4 ms·

People often lament the decline in literacy, but the books mentioned in the article demand hundreds or thousands of hours of focused practice to achieve even mo

People often lament the decline in literacy, but the books mentioned in the article demand hundreds or thousands of hours of focused practice to achieve even moderate reading speed and comprehension. These books can be far more rewarding than social media or YouTube, but they are often dense, esoteric, and written in complex sentence structures. Since our brains aren’t naturally wired for reading, developing this skill is a challenging and humbling process. Most people decide it isn’t worth the effort.

Jabbles 2y ago
> Most people decide it isn’t worth the effort Most people "decide" to not develop their reading skills when they are young children without the ability to understand the long-term implications.
- criddell 2y ago
  AI tutors might help with this because I think the constraints teachers have make it difficult to foster a love of books in a lot of kids. When I was growing up, teachers would assign one text for the entire class to read. Sometimes it was a book I enjoyed (like Canticle for Leibowitz) but more often than not it was some book I hated (like Great Gatsby which I reread as an adult and still think it’s terrible). If you really wanted to instill a love of reading and develop skills around reading, you would give students more choice. My kids had a similar experience so I don’t think much changed between 1985 and 2015. If anything, it’s worse now. It feels like schools do as much as they can to prevent kids from enjoying reading. They were assigned only books they had zero interest in and were given so much homework they had no desire or energy left to read for pleasure. It took me a long time after high school to start reading for pleasure (thank you Douglas Adams and Michael Ondaatje). I hope it works out for my kids too. So maybe the problem isn't kids who decide they don't like to read, but voters and taxpayers have decided that they don't want to pay for anything better.
HellDunkel 2y ago
The thing is- it often isn‘t (worth it) until you can put things in context and even then it is not a given you will be rewarded. I stopped reading to forcefully educate myself and just read for entertainment. Turns out I read much more and even found many more great books i want to read.
cinntaile 2y ago
It depends. If the complex sentence structures can be expressed more clearly using simpler structures, I would argue the writer is lacking.
- raffraffraff 2y ago
  My wife writes a little, but reads a lot. One time she went back and re-read something she had written years ago, and came away thinking "I hate this type of writing! It thinks it's so damn smart!". Her takeaway was this: if you're in love with the way you phrased something, rewrite it. Hey goal is to write a story with plot. Real characters. Arcs. As soon as she finds herself wasting time rolling sentences around her mouth, like toffee, with big fancy words, she is directly hurting the readers' flow. Sometimes it's nice to leave one or two, but in general you shouldn't try to be in love with every sentence you've written. But every sentence should move the story forward. Just tell the damn story. Because when you come back to your writing years later, it's those very stylish, witty, fancy phrases that will embarrass you.
  - cenazoic 2y ago
    I think this speaks to a common misunderstanding of ‘literary’ fiction vs. ‘genre’ fiction - the former is typically more character- or idea-driven, while the latter is story/plot driven. I’m not making the argument that one is intrinsically ‘better’ than the other; rather that their goals are different. I do tend to agree with the idea that you shouldn’t be ‘afraid to kill your darlings’ (cite needed). Flannery O’Connor was once asked whether she thought that MFA programs killed too many aspiring authors. Her reply was that she thought they didn’t kill enough of them.
    - aspenmayer 2y ago
      > I do tend to agree with the idea that you shouldn’t be ‘afraid to kill your darlings’ (cite needed). Flannery O’Connor was once asked whether she thought that MFA programs killed too many aspiring authors. Her reply was that she thought they didn’t kill enough of them. It's funny to me that that line by O’Connor is both good writing and good business, at least in that it reduces competition with their own works. Furthermore, making quotable quips is the best kind of publicity for your writing you can do for free as an author. I wonder how many MFA programs are so explicit about the dismal prospects of writing as a livelihood or career, not that it was ever much better in the past. Arguably, it's easier than ever to get paid as an independent writer, but that doesn't make it any easier to make a decent living exclusively from one's published output. Found the citation: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kill_one%27s_darlings https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kill_one%27s_darlings > A piece of advice to prospective authors that they must kill their “darlings”, i.e. suppress overuse of their favorite expressions, tropes, characters, etc. Often attributed to William Faulkner (1897–1962), but already expressed earlier by Arthur Quiller-Couch (murder one's darlings); more recently popularized by Stephen King.
technothrasher 2y ago
> Since our brains aren’t naturally wired for reading There's actually some evidence that we are, in fact, naturally wired for reading. The below study, for instance, shows that the area in the brain used for visualizing words seems to be already hooked up to language processing areas in newborns. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75015-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75015-7
greenie_beans 2y ago
reading this whole debate in this thread, i thought: "literary fiction writers should not be worried about ai because tech ppl don't like prose"

