. Reading helps with creativity, focus, and communication. Reading light-hearted, entertaining books increases these skills while preserving focus for work in a way that reading the latest O'Reilly book does not, while making reading non-fiction books in the future easier because you've been practicing reading. Separately, humans are not machines. In general, we aren't wired to constantly be doing things, and taking time to play or to enjoy stories or to do absolutely nothing is an entirely necessary maintenance task. Removing joy and rest from your life for productivity is the biological equivalent of accumulating technical debt. This debt can intensify until you need a complete rewrite; when this happens, it's called burn out, and it's kinda really bad.
    • foobarian 3y ago
      > the problem is convincing yourself you deserve to take time to read them This hits home in so many more ways than just reading. I find it hard to do any leisure activities because doing them means I have spare time to do any of a thousand items on my personal backlog. It's very stressful.
      • em-bee 3y ago
        the average audio book is 10 hours long. let's say reading a book takes 10 hours. then you only need 20 minutes per day to read one book per month. it should not be hard to find that time. what you say suggests that you have a backlog of non-leisure activities that you feel are more important. i solved this by making leisure activities more important. call it work-life balance if that helps. leisure is part of a healthy day. i started going for a daily walk for exercise. i considered important for my well being. i watch one tv show per day. and only one. i simply decided that is part of a healthy routine. and i made a list of what i want to watch so i don't waste that hour on random stuff. i still do spend more time on random stuff, eg youtube, but that is a different problem. when i run out of time, i stop wasting time on youtube, but i don't stop that one tv episode. i figure i have earned the break after being busy for a day. i should do the same with listening to audiobooks/stories but i haven't been able to re-establish that routine yet.
  • iknowSFR 3y ago
    Try Brandon Sanderson novels. General change to my habits has been that if I’m not feeling a story, it’s okay to put it down. The amount of reading I have trudged through because I was afraid of quitting…
    • chrisan 3y ago
      Brando Sando or Wheel of Time :)
      • aatd86 3y ago
        Or David Eddings, or Tad Williams etc. :) All these fantasy stuff are what kept me reading. Although nowadays I read more manuals and research papers. Or the occasional online xuanhuan novel.
    • emseetech 3y ago
      I suggest Stephen King as a reintroduction for general audiences (since a lot of people have a hard time vibing with high fantasy, I know I do). He's not the greatest writer of all time, but he's enjoyable while not feeling like you're reading YA or something age inappropriate. And his classics are classics for a reason. Can't go wrong with Carrie, The Stand, Misery, The Shining or Salem's Lot.
  • nullhole 3y ago
    One key thing is: don't feel like you have to suffer through reading an entire book if you don't like it. If it's a chore to read it, find something else - different author, or different type of book.
    • selectodude 3y ago
      Giving up on a shitty book feels the same as cancelling plans that you don’t want to do. Feels great.
      • toast0 3y ago
        If you need shitty books to practice giving up on, I can autograph and send you some books written by a Pulitzer Prize winning author who shares my name and writes terrible books. Email in profile.
    • feoren 3y ago
      I would add: don't try to convince yourself that you actually like this book because it has great reviews or your friends recommended it. Plenty of novels with great reviews are actually trash (IMO, of course, but also in yours, which is the point). Admit to yourself that you don't actually like it and that's OK.
  • chrisan 3y ago
    I wouldn't call audiobook "settling", I enjoy them more than books with a great narrator. What got me back into reading was Harry Potter. I hadn't read a book for fun since middle school and had grown to loathing reading of any kind from all the assigned reading. (just give me the cliff notes). HP was new, all the rage, and wife convinced me to give it a try (she had always been an avid reader). I had maybe 3 books to catch up on and I read them all back to back and was eagerly awaiting the 4th. We'd do midnight releases and each buy our own book and didn't sleep till we were through.
  • dumpsterdiver 3y ago
    Setting aside time for relaxation and leisure activities is highly productive, but unfortunately that isn't something that becomes obvious until your work visibly suffers from "all work and no play". The costs of overworking yourself truly are insidious. It really is akin to a rogue wave - you don't know how deep it runs until it finally hits.
