Why do you read?

[WICKES]

I am a conscientious reader and try to work my way through both the 'canon' (Homer, the King James Bible, Shakespeare, Sophocles etc etc) and books on science, religion, philosophy, history and so on. Sometimes it is a slog, at other times I feel uplifted and thrilled by ideas. I am genuinely interested in the world, but there are times when I wonder why I bother to read at all. I am no intellectual, but I am intelligent and well read enough to know how feeble and limited my intelligence really is and how mediocre I am. I know people who have literally never read anything and live an entirely unreflective, instictive life, yet are often much happier than me. They sleep well, are untroubled by the 'big questions' and certainly do find the unexamined life worth living- in fact they seem to do a better job of living than me. Reading so much has made me a bit snobbish and detached, a bit too much of an observer. At times I wish I could be more animal- like: a successful career in an office bullying and shoving myself forward, making plenty of money and filling my weekends with sex, drugs, alcohol and violence.

I don't know, I just wonder why I bother sometimes. I have zero religious faith (if there is a creator He/it is, at best, indifferent to evil and suffering, at worst a sadist) and share Schopenhauer's view of life as an unfortunate accident. If Darwin is the final word it kind of seems like generations of reflective, sensitive, hopeful people trying to make sense of this world were almost, well, wasting their time. It turns out we are no more than a naked ape with a large brain; a violent, selfish and only partly rational creature that finds it hard to live in even a moderately civilised way. We are alone in a meaningless universe, sensitive enough to be tormented by the briefness of our lives, by bereavement, evil and suffering, but not intelligent enough to find a way of being fully happy and at peace with the universe.

Why do you read? What do you get out of it beyond entertainment?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Wow! The person you describe could be me I swear. I too feel this way quite a lot and the think with reading is no matter how much you read, not matter how far you dig into a particular area, you only seem to uncover more and more. It is as if you are digging in a desert with a toothpick and getting frustrated, despite uncovering things of great interest.

I think it is just the way we are wired that makes people different from one another. Some people are happy to get by on the TV or from getting entertainment from a weekly football match or a night out. Others place making money at the centre of their lives and seem to “get off” on selling people car insurance or some such horrid thing. While a small, mad section of society, wants to learn about the world around them, which includes reading deeply and widely.

Personally, I can not understand why anyone does not read. I can’t understand how people can sit watching trash on TV for hours on end or read ‘celebrity’ magazines; when all the great literature of the world sits untouched.

The strangest thing someone once said to me was “why are you reading, if the book is any good they will make a film from it?” “I can’t understand why anyone reads books.”

It seems it is just the way people are.

[WICKES]

[QUOTE=Neely;614684][QUOTE]

no matter how much you read, not matter how far you dig into a particular area, you only seem to uncover more and more.

Too true! I wish someone had told me that 10 years ago. This is why I kind of envy religious people- it is all so simple for them. They have one book with all the answers. All you need to do is re read it constanty and follow what it says and bingo. I have often wondered whether it would be a good thing to know all the answers- to know for sure whether there is a God, life after death and so on, or whether life is better with a bit of mystery and debate.

I think it is just the way we are wired that makes people different from one another. Some people are happy to get by on the TV or from getting entertainment from a weekly football match or a night out. Others place making money at the centre of their lives While a small, mad section of society, wants to learn about the world around them, which includes reading deeply and widely.

Exactly the conclusion I have come to. If I have learnt one thing about life it's this- you can't fight your genes! I wish I had been born a loud, assertive, unthinking extravert, but I'm not and if I pretend I am I shall be miserable.

The strangest thing someone once said to me was “why are you reading, if the book is any good they will make a film from it?” “I can’t understand why anyone reads books.”

Yes, I've heard stuff like that. I once heard a grown man in a book shop say to his friend "you know, I can't bear books without pictures in". I noticed you are a Brit btw- we British are depressingly anti intellectual and proudly philistine. So different to the French and Italians. It is such a shame. This soggy little island has produced some of the world's greatest literature and science and yet the average person here is more interested in Jade Goodey than Newton, Chaucer, Milton or Shakespeare. People actually resent you for reading as well- they think it is pretentious or showing off.

[John Goodman]

It's a medium of entertainment that can delve deeper than TV, movies, or video games ever could. It's been fundamental in society for hundreds of years, or at least literacy was wished for for that long. Sure expanding your knowledge seems futile when you'll never be able to use the vast majority of it and life is all too short, but if that's what you enjoy doing then who's to say you can't have fun with it in the time you have. I have a job, I volunteer, I go to parties on the weekends, I go to school and eventually I'll have a career doing almost exactly what you describe. I'll be an investment banker in a high stress position doing anything to make money. That's what drives me. Reading is a great thing but moderation must always be applied. If you worry about something as minor as not being able to know enough interesting but essentially useless knowledge, it will consume you and you'll realise how much more you could have done.

[Annamariah]

I read, because books are my friends. They always have just as much time for me as I have for them.

For me reading is mostly about escapism, really. Learning is a great plus, but not the main point.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I read, because books are my friends. They always have just as much time for me as I have for them.

For me reading is mostly about escapism, really. Learning is a great plus, but not the main point.

I started out the same way, I would read for fun only and eat popular novels for breakfast, dinner and lunch. But then I wanted more than escapism, I wanted knowledge and understanding and so I started reading "classics" and took a degree in Literature.

[Drkshadow03]

Heh. I was just discussing this topic with Stlukesguild in private messages; how ironic, but good to see other people are thinking about this question. I'll answer later as I'm still piecing together my thoughts.

[JBI]

I read to build myself, and for enjoyment. Poetry in particular has a huge effect on me, as after I read something great, I just want to read it over and over again, memorize part, or all of it, and just sit with it.

