The Lemon Fool

Anyone ever put a book down for a LONG time, then picked it up again to carry on with it? Did you remember the plot?

(I started an Irvine Welsh book many years ago, but then I discovered t'internet and haven't really read books since. It's probably in a box somewhere, with a bookmark keeping the place.)

MrFoolish wrote:Anyone ever put a book down for a LONG time, then picked it up again to carry on with it? Did you remember the plot?

(I started an Irvine Welsh book many years ago, but then I discovered t'internet and haven't really read books since. It's probably in a box somewhere, with a bookmark keeping the place.)

Same here, I don't read books any more. My wife bought me a book for Christmas last year so I felt I had to read it. I am currently about 80% of the way through it, in a little over 7 months. And it is not even that long.

Are schoolkids still made to read books? Or instead do they watch video versions and/or read study guides?

Lootman wrote:Same here, I don't read books any more. My wife bought me a book for Christmas last year so I felt I had to read it. I am currently about 80% of the way through it, in a little over 7 months. And it is not even that long.

I do feel a certain amount of FOMO over it. And I suspect I could easily get back into it (books in general, probably not the half-read Irvine Welsh). But it's too easy posting rubbish on the web to find the time...

MrFoolish wrote:

Lootman wrote:Same here, I don't read books any more. My wife bought me a book for Christmas last year so I felt I had to read it. I am currently about 80% of the way through it, in a little over 7 months. And it is not even that long.

I do feel a certain amount of FOMO over it. And I suspect I could easily get back into it (books in general, probably not the half-read Irvine Welsh). But it's too easy posting rubbish on the web to find the time...

Guilty as charged, although TLF is my only online vice. But books are essentially passive things that you merely sit there and absorb. The internet is interactive and you get to publish yourself, even if it is "rubbish".

Lootman wrote:Guilty as charged, although TLF is my only online vice. But books are essentially passive things that you merely sit there and absorb. The internet is interactive and you get to publish yourself, even if it is "rubbish".

You say books are passive, but they do conjure up pictures in your head. This is the aspect I think I miss most.

MrFoolish wrote:

Lootman wrote:Guilty as charged, although TLF is my only online vice. But books are essentially passive things that you merely sit there and absorb. The internet is interactive and you get to publish yourself, even if it is "rubbish".

You say books are passive, but they do conjure up pictures in your head. This is the aspect I think I miss most.

Only picture books do that for me

I never thought of this as 'publishing' but I accept it if this is the case. Anyway, I could not live without at least a couple of books on the 'go', mostly non fiction since John Le Carre sadly died nearly two years ago.

I read few books in one day but I read a lot of books.

Dod

Lootman wrote:

MrFoolish wrote:

Lootman wrote:Guilty as charged, although TLF is my only online vice. But books are essentially passive things that you merely sit there and absorb. The internet is interactive and you get to publish yourself, even if it is "rubbish".

You say books are passive, but they do conjure up pictures in your head. This is the aspect I think I miss most.

Only picture books do that for me

I think Lootman might like of of these then
https://www.amazon.co.uk/My-First-Big-B ... /215148208

Pictures, sounds, smells they are all conjured by a good book.
At best it's a portal to another world, and I include non-fiction in that.

That said, I moved from paper books to e-books years ago and have now moved on to Audio books.

A good or great book WILL take time. Time I regard as well spent.

If time were the only consideration I would avoid audio books and stick to e-books. I read faster than people speak and I just can't cope with listening to an audio book at 1.5 times. Then again you can listen while performing tasks that don't use that part of your brain.

To put this time issue in context I recently listened to a SF book by Niel Stephenson "Anathem". Audible lists it's running time as 32hr 25min. I doubt that anyone would get through it in a day, even in paper form.

You may even wish to re-read a good book, and can you think of a worse "waste" of time?

Reading is very much a conscious delusion. A sort of self induced hallucination, or trip. It takes no effort for those who do it regularly and they often don't even see the words that they read.

There are books that I have given up on though. As a youth I read a Dickens book until the last chapter, then gave up. I've never touched Dickens since, it's just not my thing. I no longer feel any shame at abandoning a book. There are so many others that I could read instead.

MrFoolish wrote:Anyone ever put a book down for a LONG time, then picked it up again to carry on with it? Did you remember the plot?

Nooo. But in 2013, I began building a built-in oak cupboard then it got sidelined, and earlier this year I went back and finished it. I sort of remembered what I'd been doing.

Bookwise, not exactly. I have a few compendia, Auberon Waugh for instance, where I have read one story and then put it aside and weeks or months later, another.
But in general once I have started, I finish.

We read about 2hrs every evening. Paper books.
The longest I've read recently was Tombland by CJ Sansom, an author I hadn't come across before.
That was 850+ pages of fairly small print.
I hate to think how many books we have still unread, hundreds I should think, mostly bought second-hand. Plus those that we read and then put back on the shelf to read again, sometime.
T'internet is useful, but nothing beats a real book.

V8

Back in the 1980s, I bought a copy of Peter Carey's Illywhacker, which was on the Booker shortlist at the time. And it took me four long years to get through it. It's bound to sound a bit weird if I also say that it was well written, quixotic and colourful - you never knew what was going to happen from moment to moment.