  • gwbas1c 3y ago
    >> rediscovered reading > Any tips? > The last book I was able to devour and actually enjoyed was the Harry Potter series Actually, it was Harry Potter that got me back into reading. I read the first 5 books over the course of 2 weeks the summer after I graduated college. In some cases I'd see an interview on late night television and read the book the guest was promoting. More recently I read a book that was discussed on the radio during my commute. In other cases, there was a subject I wanted to learn about, so I'd read books about the subject, or biographies on people who were known in the subject matter. Sometimes I'll see a movie / TV show based on the book, and like it enough to read the book. And: J. K. Rowling's new series about Coroman Strike (written under a pseudonym) is excellent. Read it slowly, though. I'm also slowly re-reading Harry Potter to my kids and it's a lot more enjoyable in bits instead of as a binge.
  • pomian 3y ago
    I would up vote trying audiobooks. They are great for traveling, also cleaning up and other chores. Classic narrators make everything fun to listen to. There are voices for lulling you to sleep. Others to make the stories exciting. The Harry Potter books have two narrators -they are both great, in different ways. Lord of the rings is much more fun in audiobook format. Try to find audiobooks read by Simon Vance, for example - he reads the Master and Commander series, and the original James Bond series. Have fun.
  • wonger_ 3y ago
    I'm not an avid reader, but I've rediscovered reading in the past couple years. A few tips that help me: 1) Keep a list of book recommendations mentioned from HN, podcasts, friends, etc. Eventually, some will be recommended twice or more, and that may be enough to tell your brain "this will be worth it." 2) Try non-fiction if you're usually a fiction person, or vice versa. I grew up enjoying only fiction. But now I realize I enjoy non-fiction a lot more. 3) Don't stick with boring books for more than a couple chapters. I've been using thriftbooks.com, so it's affordable to toss a few dollars away and try again.
  • nicbou 3y ago
    - Try something entertaining instead of something useful. Pick books out of interest, not out of pragmatism or obligation. If a book doesn't work for you, try another. - Make it a special time. Start your bedtime routine early, light some candles, make tea and have a go at it. Or sit in a nice café, or after a nice picnic. I love reading myself to sleep, or with tea on the balcony in the morning. - Remove distractions. I read on a disconnected iPad with no internet and no apps except for reading and notetaking. If you want to put it in productivity-over-everything terms, reading before sleep is a really good way to wind down and get solid sleep. It's also a great way to build vocabulary, get different perspectives, and enjoy idle time without doomscrolling.
  • dageshi 3y ago
    Yeah, don't read "worthy" stuff, or things to enlighten yourself, find your particular brand of entertaining trash and mindlessly consume it. I recommend bad litrpg and progression fantasy personally. Mother of Learning is a good one to start, it's free on royalroad.com or available on Kindle.
    • xhkkffbf 3y ago
      Absolutely agree. The definition of "worthy" comes from a narrow group of haughty English majors. That may be your thing, but there's a huge world of non-worthy stuff out there.
    • skydhash 3y ago
      Those chinese cultivation novels are my guilty pleasures. I still look for a good translation, but they what I reach for when I just want to pass the time (and they're really long).
  • emseetech 3y ago
    | Any tips? Here's a trick that helped me after a ten+ year hiatus and having my attention fried by social media: A lot of people who have lost their attention span to technology will find themselves reading but not absorbing, their mind wandering, until they realize they'd "read" 3 pages and don't remember what happened. So read slow and with purpose, but most importantly at the end of each page, ask yourself what you just read and have a conversation with yourself about it. This helped rebuild my comprehension and focus. This is similar to how English classes will read a book as a class: Reading then discussion, reading then discussion. But instead of as a group, do it as an internal dialogue.
    • em-bee 3y ago
      i got the same problem with audiobooks. if my mind is occupied i have to relisten, sometimes multiple times, until i can focus enough. it does depend on the writing style though. it happens more when the story is difficult to understand.