It is like asking why do you have friends. Because like a book, a friend is something that has shaped and changed the way you see yourself, the world around you, and the people around you.

I feel now, more than ever, or perhaps as much as ever, people are in need of meaning in their lives. The traditional religions, which seem to be the source of many people's meanings just don't apply the same way they did when they originated. We need, as people, something that relates, and speaks to us, in order to function properly.

This reminds me of the book Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, in which an old, misshapen priest says essentially that he is in need of a God who can speak to him, as Jesus, though he believes in him, died at age 33, and no longer functions the same way as a God of old age.

Davies's work is important, in that it deals with the question of spirituality without, or separate from religion. We all need something, but we cannot all bring ourselves to believe in a religion, or, even if we can, we cannot find all we need within one thing. That is where literature comes in, or rather, where the humanities come in.

I make no distinction of these effects on me between Visual arts, literature, music, philosophy, history, and religion/theology. They all have an impact on the way we see things.

I try to read the best that was written, and listen to the best that was written played by the best, and see the best that was created for this reason. I focus, unfortunately, on literature, as it seems the medium which I am most fit to study, beyond a hobby, yet I try my best not to neglect the rest. If one does not seek out the best, then they are depriving themselves of the best.

[kasie]

Why do I read? Unashamed curiosity! I can't bring myself to ask direct questions of people (it may surprise you to know I am rather shy!) but 'By indirection, find direction out', I read to find out about people. Apparently, when I was about four years of age, I floored my mother by asking her 'What do people do?' I suppose I might have been precociously asking her what was the meaning of life but I rather think I was asking what went on in people's houses once they went inside and shut the door. Reading is a way of finding out what goes on behind the closed doors, not just those on their houses but the shutters they pull down on their minds. I suppose my interest in history rose out of the extension to the question, 'How did we get where we are today?' and my interest in the Natural World by asking 'How does that work then?' Psychology: 'Why did he do that?' Ethics: 'What should I do?'

The fascinating thing about being curious is that the more you ask, the more there is to ask - and somebody, somewhere has at least some of the answer and had probably written a book about it. No one will ever know everything though some people like to con you and themselves that they do - they just haven't realised how long a piece of string is.

But as to 'Why are we here?' - no one has ever given me a satisfactory answer. We just are - enjoy it!

[Etienne]

Well I could get in what some may call my "philosophy of life" but I'll stay out of it and simply say that, other than being very pleasing to me, reading offers me the opportunity to relax, constantly improve myself by new knowledge and mental exercise, and offers a good contrast - and I would say completes very well my other main intellectual activity which is playing chess by being fundamentally different in terms of mental process, allowing me to exercise my brain in a more universal manner.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Well I could get in what some may call my "philosophy of life" but I'll stay out of it and simply say that, other than being very pleasing to me, reading offers me the opportunity to relax, constantly improve myself by new knowledge and mental exercise, and offers a good contrast - and I would say completes very well my other main intellectual activity which is playing chess by being fundamentally different in terms of mental process, allowing me to exercise my brain in a more universal manner.

Ah chess is a great game. A fine balance between calculation and creativity. I enjoy it, though I tend to make silly mistakes sometimes which means I am just an average average I think.

[integrity]

I read to assure myself I'm not illiterate.

[DapperDrake]

Why do I read? its a complex issue I'm sure, part escapism, part education, and part entertainment.
I think the main reason is escapism, there is great comfort in being an observer, safe from all that goes on in the world of the book and yet involved in every aspect of it... So unlike life. plus of course its very stimulating to be able to absorb a part of someone else's experience and ideas, to touch their genius as if it were your own.

[stlukesguild]

I was indeed just discussing this very topic with Drkshadow03 in a PM. To give a shortened version of my thoughts I would say that I fully agree with Harold Bloom's statement that the attainment of aesthetic pleasure is the only legitimate reason for reading. I agree... but would expand upon this. I believe that Anna Quindlen has written one of the best descriptions of why we read... (or why we spend time with art or music, etc...):

Books are the means to immortality. Through them we all experience other times, other places, other lives. We manage to become much more than our own selves. The only dead are those who grow sere and shriveled within, unable to step outside their own lives and into those of others. Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque.

I don't read or experience art to reinforce my own thoughts... beliefs... prejudices... but to enter into the thoughts of endless others... to engage in dialog... a conversation... or an intercourse with endless other human spirits. The only question then is with whom do I most wish to spend this time? Obviously, I wish the engage in this dialog... conversation... with those who bring me the most pleasure. Here, I must again quote Walter Pater's closing words from the Conclusion to his collection of essays, The Renaissance:

Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us, --for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the sense, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening...

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had clung always about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the interval that remained; and he was not biased by anything in his previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! we are all condamnés, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve --les hommes sont tous condamnés à mort avec des sursis indéfinis: we have an interval, and then our place knows no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passion, the wisest, at least among "the children of the world", in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us a quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which comes naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion --that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake.

[JacobF]

I read for two main reasons. My first reason is to escape from reality, to be immersed in a world and embrace all the characters, the plot, the setting, et cetera. Reading something can sometimes be more tactile and more entertaining than video games, movies and TV, because when you read the text you are forced to use your imagination to mold the authour's words into a living, breathing experience for yourself. I admit it takes a bit of work sometimes, particularly with fiction like Brave New World and Heart of Darkness, but it's generally very rewarding.

My second reason is to observe the world around me in a different way, to see things from a perspective I would have never thought of. While I haven't attempted to read philosophy yet, some books just hit me in a sense that for the rest of the week, everything I do and see reminds me of a book I have recently read.

Admittedly, I'm generally more interested in writing rather than reading, simply because writing comes more easily to me and I tend to enjoy it more. Still, I love reading.