I eat by myself and read 90% of the time. I don't feel self conscious about it at all.

'cause I could mostly give a shit what people think

Could? Or couldn't?

you want a shit? well, I could give you one . . .

i'm somehow reminded
in some small little way
of the beginning
(or, truly, the entirety of)
the play titled Sure Thing
by the wonderful David Ives

( http://thunder1.cudenver.edu/cam/epo...ndy/script.htm )

Never give a shit.

Makes your hands messy...

I like the way you think.
Me too.

Yeah, I have very little fear of doing anything alone, so have been known to go out to a non-fancy dinner and read a book or the paper. I would much rather see that than "starers." People who sit waiting for an appointment, or dining...and just stare into space. Or couples who go out to dinner and just slowly chew and stare off and don't even talk to each other. Or what I call "car-sitters," people who can't be bothered to go into the store but sit in the car just staring ahead. At least there's some mental stimuli in the store.

I'm sure most of them are solving the world's problems in their heads but some of them...I think they're just empty-heads.

I can't stand just sitting...throw a book, or magazine, or newspaper into my hands or my brain will idle and stall.

I am always amazed when people tell me that they would never go to a movie by themselves.

When I go to a movie alone, I always take a book.

You could read, say, The Green Mile at a screening of The Green Mile, all the time shouting "The book is better!"

Hilarious. You could keep blurting out things like "That doesn't happen in the book!"

Or even better things like "This person/event is a combination of two or more people/events from the book, condensed here for the purposes of communicating the major plot elements in a shorter period of time!"

Cujo would have been a better example from me. I'd be screaming "The kid DIES at the end of the book!"

F
U
C
K
!

I'm on page 283 cousin. couldn't you have given a spoiler warning???

omg you can't be serious. Are you? I mean, I really thought about a spoiler warning but kind of figured anyone who wanted to read it would have read it by now.

I am soooooooooooooooooooooooo sorry. He doesn't really die. In fact, the dog gets well and the boy and the dog ride off into the sunset while mom smiles and wipes a happy tear from her eye?

uh, thanks. i'll try to pretend i believe you. it doesn't matter since i read that book about two decades ago, but thanks anyway.;)


spoilers are fun. Mrs L and the girls went to see Sex and the City on opening night and there were oodles of people in line when they walked out. Her friend of course, wipes her eyes and stage whispers, "I can't believe they let Carie die." and kept on walking.

lol

Um, I'll probably never see that movie as I've only seen bits of the show and don't care for it. Do they really kill her off?

Am I just the most gullible person ever?

No they don't kill her. it was just the thing to do though. Unlike the pricks walking out of the theater in 1980 saying, "i can't believe vader is luke's father!"

I probably ruined Lord of the Rings for people, as I walked out I mentioned to my sis-in-law that "I remember there was a skirmish."

The film was all skirmish. :lol:

That could easily be a Steven Wright quote.

Ohmigosh, I am HOME! Do you know how hard I have looked to find an internet community like this one? Intelligent, literate, readers! Who can be allowed to use profanity but not lean upon it like a crutch.

I have kids ages 10 and 12 and if being a parent who reads voraciously were enough to make them readers, believe me, they'd be readers. Alas, they are not. They are intelligent, do well in school and the 12 year old shows the makings of a fab writer one day...but they will not read for fun.

I blame the TV and video games. I never watch TV. Well, rarely, maybe twice a week for about an hour. It bores me and I almost always have to do something else at the same time. But my dear husband is one of those people who always have to have the damn TV on and it drives me batty. Say, I'm sitting on the couch READING a book, he'll come in from mowing the lawn or something, turn it on, then leave. As though he thought he was doing me a favor, resolving my TV deprivation. Ugh.

He has also accused me of "being antisocial" when I am reading. Oh well. Apparently the only time I am allowed to read is just before falling asleep, in bed. Any other time, there's other things I ought to be doing instead.

My parents were readers. My mom, especially. She died in December and I am clearing out her condo. I have counted the number of books to donate - just the ones I am not keeping. It's over 600. and about 400 of them are paperbacks purchased within the past 5 years.

My mom never wanted to give any of them away, but in the last year she finally agreed to start giving them to the library. I said - mom - let the library store your books for you, you can always borrow them again! That's why I don't have that many books, I just get them from the library when I need them. I have cards to six different libraries and I have used them all within the last six months.

But I am biased. I am an English major - facing my midlife crisis by returning to college full time. Good LORD I love school. You cannot imagine how much I ADORE being back in college. I am in heaven!

I am also a freelance copywriter. This gives me some insight into the dumbing-down of the average reader. I write for non-readers. I write to make them read, even though they don't think they want to. Quite a challenge, but I love it.