      • emseetech 3y ago
        I could never do audiobooks for that reason. It was simply too easy to get distracted.
        • em-bee 3y ago
          it takes some practice. and i find it's more difficult with short stories because there every detail counts. if you miss a few details from a longer book, it tends to matter less. and then while listening i need to do an activity that doesn't require mental focus. so i can't sit in front of the computer, unless it is mundane photo editing or some other repetitive task that doesn't make me think. going for a walk and housework work for me. especially housework. there is nothing else i can do while washing dishes, cooking, doing laundry or cleaning. the work doesn't require much focus, and is quite repetitive. that makes listening easy.
    • phone8675309 3y ago
      One of the things that helped me was to have an actual dialog with the book. For non-fiction books, this means pushing back against claims that appear to be unsupported. When I read in a paper book I do so with a pen to make notes in it (I don't sell my books, and I obviously don't do this with library books), but ebooks just get marked up in my ebook reader and it's very nice. It's also good when reviewing a book because I can see all of my thoughts and questions and often can answer them by the end of the chapter/section/unit. For fiction books, this ends up being a "what would I do there/what would an ordinary person do?" It's very helpful to try and place yourself in the character's shoes and see how you may have reacted differently or if you agree with the character understanding _why_ you agree with them.
  • NegativeLatency 3y ago
    Find a nice local book store and go have a look around at what looks interesting to you.
  • em-bee 3y ago
    another vote for audio books. i was an avid reader in my youth but stopped when i entered university (and got a computer (guess where i spend most of my time instead of reading books ;-)) about a decade ago i discovered audiodrama, short story audio magazines and finally whole audiobooks. i mostly listened to them on my commute. later when i had no commute i started going for walks (to get out of the house and move) and i also listen during housework or other mundane tasks. i tried listening before going to sleep, but that didn't work because i would doze away and miss sections while hearing others. that meant hi had to relisten the next day to catch what i missed. i get about an hour of listening time on average, sometimes two, when i have a good daily routine, less otherwise. one hour per day is enough to listen to 2-3 books per month. i alternate between all three types so i usually only get one book in a month, sometimes less. but that adds up too. my reading list has almost 80 titles. with an average of 10 hours per book you can finish a whole book in a month with only 20 minutes per day.
  • mbesto 3y ago
    In my mid twenties I had a mundane 30 minute commute in a crowded London tube which meant no internet (maybe thats different now). I cranked through so many books in that ~2 year timespan.
  • tpmoney 3y ago
    If you're into fiction, can I suggest looking for short story magazines in your preferred genre. Look novels are great and all, and I love devouring a book that really hooks into me, but the modern publishing landscape is full of 500+ page books that are part 3 of a 48 book series. That can be overwhelming and certainly difficult to drag yourself into if you're not in the habit of reading. Sort story magazines introduce you to multiple authors and multiple stories, most of which could be read in 30 minutes before bed, and give you a chance to enjoy reading for fun without committing to a who "extended universe" of material you feel like you have to know. If SF&F is your preferred genre, "Asimov's", "Analog", and "Fantasy and Science Fiction" are old staples that are still being published. "Locus", "Lightspeed" and "Strange Horizons" are also options, with Lightspeed and Strange Horizons being relative newcomers to the field. weightlessbooks.com carries a couple of those and some magazine in other genres too if SF&F aren't your jam.
  • lupire 3y ago
    Quit your job. It's not reasonable to do a cognitively demanding job all day and then expect to do cognitively demanding leisure at night. Unemployed people are great readers.
    • doubled112 3y ago
      I can use all the books I’ve finished to keep myself and my family warm this winter!
  • Aerroon 3y ago
    Maybe it's a problem of taste? Maybe you don't like the books you've tried to read because of the contents of the book? From what's popular these days I think you should try reading: The Martian and Cradle. If you don't like it then stop reading and go for something else. If you want to try a lot of different stuff I would recommend trying web novel on sites like RoyalRoad, Web novel, Scribblehub. Just pick something, read a bit. If you don't like it, find something new.