Jabbles 2y ago

> Most people decide it isn’t worth the effort Most people "decide" to not develop their reading skills when they are young children without the ability to understand the long-term implications.

criddell 2y ago
AI tutors might help with this because I think the constraints teachers have make it difficult to foster a love of books in a lot of kids. When I was growing up, teachers would assign one text for the entire class to read. Sometimes it was a book I enjoyed (like Canticle for Leibowitz) but more often than not it was some book I hated (like Great Gatsby which I reread as an adult and still think it’s terrible). If you really wanted to instill a love of reading and develop skills around reading, you would give students more choice. My kids had a similar experience so I don’t think much changed between 1985 and 2015. If anything, it’s worse now. It feels like schools do as much as they can to prevent kids from enjoying reading. They were assigned only books they had zero interest in and were given so much homework they had no desire or energy left to read for pleasure. It took me a long time after high school to start reading for pleasure (thank you Douglas Adams and Michael Ondaatje). I hope it works out for my kids too. So maybe the problem isn't kids who decide they don't like to read, but voters and taxpayers have decided that they don't want to pay for anything better.

HellDunkel 2y ago

The thing is- it often isn‘t (worth it) until you can put things in context and even then it is not a given you will be rewarded. I stopped reading to forcefully educate myself and just read for entertainment. Turns out I read much more and even found many more great books i want to read.

cinntaile 2y ago

It depends. If the complex sentence structures can be expressed more clearly using simpler structures, I would argue the writer is lacking.

raffraffraff 2y ago
My wife writes a little, but reads a lot. One time she went back and re-read something she had written years ago, and came away thinking "I hate this type of writing! It thinks it's so damn smart!". Her takeaway was this: if you're in love with the way you phrased something, rewrite it. Hey goal is to write a story with plot. Real characters. Arcs. As soon as she finds herself wasting time rolling sentences around her mouth, like toffee, with big fancy words, she is directly hurting the readers' flow. Sometimes it's nice to leave one or two, but in general you shouldn't try to be in love with every sentence you've written. But every sentence should move the story forward. Just tell the damn story. Because when you come back to your writing years later, it's those very stylish, witty, fancy phrases that will embarrass you.
- cenazoic 2y ago
  I think this speaks to a common misunderstanding of ‘literary’ fiction vs. ‘genre’ fiction - the former is typically more character- or idea-driven, while the latter is story/plot driven. I’m not making the argument that one is intrinsically ‘better’ than the other; rather that their goals are different. I do tend to agree with the idea that you shouldn’t be ‘afraid to kill your darlings’ (cite needed). Flannery O’Connor was once asked whether she thought that MFA programs killed too many aspiring authors. Her reply was that she thought they didn’t kill enough of them.
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    > I do tend to agree with the idea that you shouldn’t be ‘afraid to kill your darlings’ (cite needed). Flannery O’Connor was once asked whether she thought that MFA programs killed too many aspiring authors. Her reply was that she thought they didn’t kill enough of them. It's funny to me that that line by O’Connor is both good writing and good business, at least in that it reduces competition with their own works. Furthermore, making quotable quips is the best kind of publicity for your writing you can do for free as an author. I wonder how many MFA programs are so explicit about the dismal prospects of writing as a livelihood or career, not that it was ever much better in the past. Arguably, it's easier than ever to get paid as an independent writer, but that doesn't make it any easier to make a decent living exclusively from one's published output. Found the citation: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kill_one%27s_darlings https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kill_one%27s_darlings > A piece of advice to prospective authors that they must kill their “darlings”, i.e. suppress overuse of their favorite expressions, tropes, characters, etc. Often attributed to William Faulkner (1897–1962), but already expressed earlier by Arthur Quiller-Couch (murder one's darlings); more recently popularized by Stephen King.

technothrasher 2y ago

> Since our brains aren’t naturally wired for reading There's actually some evidence that we are, in fact, naturally wired for reading. The below study, for instance, shows that the area in the brain used for visualizing words seems to be already hooked up to language processing areas in newborns. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75015-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75015-7

greenie_beans 2y ago

reading this whole debate in this thread, i thought: "literary fiction writers should not be worried about ai because tech ppl don't like prose"