How do you decide what they will, and will not, read? I imagine there's a lot of anguish in the editing.:haha:

You use some gimmicks...gotta have an attention-grabbing hook, lots of white space, bold and italics, conversational tone, and nothing above a fourth-grade reading level.

Don't be too hard on your husband Juniper - my Dad was the same with TV all the way through my childhood - still is in fact. All his reading was done out of my eyesight except when he was reading aloud to us. I grew up a voracious reader, my sister not for pleasure and my brother... well - newspapers and internet. A modern reader.

Your children might "find" reading when they hit the right books. I know people it happened to in their teens. Otherwise, just take comfort in the fact they are intelligent and (I assume) value that trait in other people.

I am so happy to be working where I am now. In the first month I was a little put out that books were being passed round and not offered to me - despite the fact I identified myself as a reader. But I was new and bit my tongue. Now I've been there 4 months and I'm being included in the conversations about books. And people are starting to say, "I must bring that one in for you!" I thnk it was just a case of establishing myself.

Sadly, I lost a lot of my I-have-to-share-this-one books when I moved. If I'd have known, I'd have packed them very differently. Still - I got my poetry books, and they would have been harder to replace than bestselling paperbacks!

If TV and video games were responsible for not enjoying the activity of reading, I'd be a virtual illiterate. I am TV obsessed, I watch many hours when I have the time. I love video games (but only play massively multi-player types) and have followed their development with utter fascination since I first sat down to an Atari games machine.

I can relate to the 'anti-social' thing. When me and J were together, very early on before he calmed the fuck down, it would drive him mad when I went into a reading mood. He got over it. But he didn't read for pleasure much himself, except for the odd political memoir, for a long time. He still wouldn't turn to a book as his first choice of entertainment now. But that doesn't mean he isn't 'literate'. He has a very deep understanding of narrative structure (son of a playwrite, it's in his veins :P) and a brilliant mind. he chooses to apply that to the narrative form of computer games, and to an academic analysis of what narrative means in computer gaming, and how it relates to the gamer's experience.

I find it a fascinating subject, the changing form of narrative and how we interact with that. I do not consider books tobe inherently superior to games, television, movies, theatre, or any other medium of expression.

Juniper, I know exactly what you mean about going back to college:) It's a wonderful experience isn't it? I enrolled at university in 2006 for a History degree and the last two years have been the happiest of my life. One more year to go and then on to postgrad, I hope.

To return to the reading theme: it can feel isolating to be amongst people who don't understand your love of reading. With my old circle of friends, before I moved away in my 20s, one of my defining characteristics was that I read books. One or two of the girls read magazines, and the lads would read computer manuals and glance at the sports news and the topless chicks in the tabloids. They all thought it was hysterically funny that I liked reading. I do not know why. We'd have the gang round, the lads playing Grand Prix, the girls kicking around and talking, occasional bursts of computer maintenance spilling out across the living room. This would go on for hours. I could handle it for a couple of hours, but I can only talk about banal shite for a limited amount of time before I run screaming to the bookshelves.

The lads I could talk to. I liked computer games, I could relate to them. The girls didn't appear to like anything. I am sat here now, desperately trying to recall what kinds of things we all talked about and I am drawing a virtual blank. A regular soap opera (Brookside) seemed to be their favourite topic. That and who was shagging whom.

Every group has roles within it. We fall into our place in the greater whole. My role within our little gang was to be the weird bird who inexplicably reads books:P (I don't count J in that description. He always understood what I got from reading and was as bemused by our friends attitude as I was). I just played up to it, fully embraced the eccentricity:P

It's funny Ju, we put the TV in the least comfortable place in the house because we consider it "anti-social". I guess it is perspective. Pete and I found we were watching a lot of tv and it was eating into our home time. I still have the habit of turning on the radio for no good reason, but today I'm listening to the rain on the steel roof, watching Pete make yogurt, and being anti-social on the interwebs. Maybe I'll get off-line and read some (really dated btw) Greg Bear.

Aaah. I woke up and read. Now I'm on the internet. I'm still on the internet using it as reference material to learn about new methods of puppy training. This is also reading, and I am being social enough to write to you guys about it.....I don't see one as being more important than the other.

Which one will be more effective in the long-run? I don't know. The Rilke I read this morning is related to dogs and the reference material I am looking up will be great, in a utililitarian fashion, and is of the same subject. Who knows? I don't think I've wasted any of my time at all. Anti-social? Maybe. But I don't apologize for being anti-social. There are times to come together with my husband and times to do my own thing. I think that's healthy.

Uh... er... nevermind :bolt:

Yes, I regretted that after I said it.........;) On many levels it doesn't really work for me. b'aaah!