  • tarsinge 3y ago
    Regarding time reading is faster than listening. Also way more efficient than movies, series or video games. I can’t play story based video games anymore like Witcher 3 because at one point I’m like I’m wasting so much time compared if I was just reading the book. Also books are less isolating than listening, for example if you are in a park with nature sounds. If you enjoyed The Expanse you could try the last 3 books. If you haven’t read for a long time it’ll be hard at first to stay focused but by the middle of the book you should hopefully get the feeling of wanting to pick the book anytime like a new episode of the show just dropped.
  • prawn 3y ago
    Read when you're fresh (set your alarm earlier and read before you get out of bed) rather than when you're tired at the end of the day. Use a habit tracking app (mine is Streaks on iOS). If tired, walking around the house while reading ticks off pages and steps. Read books you like; quit anything that you feel is a waste of time. Read while eating breakfast if it's not antisocial. Pick shorter books to get momentum (Old Man and the Sea, Into the Wild). Read on your phone, so it's always an option. Put your Books app prominently on the home screen and relegate social media apps out of view.
• WalterBright 3y ago
  I avoided all optional English class in school. But I still read at least one book a week, sometimes two.
• bamboozled 3y ago
  I never really had any homework, or I never did it. I never read for pleasure either. I don't think it's that, but I get your point. Too busy = no time for reading for fun
  • naasking 3y ago
    Not just no time, but making even otherwise fun things mandatory with a volume that's overwhelming can suck the fun out of it and/or make it seem dull.
    • aatd86 3y ago
      Yup. I initially thought that it would be a good idea for me to major in Computer Science. For some reason I majored in Finance after a few years of electrical engineering courses. I don't think I'd be programming today if I had to be force fed programming assignments.
      • TylerE 3y ago
        Computer Science is actually kinda of lousy for teaching the things most programmers can do. To the point where if I was hiring, I'd rather hire someone who's less experienced and self-taught, but with some sort of "interesting" background, where "interesting" is almost anything that teach's critical thinking about abstract concepts and how to articulate ideas. Could be anything from a Journalism degree to someone who spent a decade working their way up the ranks of a machine shop from operator to foreman. I can tell you the last time I had to write a singly-linked list implementation though. October 17th, Nineteen Ninety Never.
        • aatd86 3y ago
          Well, a singly linked list is actually one of the most important data structure I've found :). From there, one can modify it to implement tries. And then one can understand trees, arborescences etc. The rest is about algorithmic complexity (speed and size) which I never remember but that's easy to look it up. It's true that someone who does simple frontend engineering (for example) might not need to know too much about that. But for instance, it was just a couple weeks ago that I've realized a markov chain is just a bunch of linked lists (a DAG, Directed Acyclic Graph). I've found Computer Science to be a very nice framework to think about the world.
• boringg 3y ago
  When can we change our education to promote better educational outcomes instead of training for the test or alternatively being devoid of fundamental knowledge/skills? It feels like we should be progressing in this area much faster then we are. Yes - i know - its way to broad of a question.
  • kevindamm 3y ago
    I'm sure it's more complicated than this but something that definitely has had an influence -- when budgets for a school district are determined by how many students pass vs being left behind, there is an outsized incentive to prepare students for the test instead of for more broadly reasoning or for enjoying the practice of learning.
• flawsofar 3y ago
  Indeed. My love for reading went Gone With The Wind.
• swayvil 3y ago
  Some of us determined that school is something to be avoided. To squeak through it with absolutely minimal effort. Never do the assigned reading. Never do the homework. Which leaves mountains of free time (an irreplaceable commodity, you will agree) for reading whatever the heck you like. I like science fiction.
• zdragnar 3y ago
  I had plenty of assigned reading and half-assed it because high school classwork was not hard l remotely hard. Writing an acceptable book report was trivial with only some brief scanning. I still read for fun, but stuck to fiction.
