Subject:
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Re: Reading in steep decline?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 8 Jul 2004 22:48:23 GMT
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Viewed:
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646 times
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> Thoughts?
Various unorganized thoughts:
--While web surfing does involve a lot of reading, this is generally in very
small bites, distracted by a lot of colorful eye-candy. It's like the contrast
between USA Today and the New York Times. Reading books involves more patience
and complex ideas can be developed over multiple pages or chapters.
--One thing that very much bothers me is that people will see a movie and feel
that they have a complete understanding of a book or a subject. I'm a huge
Tolkien fan, but I really disliked this aspect of the Peter Jackson movies.
I've had friends tell me that they didn't have to read the book, because they
already saw the movie. Ignoring all my petty obsessed-fan comments on the lack
of Tom Bombadil or whatever, the movie also leaves out just about everything of
interest philosophically in favor of action sequences. I'm sure the same could
be said about any movie adaptation. Malcolm X is another great example. See
the movie and you get a sequence of events. Read the autobiography and you get
Malcolm X's commentary on what he felt the events meant.
Similarly, people see a movie and feel that they've understood something
historical. So their whole picture of the Holocaust is Schindler's List, or JFK
is their picture of the Kennedy assasination, or whatever. So rather than study
history, they'll go see a movie.
--In his essay "On the Reading of Old Books", C.S. Lewis makes a great point.
He makes the point that every period of history has it's own set of prejudices
that are discarded as silly by subsequent generations. Just as they did not see
beyond their own blinders, we are blind to the prejudices of our own day. To
get around this we can read authors from different time periods, and since we
cannot read books from the future, we are left with books from the past. In
seeing through the eyes of these authors we see through their worldview, which
makes it easier to understand our own.
--On a related note, I was in a bookstore the other day looking at the stacks of
books on Iraq, the Bush presidency, the Florida election, etc. The problem was,
whether from the left or the right, these authors all had very real axes to
grind. Even more so if you tune into other aspects of internet, t.v., radio,
magazine, or newspaper media. On the other hand, books about past presidents or
conflits give a much fuller view, and perhaps a better view of our own time
period. Of course, you're not going to find a good blog on the Spanish-American
War or whatever, you've got to go to books.
--Many of my students have a very hard time processing information in their
textbooks. I think that in part this is because they do not have practice
processing information from reading outside of class.
Bruce
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Reading in steep decline?
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| (URL) thing I came away with, and it doesn't offset the overall concern I feel, is that it may not be READING that is in steep decline, it may be reading BOOKS. One of the chief competitive sources listed was the internet. High bandwidth streaming (...) (20 years ago, 8-Jul-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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