Well, I didn't mean to sound so critical. I guess I just feel defensive of what Dana mentioned, being viewed as eccentric for reading.

Let me clarify. It's not that books are inherently superior to TV, video games, movies, theater, etc. All of those things can be wonderful, but 9 times out of 10 they are pure crap. Some TV shows make you think and educate you, some entertain you in stimulating ways, and some just yammer at you. I have no problem with sitting in front of the TV to watch a show. It's turning the TV on even when there's nothing good to watch, just to have it on, and watching anything...that I have a problem with.

I do value the ability to be alone with my own thoughts - or with other people, in the absence of external noise. Reading requires a different kind of effort and not everybody can get caught up in a book, some people just read and comprehend. But I think that is something that comes with practice, and if you don't put in the time, it can't happen.

As for the kids, it makes me a little wistful and sad that they're not falling in love with books the way I did; you love someone, you want to make sure they get the chance to experience all the wonderful things you've experienced. Like...say, someone says they don't want to go for a walk in the snow at midnight, and you drag them out anyway, and it turns out to be a beautiful thing they're glad they did.

*chuckles* indeed, Juniper, it would be nice if you could physically drag them through the wardrobe into Narnia.

Its a new world - the kids are getting input from a multitude of electronic sources. The written word is going the way of the daily newspaper...

True, but they are missing out on the wonder of the imagination.

I disagree classic. Books have never been so popular or so widely, and cheaply, available. When I walk into a Waterstones or Borders shop I see a dizzying array of books and its always full of people. There are more children's books and children's authors than there ever was when I was young. Books for tots, books for teens, dark books, fun books, bleak books, and colourful books. The market for books is vast.

The market is there and the forced summer reading programs here are a reason for much of it.
I have to say that the supply of books is vast, but the reason is pure economics. They must have whatever you want, because if they don't you will go elsewhere. They also have the food courts and all to keep you in the stores longer. They let you read the books for free. What other business does that? None, because its a failed model. There is no doubt that we are headed to a paperless world. (good for the trees) Books will be an inevitable part of that...soon.

How many of you still write out checks?

From time to time.

What does paper have to do with anything? Books can be published in all manner of formats.

Me. For some things, anyway.

I still read books...real books, made with paper and everything. A LOT of books, actually. And I read them to my children. Ok, not the same books, but books with words and pages and covers and illustrations. They may never read another book once they get out of school, but at least I tried. I do read internet books occasionally, but really, there is nothing quite like curling up in an armchair with some hot cocoa or coffee and turning the pages of a good book.

Stormie

Please don't misconstrue what I'm saying. I am not defending the reality as I see it, nor do I like it. It is my opinion that the end of the written book, much like the newspaper or even magazine is near. I am no writer, but the reality is that books written on paper are not gonna be around much longer. Children today have the attention span of about 5 milliseconds. Everything in their world is immediate. Thats just a simple reality. As technology and that progresses - it will only get worse. I see it in young adults and even moreso in the teens and younger. Reading takes time, patience and effort, three characteristics lacking in the vast majority of our youth.

I don't know... As much as my kids love video games and TV, they both beg to be taken to the bookstore and read for at least an hour every night.

I believe you, but that is certainly not the norm.

It may not be the norm.....but nor is it rare.

Except among teenage boys. Most are going blind from too much... you know... ;)

sun?

I don't value electronic books as much as the other.

I am going to admit that, and I am not ashamed. I have a fetish for old and/or rare books. I like physical libraries more than online libraries. Off course, I am an old bag so that explains a lot.
:)

So do I. I have a (admittedly rather small) house full of books. I used to have a library but had to give away my book collection when I moved house. I gave away hundreds.

I love everything about books. I like the way they feel, I like the different textures of paper, I like the way books, especially very old ones, smell. Doesn't stop me enjoying a story accessed in some other way.

For the record, I love books also. I have many many, very old ones that I cherish. I still firmly believe their days are numbered.

As it is with all things. Ideas are now rarely transmitted via papyrus or vellum.

and your point?

I mentioned my mom's death and her collection of books...part of my inheritance from her is 6 paper boxes full of really old books, dating from the 1830's. Some are school books like McGuffey Readers with scribbles in them, names of family members long gone. others are cheap penny-dreadful novels. I love every one of them.

That people have been proclaiming the death of books for a long time. Much as the death of radio has been proclaimed.

My other point is that you said that the 'written word''s days were numbered. I disagree. The written word takes many forms. Paper books are merely one way of transmitting it.