• somenameforme 3y ago
  I had a similar, but different, experience. My issue is that in school I approached reading as a task to be completed in the most efficient manner possible - consuming as much as I could, as rapidly as I could, while ensuring an ability to regurgitate on demand. So I never really got to experience the joy of actually reading; in many cases I never even actually thought about what I was reading. So many books have amazing moral tales, metaphors of major events, and so on - yet one can completely consume books and remain absolutely clueless to what you're really reading. Then as I aged, at some point I ended up getting into classical literature somehow, and now that I actually "got it" and could see and understand what it was saying - beyond the words themselves, it became a complete joy to read. For instance reading "The Republic" in modern times can make one think Plato was a prophet more than a philosopher. Or reading Aristotle's "Politics" can give one such an incredible amount of insight into thinking in the past, society, and even into your own thoughts. Or reading Aurelius' "Meditations" while bearing in mind these were the inner thoughts, never meant to be published, of not only one of the greatest leaders in history, but also arguably the single most powerful man alive at the time. It makes reading feel amazing. Another less well known example would be The King's Mirror [1]. A Norwegian text from 1250 that was a training/philosophy manual, in the form of a Q&A, intended for King Magnus VI. Highly recommended. Now I see things like middle schoolers being assigned Animal Farm and I just kind of sigh, though it's not like I can think of a better solution! [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konungs_skuggsj%C3%A1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konungs_skuggsj%C3%A1
  • RealityVoid 3y ago
    I fully agree with your point, and your experience is similar to mine in a sense. I got lucky in never "bending" to the task of reading because I had to, just reading the school curriculum books if they were interesting to me. And I enjoyed reading greatly. But some books Ichose to read I slogged through and could not enjoy them because of my lack of maturity and perspective. Revisiting them revealed a lot more depth. And my reading of them grew with my understanding of the world. So I guess the experience is normal. And I wonder if I did not slug through those books at that time if I would have ever reached the insight I had on subsequent reading. I am certain things from a good book stick with you, even if you don't recall it explicitly. It just lingers there in the back of your head, like bricks that are piled up on each other until you don't see them anymore but you do see the wall they form.
• nothercastle 3y ago
  It’s not just homework it’s outside activities… but also the time spent at class is often wasted so there are not enough hours in the day to do everything.
• godelski 3y ago
  > And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my homework? Not to mention that we're reading right now...
• TacticalCoder 3y ago
  > Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have. Yeah. My nine years old goes to a school where there's no homework. She now reads a lot: kids at school all shares any cool book they read and then they all want to read it. Today she brought back a brick and started reading it. She devours book.
• gnicholas 3y ago
  Funny, my 4th grader has basically zero homework. She goes to a 'good' public school in Silicon Valley, for reference.
  • zikzak 3y ago
    Same, but in our case he's doing it all in class. The kids that can't get it done or choose other activities are taking it home.
• nytesky 3y ago
  Out elementary and middle schools have a no to low homework policy. By high school the most they assign to non AP courses is 15 min per class. Only assignment is reading 30 min a night, any book they want (including graphic novels). Yet that does not foster a love of reading. I had a ton of homework, but still read a book a week (though I did not do sports, only band, so had way more time than most mainstream students in that regard). My reading waned when I had kids, basically as working parents I am always too exhausted to read, I always doze off. So I can’t set a good example, which I wonder if that is part of the problem — my mom was always reading.
  • btilly 3y ago
    Our? Where? My kids had far more than that.
    • gnicholas 3y ago
      Not GP, but that's what we see in Menlo Park public schools.
    • prawn 3y ago
      My 9 and 11 year olds have no real homework (primary school in Australia) which seems to be public school policy for this age group. Rarely, it's 10 minutes on one night in a week; they often ask for homework and are enthusiastic if given worksheets. They read for literally hours a day. I read huge amounts as a kid but then lost the habit as an adult. It takes any number of habits and tricks to try and get it going again. Like someone upthread, I'm often fighting tiredness, and one trick that can work is prioritising reading in the morning and leaving news and social media for when I'm tired.
