Let me weigh in firmly against reading, as currently constituted ;-) Most books are terrible from the reader's perspective and most authors are woefully self-indulgent.
Now that I have the internet and Wikipedia in particular, most books are a slog. Don't get me wrong. I share the author's desire to be well read across literature and both the hard and social sciences. This includes both broad surveys and the occasional deep dive. A good book has arguments in line with its title and conveys them in 300 - 500 pages of engaging prose. Anything less can't deal seriously with a serious topic, and anything more is just too much for a person who wants to cultivate broad and varied interests.
It's remarkable how many scholarly books don't fit this model. Authors that tell you the five separate things that you need to know before they can start telling you what the book is about. Authors whose writing is more about throwing elbows against other scholars in their field than it is with engaging the reader. Authors whose work is so allusive to the codes and practice of their discipline that is impenetrable to the average intelligent reader. Authors who are so chummy and desperate to engage with the average reader that they scare off any normal person or churn out a useless pablum that anyone can consume, but which is devoid of nutritious value.
What's the current stat? Something like 96% of all books sell no more 1,000 copies. I'd surmise that over 90% of that 1,000 is started but not finished. We could better those stats if authors and publishing houses could agree on what makes a readable book (see my criticisms above), but while publishers may merge and produce a monoculture, academia never will.
I welcome other suggestions as to what might produce more readable books, because folks are not going to get off their phones until authors begin to provide such content.
Thanks for the comment Andy. So, I'll put two points across here :) First, I think this is a bigger problem than you identify. It's not that most books today are poor which is the root problem (that's a separate debate and one I've had with others) because if it was I'd be seeing people root through classics and older texts and just shunning new ones. We don't in fact see this at all. In fact, in my experience, many younger people find newer work much easier to plough through than the older stuff which may be stronger in philosophical and literary terms.
I also would say on my second point that this doesn't really hit the substantive part of my piece so much. I'm more concerned with the background conditions of our society. Perhaps this is implicit in your comment and I missed it, so sorry if that's the case! but for me people not reading is not the core problem but the symptom of something much more rotten in our society.
I used your piece as a point of departure from which to make my own comment on why reading seriously in the internet age is hard. It doesn't have to agree or disagree with your arguments or align with your prioritization of what the important issues are. At another time or on another topic I might debate the individual arguments that you raise in your excellent piece, but one can still offer thoughtful commentary without doing that.
That's fair Andy :) I think I still ultimately disagree with your diagnosis though. From what you're saying, and please correct me if I'm misreading your claim, people won't begin reading unless we solve the problems in the publishing industry today.
So, I think you're right about certain genres of books fitting into this category. Oftentimes, they are found in the 'smart thinking' section of Waterstones and I believe fits the infamous category of the 'Waterstones dad'. Now, I think this is partly a problem that rewards churn over quality and potentially intersects with some of the deeper issues I outlined in the piece.
But, and this is where I may part ways with you, I don't think that this applies to all sections of books today nor does it cover books from quite a long time ago. So, we are witnessing a deeper crisis in literature and novels which I would argue are going through a relative renaissance in terms of output and quality. From both stats and anecdotal experience as well, I think we're seeing an increasing difficulty in engaging with 'classic' books which occurs with younger people as well. So, although I do think some books could be more readable I don't think this applies to all of contemporary writing and certainly not to older texts.
I think all I'm saying is that reading seriously and widely is much harder than we thought it would be when the promise of the internet age dawned, and that fact is discouraging folks from reading. I've noted a number of consistent flaws I've noticed in scholarly books that if corrected might cause folks to read and finish reading more serious nonfiction, but I make no claim that this is the best way or the first priority to tackle the problem of why folks no longer read. It clearly is not, but it is a practical suggestion that scholars who want their books to be read might consider what college educated in postgraduate readers are looking for in a book as they seek to stay informed about the world.
well words have been a primary way of learning for an extremely long time. Mass print changed the world and so beforehand this was through a variety of methods including oral traditions. However, what we are seeing is an increasingly disruptive method of communication and learning which is what I would argue is the background conditions which are a problem.
