I don’t know either. Maybe some of it is just the quality of writing isn’t there anymore. I used to subscribe to Car and Driver and looked forward to it every month. Their writing was great and their exploits legendary. I mean doing a comparison test of minivans by driving them up the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in winter? Brock Yates recalling the original Canonball Runs. Then there were P.J. O’Rourke’s columns like, “High Speed Performance Characteristics of Pickup Trucks.” The writing just isn’t that good anymore and the material is lacking.

Used to always read Tom Clancy’s novels when they came out. Just haven’t found anything to replace them. Every now and then I’ll pick up something by Papa Hemingway but that seems like effort anymore.

Maybe it’s a technology thing. Now when I fly instead of bringing a book or magazine, it’s an iPad and a pair of noise cancelling headphones.

I read at least an hour and a half nearly every evening. I haven’t had a TV for decades. And I don’t have wired Internet in my home.

I find my Kindle Paperwhite (Signature Edition) to be better than books. Some of the authors I like tend to use uncommon words. It’s so handy to touch the word to get its definition to pop up.

Also great to be able to borrow library books without leaving my home (via Libby).

I also have the Kindle app on my iPhone. At my dentist, waiting for the drilling, I can open the app and see my book positioned at the point where I finished my Kindle session. Back at home my Kindle book opens at the point my dentist interrupted my reading.

I would read less if I didn’t have my Kindle.

quote:

Originally posted by mcrimm:

have worn out 2 Kindles.

How do you wear out a Kindle? Battery?

The Barnes and Nobel Nook e-reader is a great convenience and I spend as much time reading it as paper books. It’s especially useful when I’m away from home, waiting for a doctor appointment, etc. Right now I’m reading a paperback of The Great Terror, a history of the early Stalin era in the Soviet Union, and the book itself is a nuisance to handle. It weighs nearly 2 pounds and the pages don’t lay open flat; a Nook version would be nice, but it’s not available.

Plus e-books are usually significantly less expensive than paper copies, and I can download one in literally a minute or two after purchase—something I’ve done more than once while lying in bed at night.

But it’s not perfect. Because of the small size of the screen, it’s usually impossible to get anything from something like a map in a serious history. As I’ve mentioned here before, it’s easy to get lost and sometimes difficult to get back to where I was if I happen to touch the wrong part of the screen.

This, though, is probably my pet peeve:

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
Some of the authors I like tend to use uncommon words. It’s so handy to touch the word to get its definition to pop up.

The Nook has an integrated dictionary, but as often as not if I don’t know a word, the dictionary doesn’t have it either. And then there’s responses like, “ionization: the characteristic of being ionized.”

But that nuisance prompted me just now to ask the AI Copilot about a dictionary for the Nook and it suggested downloading from EPUB, something that I didn’t know was possible. I’ll have to try that.

I'm 81 and read almost a book a week. I sit outside every afternoon for a little over an hour, read and play disc with my dog. I read both a Kindle and real books, depends on what's available. I use Libby and the library a lot, occasionally buying books. Most of the time I couldn't tell you the title, I read a lot of series and follow a few authors of non-fiction.

Not sure what would occupy my mind if it wasn't for books. I find it hard to watch TV other than some news and sports.

Reading is and always has been one of the great pleasures in my life, and if it’s at all possible, I encourage everyone to discover that for themselves.

The question I would ask of anyone is do they have any interests? “Well, of course.”
Okay, then, there have probably been articles and even books written about it.

When I was interested in hunting, I read some of the classics such as Death in the Long Grass written by people like Peter Capstick. I read books about guns and firearms ballistics. When I did a lot of climbing and backpacking, I read books about the great mountaineering expeditions. I read many books about photography. I have an abiding interest in military history and American history in particular. I read books about crime investigations and everything relating to spying and intelligence-gathering such as code-breaking. I am particularly interested these days about military sniping, and my library has a large number of books relating to current and historical practices.

Anyway, we get the idea, sigfreund.

I understand that the sorts of articles written in specialty paper magazines have become less common, but many are still available online. The NRA just changed its publishing practices; paper copies of The American Rifleman will be provided only quarterly, but monthly issues will be available online. Other traditional sources have similar online articles about guns, hunting, competitions, etc.

I first became hooked on reading by thrillers, such as the Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. They seem … quaint these days, but for entertainment, I like many modern offerings such as the Gabriel Allon books by Daniel Silva. And that series is not just fun to read; I’ve learned much about art history from them, just as I learned about 19th century British naval and social history from the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian (including the fact that “knots” as a measure of maritime speed was based on counting actual cord knots).

Online searches will turn up recommendations about almost anything.

I'm another book lover. I would have guessed I would have ruined my vision by now, but I'm still reading. My entire library is on kindle now, but I read physical books, magazines, and newspapers for decades. I've also taken up listening to books as well! It's an actual skill and I believe I now listen as well as I read.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
<snip>
This, though, is probably my pet peeve:

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
Some of the authors I like tend to use uncommon words. It’s so handy to touch the word to get its definition to pop up.

The Nook has an integrated dictionary, but as often as not if I don’t know a word, the dictionary doesn’t have it either. And then there’s responses like, “ionization: the characteristic of being ionized.”
<snip>

Yesterday evening I was reading a novel, “Cocktail Party”, by P. G. Wodehouse. I came across this uncommon word: “chatelaine”.

I touched it on the screen of my Kindle, and this definition popped up: “n, DATED a woman in charge of a large house”.