      • btilly 3y ago
        At the same age in southern California, my kids had what was supposed to be 1-2 hours of homework a night. Which was made worse by ADHD. And, additionally, I had to teach my son basic skills that school failed to teach him. Like spelling and his times table. It was a disaster.
• giantg2 3y ago
  I think a lot of it is what goes on at home (surprise, this is basically for all education). I know I did reading as part of my schoolwork and homework. The reading I most remember was during the summer. A few were summer work related and needed reports, but the book choice was open ended. Many were not school related but encouraged by my parents.
• alpinisme 3y ago
  Is 30 minutes really the amount of novel reading we find unacceptable these days? I’m not asking quite as snarkily as that sounds. Do you think the problem would be alleviated if the hours of class time were shorter and (maybe) handed over to a study hall period or even to just being sent home? In college I know the theory is supposed to be that one hour of class time equals two hours of homework (though that rarely happens in practice, in my American experience). But high school has far more hours of class time.
  • tpmoney 3y ago
    For me as a kid who loved reading and fell out of it by the time I finished school (and then re-found that love decades later), the biggest contributing factor wasn't 30 minutes of reading for school. It was forced reading of books that were uninteresting to me in the first place, and then having to engage with those books in a wholly artificial way. There's a lot of interesting things to be gleaned from books and certainly expanding students horizons is not in and of itself a bad idea. But school reading is painful, whether it's 10 minutes or 4 hours. You're given pre-selected material with pre-selected lessons to be taken from that material. You are expected to write summaries that explain why the curtains in the foyer of this book were blue (regardless of whether there's actually a reason the author did that or if the lesson planner just hallucinated some meaning out of thin air), and then discuss obvious lessons in non-fiction materials as if there was any other purpose to writing the book in question except to present that lesson. Sometimes you're given books to read that match whatever the current hot social topic is, again without regard to the quality of the books, and then expected to regurgitate the correct opinions on that topic as if the book presented those opinions, and again without regard to what the book actually said (or failed to say). Reading in schools is presented and treated with the rigor of a mathematical proof, and the soullessness of dispassionate scientific observation of dying rats. It should be no wonder that what that is the experience of children with reading, so many fail to find a hobby or pleasure in it. We don't seem surprised when most students don't do mathematical formulas in their spare time after learning it in school, why should reading be any different?
    • lupire 3y ago
• cbsmith 3y ago
  That's not exactly a new phenomenon though. "Decline by 9" is a comparatively new thing.
• btilly 3y ago
  And what is the value of that homework for learning? Close to zero! A lot of the time it is done wrong, which just cements wrong ideas that need to be unlearned. It's only jobs are to be PR about how rigorous school is, and to hurt underprivileged kids whose parents can't help with homework. :(
• shannifin 3y ago
  I confess I mostly just read cliffsnotes and sparksnotes. Felt a little guilty about it at first, but it helped me ace the tests, and saved a ton of time.
• throwaway2037 3y ago
  I never understand why we are forced to read so much of the literary canon. Most of it is so hard to read, and so unenjoyable. Many of them could be re-written in a more enjoyable way for young children, through teenagers. I am exactly like you: I hardly ever read for pleasure when I was younger unless there was a blatant bride ("award") awaiting me. Most of the time, I was underwater reading some garbage prose from 1850 that doesn't stay with me today.
  • lupire 3y ago
    Which books of the canon did you read that you found to be garbage prose?
    • sovnwnt 3y ago
      I wouldn't say it's "garbage prose" but I read A Tale of Two Cities in school and found it impossible to form a mental image from the text in some parts. I'm still struggling to understand what "Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail." means.
      • pasc1878 3y ago
        Look at what happened in 2008 with banks collapsing - by having runs upon them. This is being done via postal withdrawals here. This isn't obscure.