This article by Mia Levitin in the Financial Times tackled the decline in reading and was, I thought, interesting and with a whisper of optimism.
https://on.ft.com/40cClSk
Thanks for this Eliot I'll definitely give this a read :)
Let me weigh in firmly against reading, as currently constituted ;-) Most books are terrible from the reader's perspective and most authors are woefully self-indulgent.
Now that I have the internet and Wikipedia in particular, most books are a slog. Don't get me wrong. I share the author's desire to be well read across literature and both the hard and social sciences. This includes both broad surveys and the occasional deep dive. A good book has arguments in line with its title and conveys them in 300 - 500 pages of engaging prose. Anything less can't deal seriously with a serious topic, and anything more is just too much for a person who wants to cultivate broad and varied interests.
It's remarkable how many scholarly books don't fit this model. Authors that tell you the five separate things that you need to know before they can start telling you what the book is about. Authors whose writing is more about throwing elbows against other scholars in their field than it is with engaging the reader. Authors whose work is so allusive to the codes and practice of their discipline that is impenetrable to the average intelligent reader. Authors who are so chummy and desperate to engage with the average reader that they scare off any normal person or churn out a useless pablum that anyone can consume, but which is devoid of nutritious value.
What's the current stat? Something like 96% of all books sell no more 1,000 copies. I'd surmise that over 90% of that 1,000 is started but not finished. We could better those stats if authors and publishing houses could agree on what makes a readable book (see my criticisms above), but while publishers may merge and produce a monoculture, academia never will.
I welcome other suggestions as to what might produce more readable books, because folks are not going to get off their phones until authors begin to provide such content.
Thanks for the comment Andy. So, I'll put two points across here :) First, I think this is a bigger problem than you identify. It's not that most books today are poor which is the root problem (that's a separate debate and one I've had with others) because if it was I'd be seeing people root through classics and older texts and just shunning new ones. We don't in fact see this at all. In fact, in my experience, many younger people find newer work much easier to plough through than the older stuff which may be stronger in philosophical and literary terms.
I also would say on my second point that this doesn't really hit the substantive part of my piece so much. I'm more concerned with the background conditions of our society. Perhaps this is implicit in your comment and I missed it, so sorry if that's the case! but for me people not reading is not the core problem but the symptom of something much more rotten in our society.
I used your piece as a point of departure from which to make my own comment on why reading seriously in the internet age is hard. It doesn't have to agree or disagree with your arguments or align with your prioritization of what the important issues are. At another time or on another topic I might debate the individual arguments that you raise in your excellent piece, but one can still offer thoughtful commentary without doing that.
That's fair Andy :) I think I still ultimately disagree with your diagnosis though. From what you're saying, and please correct me if I'm misreading your claim, people won't begin reading unless we solve the problems in the publishing industry today.
So, I think you're right about certain genres of books fitting into this category. Oftentimes, they are found in the 'smart thinking' section of Waterstones and I believe fits the infamous category of the 'Waterstones dad'. Now, I think this is partly a problem that rewards churn over quality and potentially intersects with some of the deeper issues I outlined in the piece.
But, and this is where I may part ways with you, I don't think that this applies to all sections of books today nor does it cover books from quite a long time ago. So, we are witnessing a deeper crisis in literature and novels which I would argue are going through a relative renaissance in terms of output and quality. From both stats and anecdotal experience as well, I think we're seeing an increasing difficulty in engaging with 'classic' books which occurs with younger people as well. So, although I do think some books could be more readable I don't think this applies to all of contemporary writing and certainly not to older texts.
I think all I'm saying is that reading seriously and widely is much harder than we thought it would be when the promise of the internet age dawned, and that fact is discouraging folks from reading. I've noted a number of consistent flaws I've noticed in scholarly books that if corrected might cause folks to read and finish reading more serious nonfiction, but I make no claim that this is the best way or the first priority to tackle the problem of why folks no longer read. It clearly is not, but it is a practical suggestion that scholars who want their books to be read might consider what college educated in postgraduate readers are looking for in a book as they seek to stay informed about the world.
Before books and print existed, what fostered the love of learning?
Carry on.
well words have been a primary way of learning for an extremely long time. Mass print changed the world and so beforehand this was through a variety of methods including oral traditions. However, what we are seeing is an increasingly disruptive method of communication and learning which is what I would argue is the background conditions which are a problem.