It was about the fifth uncommon word encountered in this book, and for each the Kindle definition fitted the context of the word. I have more than a dozen books by Wodehouse on my Kindle.

Book worm since I learned how to read back when I was 7 or 8 and then had to relearn to read in English at 9.

I find that reading a good book for a couple of hours before sleepy-time actually helps me sleep almost as well as when I was much younger; sort of a sleeping pill. I guess my brain has more data to sort and backup with reading, so I sleep longer and better.

Books have been my escape from reality - who needs drugs? Books are the best drug for the mind!

My wife and I were talking about this the other day.

I think our attention span as a society is way way down.

Between news stories and social media our brains have rewired to short form videos that last 90 seconds at most, with no effort on our part.

Perhaps ChatGPT can offer some insight here...

quote:

Originally posted by KevH:
I think our attention span as a society is way way down.

Who is the “our” of whom you speak?
If you are correct about some of us—and is certainly not true of everyone—it was totally self-inflicted. No one must limit himself to intellectual and visual pablum.
That does not mean of course that it isn’t often true, but we don’t have to accept it as something we have no control over.

quote:

Right now I’m reading a paperback of The Great Terror

My son John was attending Stanford back in the mid-90's. I went to visit him, shortly after returning from my year or so living in Russia. We wandered over to the Hoover Tower, and asked the receptionist if they had any experts on Russia we could talk to. She directed us to the office of...Robert Conquest. He talked to us for probably an hour and a half about all sorts of things, including his time as a spy in Bulgaria. And his bawdy poems. Probably the most consequential person I've ever met.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
She directed us to the office of...Robert Conquest.

Wow! That would have been fascinating.

PHPaul said it’s like a movie running in his mind when he reads. I’m envious, the number of times I’ve experienced that I could probably count on one hand. It’s probably why I have never enjoyed fiction. I’d rather read an algebra book or Guns & Ammo.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
who wants to carry a book when the worlds under your scroll finger at a glance.

Good point. Why would we want a steak, baked potato, and salad with a glass of Merlot when we could have the convenience and lower cost of a diet Coke and bowl of Froot Loops?

There is of course nothing more personal than what we eat, and we’re free to prefer a diet beverage and bowl of sugar in disguise, but many of us can think of reasons why we would like something else. Likewise, some prefer what we can get from a substantial treatment in a book rather than what our busy fingers will turn up among countless distractions.

Well, you could help your heart and eliminate a lot of sugar if you'd just read a good Heart Healthy Cookbook, digital or paper available.


Link Cookbook

Interesting enough there's a lot of reporting of GenZ disconnecting from digital interfaces, buying dumb phones, and, buying books, not digital copies, good old hard cover books.

Social Media is Anti-Social, been saying that for years, stick your Apple Avoidance Pods in your ears and walk around, nobody talks to you, you talk to nobody, someone tries, point to your ears and mouth "On the phone"

Interesting if it continues, our grandkids spend too much time on digital Amazon kids devices, watching Kids Utoob and I've repeatedly said it's detrimental letting idiots that create stupid videos of kids doing things we'd never let them do at home. Yesterday it finally set in my daughter and son in laws brain, as the 3 year old has began to act out sword play from that stupid digital Asian music group that slays Dragons.

Letting digital babysitters in your home who are really just content creators looking for clicks is a mistake.

Books are better, your mind learns better, you learn new words, sentence structure, conversation patterns etc.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
She directed us to the office of...Robert Conquest.

Wow! That would have been fascinating.

I second that! Would love to have been able to chat with him.

My closest thing is to have attended multiple history seminars given at UNC Chapel Hill by Gerhard Weinberg, who found, then translated, Hitler's Second Book, and having had a chance to chat with him about that, among other things.

quote:

Originally posted by 400m:
PHPaul said it’s like a movie running in his mind when he reads.

That’s interesting, but nothing like I experience. I can get immersed in a story, usually fiction, but I don’t see images like a movie. I have recently read a couple of science articles referring to the “condition” (for lack of a better word) that some people have in which they cannot form any mental images. They know what an apple is, but don’t/can’t form a mental picture of an apple. After reading the articles I thought about myself and although I can form an image of something specific like an apple if I concentrate on doing it, it’s not automatic. When someone says, “Don’t think of a pink elephant,” nope: no image comes to mind unless I try for it.

I can read faster than most people can talk, and a damn sight faster than they do on videos. I can also visualize almost anything. I hear all these people saying “oh, Nicolai Tesla could see all his inventions in his mind before he put them down on paper!” Yeah, like every engineer I have ever known. It may very well be a necessary ability to be an engineer. I was a pre-teen before I found out that everyone couldn’t visualize things. How do people daydream without seeing it in their minds?


Anyways, I see images when I read, hear character voices, don’t smell things though (thank God). I read a lot, sometimes re-reading series while waiting foe new books to come out.

HRK I remember that topic being a thread here a year or two ago. That’s the first I’d ever heard of it. I think it was called fantasia. I can visualize images fairly well including color. Not as vividly as some.

Normally if I’m reading a story, characters tend to be associated with more of an unrecognizable image. The few times I have been engrossed enough to see characters and action I thought I’d discovered a new drug.

Someone above said they can sometimes read pages and not know what they read. I was 19 before I knew I had ADHD, so that was normal reading to me. Meds opened up the ability to read and comprehend which was life changing, but my lack of interest in fiction stuck. I’m grateful that I can at least enjoy reading though. Up through High School I detested it.