        • vitus 3y ago
          Or more recently, the run on SVB last year where everyone started panicking that the bank was no longer able to hold its deposits, just because it announced that it had taken action to generate something like $40 billion in liquidity. And then the next day alone, customers withdrew $42 billion. All of this was much worse during the Great Depression, before we had FDIC insurance guaranteeing deposits up to a certain threshold. If you've ever seen It's a Wonderful Life, it depicts a bank run during that era as George Bailey is about to go off on his honeymoon. (I remember my 6th grade history teacher describing this as we watched that movie around the holiday season.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Bank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Ban...
• Aidevah 3y ago
  Very true. Here's Dr Johnson: >What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.
• teeray 3y ago
  I also went to a private college prep school, and the workload was practically abusive at times. I remember some days when I’d work on homework during class, get home, then continue working on homework clear until 3 or 4 AM. Then it was back up at 6 AM to go back to school. Some nights were light and I got to bed at 12p-1a. The weekends following the hard weeks were mostly nonexistent because I was unconscious for most of them.
  • phone8675309 3y ago
    Surprise, surprise - when you work somebody 60-80 hours a week they don't find things fun when they get home and are just trying to recover.
• Modified3019 3y ago
  Another thing is the mandated reading comes with punishment attached. One goes into it knowing that they’ll have to puke out some key points, contort bullshit into an intro-body-conclusion format, or worse, overanalyze it for “meaning”. Early in high school among other things I had to read was “The Veldt”. Of course I hated dealing with it like everything else. I couldn’t have even told you who the author was a few weeks after the assignment. In late high school, I discovered Ray Bradbury as I began exploring my local library, branching out from comics (Calvin and Hobbes, pogo, bloom county) and nonfiction books into fiction. He quickly became one of my favorite authors due to the sheer volume of short stories he had. Many were good, some were bad, and some were great. It was a bit of a pleasant surprise to encounter “The Veldt” again without a teachers whip at my back. It was sad to finally work my way through the last of what he wrote knowing there would be no more.
  • WaxProlix 3y ago
    You've almost certainly come across them by now, but his novels are fantastic. I started with The Martian Chronicles and then The Illustrated Man, but ended up loving Something Wicked This Way Comes and even Dandelion Wine. There's something about good fiction and youth that just went together so well -- maybe people who did a lot of, say, swimming in their formative years feel that way about "good swimming" and youth, but I have to believe that good fiction would still trump most everything else for the time period.
    • yurishimo 3y ago
      For me, fiction was a way to explore my thoughts and dreams indirectly as a kid. I’ve never been one much for introspection, but reading tickles something in that part of my brain to reflect on my life and sometimes relate what happens to a character to what I’m feeling/have felt. In a story, the author has to tell you how the character feels explicitly (usually) in addition to the normal story beats. Occasionally I would notice a mismatch between my own gut reactions and that of the character which would make me stop for a second and try to dissect what the differences were between my interpretation and that of the author. Not to even mention that reading is a way to escape and explore without leaving the comfort of your own home. The only downside I find currently is that reading new things is quite expensive and I haven’t found a great digital solution yet. My phone is too small but carrying a book or a reader tablet is not practical every day.
• Aerroon 3y ago
  I stopped reading books because of mandatory reading. When I graduated from high school one of the thoughts on my mind during the ceremony was "YES!! I will n e v e r have to read books again!!" I also stopped reading around age 9-10 for fun. My 'favorite' book during school was Crime and Punishment. I didn't like the book, but I knew the teachers liked it. So if it ever came up I 'liked it very much'. Many years after school anime -> manga -> light novels -> web novels got me back into reading. Now I spend far too much time on reading, but I don't think I will ever read fiction in my native language again.
• Grimblewald 3y ago
  As an adult who does a gargantuan amount of reading for a living - while work is busy i cannot fathom reading for fun but during breaks I start up again. To me this is all quite sensible and a bit bit of support for the argument we need to slow everything down a bit. Fix work-life balance accross the board.
• jgalt212 3y ago
  > Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have. Probably this, but also this. Kids don't even show up for school post-pandemic 36% of NYC public school students were chronically absent last school year https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2023/9/6/23862246/nyc-public-school-chronic-absenteeism-pandemic/ https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2023/9/6/23862246/nyc-publ...