But to back up Dana's point - we don't have that here. There has been a massive resurgence in children reading which the media like to pin on J K Rowling. Rubbish of course - the media only picked up on Harry Potter when The Prisoner of Azkaban knocked Hannibal off the top of the bestseller list in the week it was released. Even without children I'd heard the buzz from my local bookshop when The Chamber of Secrets was released. Although to be fair they knew me as a purchaser of children's books.
All I can say is again it must be a cultural difference. I get Heat magazine every week and have done for nine years. It's trashy, but I grew up with magazines. My sister confirms my niece's age group are as into their magazines as we were (not sure what they read - it was Just Sevnteen when I was at school). For intelligent humour I get Private Eye every two weeks.

And 90% of people on the Tube every monring and evening will have a newspaper. I'm not kidding. A book or a newspaper. How else can you hide from the weirdos.

I know you're not anti-reading. I'm just saying perhaps you are sounding the death knell too soon.

And in Japan, porno comic books are regulation subway reading for commuting suit-slaves. I use the :headshake smiley because that's me peeping over his shoulder.

I still subscribe to niche magazines like National Geographics, Smithsonian, and Liberty but no news magazines. My daughters are working their way though kid magazines. I think paper print will be with us a long time, but we may change what we use it for.

I will admit I rarely buy a newspaper. I tend to get the headlines online and the analysis from Newsnight. But then, if you just want a rundown of what's going on, there are plenty of free newspapers. I read the Metro most days during term, because there are copies dotted about the bus.

I do, however, spend far more than is healthy on books.

I buy vellum to write with! :D It's actually my favorite. (and now a rarity) I use my typewriters and pens!I still love a lot of paper. I like rice paper, spongey paper, vellum, oh well, you get the idea! I even use large scrolls of typeable butcher paper...(you have the freedom to cut it to the size you want and it is cheaper than "art paper") I have a prized collection of paper. I think my red suede paper is sexy...I have also decided to take up the art of letter writing again. I e-mail, call, message, etc....but I also find that my correspondence with friends is not as intimate electronically so I am taking up the pen and typewriter again to send messages. I think it's like getting a little present in the mail.

I read a book recently also, that suggests just that (something much like it anyway). The idea is, if you are using a computer (keyboarding) things are going to come out differently than with a pen or other mediums. It will just be different, no better or worse, just different. I think there is a small, or large at times, difference in my communications,writing, and reading; this is dependent on the medium.

I know that I am using different areas of my brain to accomplish the writing or the reading depending on the medium because I have noticed that I am dyslexic (recent find and recent issue). The catch? I am only dyslexic while keyboarding on the computer. It is very specific. I read and write with other sources with no sign of dyslexia but recently I have had to edit everything I keyboard on the computer because when I type it, the letters are rearranged. I find this interesting because I show absolutely no sign of it using other mediums. I think this is connected to the medium, and we may lose something essential in our reading and/or writing if we don't have the variety. It's almost as if a different side of me comes out when I switch mediums.

Ok. Done. See what happens whn you mention vellum? blah blah blah....;)

*smiles* I also have some affection for vellum.

I find the biggest difference between writing by hand and typing is to do with speed of thought and translation of that thought to the page. I find when I write by hand, i have to consciously avoid skipping syllables. I cannot form the words fast enough.

I noticed a large difference when I had something important to say to one of my friends that has been acting differently towards me (upsetting me) and wrote it all out in a message as an e-mail (erased it). Then I took out the pen and paper to write the letter. The tones of each were drastically different, at the same speed, and the same amount of editing. The point was the same, but the tone took on some changes that were more detailed and effective;hence I have decided to write letters to correspond again.

If you are bored maybe you could try this Dana. Write something to someone that you feel is important to you (you don't have to send it). Do it first with your word editing program or an e-mail, and save it. Then take out the pen and paper to tackle the same subject. I have the possible subject ready: a letter or message to your friend J full of things you need to tell him. (or whatever is on your mind) Just make sure the subject is the same.

Then read both. See if the tone changes or if any other major element changes. You might be surprised at what you find there, and you might not.:D


(I forget sometimes that no one wastes time doing things that I do)

That's not a bad experiment, Cic. I tell you what I have noticed. I do write by hand, particularly if something occurs to me in the night. Usually this is poetry. I find I am much more self-conscious when I write by hand. When I type poetry I am much more lost in/engaged with the act. I am able to transpose the emotional content much more easily than when writing by hand.

I agree, Dana. With the spell-check and ease of editing, on the keyboard, I find I'm more connected with the content, and less with the process. Possibly a little more adventurous with vocabulary, too.

Although, probably more likely to include inane detail and superfluous bullshit. :o

Alas, I cannot write by hand anymore. Carpel tunnel has injured my writing wrist (total numbness except when making writing motions for more than a few words, then pure agony). I've learned to love the backspace, delete and cut/paste functions of the computer world, however.

Stormie