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Dec. 16th, 2011 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ann_leckieTaking a weaving-in-ends break--I hate weaving in ends--and pondering a link I saw earlier in the week.
The title of the post is "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on why people no longer read."
Read that last sentence again. "Reading is at an all-time low."
Really? Lower than before writing was invented? Ok, that's cheating. Lower than shortly after writing had been invented and only priests and scribes could do it and books were stacks of clay tablets that had to be laboriously copied out by hand? Really?
Reading is at an all-time low now, lower even than in the 4th century CE, when once again books had to be copied by hand, and it was mostly the wealthy who learned to do it? And even then they might be astonished at someone who could do it without moving their lips? Really?
The author goes on to suggest that the reason reading is at this "all-time low" is because getting books is too easy.
You know, now I think about it, that totally explains why, once the printing press made access to books easier and cheaper, people read so much less. I think it would be a cool alternate history idea, don't you? One where the printing press and increasing literacy led to the development of popular fiction. Maybe even, say, not-terribly-successful doctors might write for these publications on the side and discover it was more lucrative than their dayjob!
But no. That's unpossible. Because making reading easier must, of course, make people not value it and lead to the ultimate decline of reading.
The author of the post does suggest that maybe there's some nostalgia involved here, that maybe everything looks better in the past because it's the past, but then says, "All I can say is, it seems as if Conan Doyle’s opinions about the ease of reading leading to its decline are just about dead on. You really only appreciate things you’ve had to work and sacrifice for, not things that are handed to you on a silver platter."
Right. Best thing for reading, make books difficult to get. That'll get more people reading, you betcha. And then my favorite bit:
You know why this is my favorite? Because first off, he's conflated "reading" with "reading stuff I consider classics." He actually did that a few paragraphs earlier, but he's never actually acknowledged the two things aren't the same.
But second off--my favorite favorite--is that "apart from the genre classics" bit. I mean, besides Doyle, Verne, Swift, and so on who reads old stuff? Surely Barnes and Noble doesn't print up cratefuls of cheap editions of Austen and Melville and Wells and so on because anyone buys them, no, and even if anyone did, that would be an exception, like the Gutenberg download numbers for those same classics, which are, surprise, significantly higher than the numbers for obscure works.
Besides the aqueducts and the roads and it being safe to walk the streets at night and, you know, so on, what have the Romans ever done for us? Absolutely nothing, that's what.
I could add a few paragraphs about how angry and irritated I get at "people don't read because it's too easy to get books" makes me. I bet people don't eat when it's too easy to get food, either. Bet people would breathe more if air weren't so easy to get, huh? All those folks you know who don't have jobs? It's because they're too easy to get! I mean, seriously! People don't read because it's too easy--can you actually say that with a straight face?
But I have to weave in some more ends, so I won't add those paragraphs.
The title of the post is "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on why people no longer read."
Look at that last paragraph. “Reading is made too easy nowadays…” What would Conan Doyle think if he were alive today? In his time, people at least had to bestir their lazy rumps from their sofas and trot down to the library if they wanted to read. Now we have Project Gutenberg and Google Books and dozens of other free e-book sites, legal or not. Yet it seems that reading is at an all-time low.
Read that last sentence again. "Reading is at an all-time low."
Really? Lower than before writing was invented? Ok, that's cheating. Lower than shortly after writing had been invented and only priests and scribes could do it and books were stacks of clay tablets that had to be laboriously copied out by hand? Really?
Reading is at an all-time low now, lower even than in the 4th century CE, when once again books had to be copied by hand, and it was mostly the wealthy who learned to do it? And even then they might be astonished at someone who could do it without moving their lips? Really?
The author goes on to suggest that the reason reading is at this "all-time low" is because getting books is too easy.
You know, now I think about it, that totally explains why, once the printing press made access to books easier and cheaper, people read so much less. I think it would be a cool alternate history idea, don't you? One where the printing press and increasing literacy led to the development of popular fiction. Maybe even, say, not-terribly-successful doctors might write for these publications on the side and discover it was more lucrative than their dayjob!
But no. That's unpossible. Because making reading easier must, of course, make people not value it and lead to the ultimate decline of reading.
The author of the post does suggest that maybe there's some nostalgia involved here, that maybe everything looks better in the past because it's the past, but then says, "All I can say is, it seems as if Conan Doyle’s opinions about the ease of reading leading to its decline are just about dead on. You really only appreciate things you’ve had to work and sacrifice for, not things that are handed to you on a silver platter."
Right. Best thing for reading, make books difficult to get. That'll get more people reading, you betcha. And then my favorite bit:
Looking at the download numbers for some of these books tells a pretty sad story. The Project Gutenberg edition of Through the Magic Door has only had 126 downloads. Parnassus on Wheels has 61. The Haunted Bookshop has 126. (And how many of those were web bots on search crawls?)
Apart from the genre classics like Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Jonathan Swift, and so on, how many of us are in the habit of sitting down for an hour of entertainment in books that are over a hundred years old?
You know why this is my favorite? Because first off, he's conflated "reading" with "reading stuff I consider classics." He actually did that a few paragraphs earlier, but he's never actually acknowledged the two things aren't the same.
But second off--my favorite favorite--is that "apart from the genre classics" bit. I mean, besides Doyle, Verne, Swift, and so on who reads old stuff? Surely Barnes and Noble doesn't print up cratefuls of cheap editions of Austen and Melville and Wells and so on because anyone buys them, no, and even if anyone did, that would be an exception, like the Gutenberg download numbers for those same classics, which are, surprise, significantly higher than the numbers for obscure works.
Besides the aqueducts and the roads and it being safe to walk the streets at night and, you know, so on, what have the Romans ever done for us? Absolutely nothing, that's what.
I could add a few paragraphs about how angry and irritated I get at "people don't read because it's too easy to get books" makes me. I bet people don't eat when it's too easy to get food, either. Bet people would breathe more if air weren't so easy to get, huh? All those folks you know who don't have jobs? It's because they're too easy to get! I mean, seriously! People don't read because it's too easy--can you actually say that with a straight face?
But I have to weave in some more ends, so I won't add those paragraphs.