And that was exactly the problem. It was roughly 700 endless pages of picaresque ramblings about all the bizarre things that happen to a loner (and some others of his family) out in the Australian outback. If there was a plot to the book, I never properly discerned one. And that drove me so crazy that I could only bear to read it for a couple of days at a time, because my brain was going "come on, come on, can we get on with the story now"? And so I would put it down, feeling pretty frustrated, but I knew I'd just have to open the book again to get another fix of this annoying writer.

Part of the problem is that the hero is also a professional liar, so you never quite know whether what he's telling you is really happening. And some of the scenes are unforgettably weird. Such as the time our hero is riding his motorbike across the bush and stops for the night at a remote shack where a lonely old guy is glad to see him. The following morning, he wakes up to find that the old guy has completely dismantled his motorbike, just so as to force him into staying longer. (It takes six months to rebuild the bike, I think. Paranoia-inducing, or what? ) Or the flight across Oz with smuggled lizards down his trousers. But after 700 pages you realise that there's still no plot - the endless surprises are the plot.

Good book. I don't think I'll read it again, though. My nerves couldn't stand it.

BJ

Lootman wrote:Guilty as charged, although TLF is my only online vice. But books are essentially passive things that you merely sit there and absorb. The internet is interactive and you get to publish yourself, even if it is "rubbish".

I suspect you've not read any really good books? They are nuanced and open to many interpretations. You have to think and put some work in (all IMHO of course!)

I do sympathize with people who struggle to read. I guess they are able to get some entertainment from the internet.

NotSure wrote:

Lootman wrote:Guilty as charged, although TLF is my only online vice. But books are essentially passive things that you merely sit there and absorb. The internet is interactive and you get to publish yourself, even if it is "rubbish".

I suspect you've not read any really good books? They are nuanced and open to many interpretations. You have to think and put some work in (all IMHO of course!)

It's more of an age thing. I was an avid reader as a child, teens and into my twenties. I read a lot of classics (British, American, French, German, Russian). Some were quite long like Crime and Punishment. I read everything by Conrad in particular.

But in my twenties I became much more busy with career, family etc and when I did have time to read it was usually work or investment related. And now I find it a bit of an effort to read a book.

The one book I never finished was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I was determined to finish it but somewhere in the middle of John Galt's speech I lost the will to live.

pje16 wrote:

Lootman wrote:

MrFoolish wrote:You say books are passive, but they do conjure up pictures in your head. This is the aspect I think I miss most.

Only picture books do that for me

I think Lootman might like of of these then
https://www.amazon.co.uk/My-First-Big-B ... /215148208

A bit advanced for me

NotSure wrote:

Lootman wrote:Guilty as charged, although TLF is my only online vice. But books are essentially passive things that you merely sit there and absorb. The internet is interactive and you get to publish yourself, even if it is "rubbish".

I suspect you've not read any really good books? They are nuanced and open to many interpretations. You have to think and put some work in (all IMHO of course!)

I remember one episode of the R4 program "a good read". The presenter had, in her time, read SF, but clearly had developed a deep distaste for the Genre to the extent that she kept mentioning how much she dreaded the possibility that a guest would chose a SF book.

One guest responded that she obviously had not read enough good SF books.

There after the radio audience kept recommending good SF!

There are very many great books in every genre under the sun. Indeed some cross genre or invent their own. "Johnathan Livingstone Seagull" or "Zen and the art of motorbike maintenance" anyone? What genre do they fit into? "The Eyre affair" or "The big over easy"?

But back to books that you can't read quickly, what of "The count of Monte Christo" or "The lord of the Rings"? Both have been made into films, but how do you compress and digest the story down to something the size of a single film or even three? The first time that I attempted TLofR" it took me a year.

I'd also hardly describe the likes of reading "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius (must get around to reading or listening to it) as passive. Even a "who dun'it" clearly involves input from the reader. Some of the best books actually give you a head ache, as you try to process and think through, accept or reject, new ideas.

As for Lootman's comment about publishing yourself on the internet, we can still be talking about reading stories. There are fandom sites where budding authors publish their work.

"The Wandering Inn" grew out of an internet serialized book, now available as paper or audiobooks.
Here is the Wiki.
https://thewanderinginn.fandom.com/wiki ... g_Inn_Wiki

The Grantville Gazette is another, though more commercial, series. Involving as it does, very many authors with strong constraints about the world that they write in.

I suspect that we should just accept that for some, reading is a very important part of their life, and for others it is not.

Ps, just read Lootman's last post. I too have abandoned a Ayn Rand book (Fountainhead). Seriously though, there are in fact great "graphic novels". I find that I need more words, but "The Sandman" is currently being made into a TV series for those for whom pictures with words is a bit too difficult. I did enjoy "Death: the high cost of living" as a "graphic novel".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death:_Th ... _of_Living

Lootman wrote:

NotSure wrote:

Lootman wrote:Guilty as charged, although TLF is my only online vice. But books are essentially passive things that you merely sit there and absorb. The internet is interactive and you get to publish yourself, even if it is "rubbish".

I suspect you've not read any really good books? They are nuanced and open to many interpretations. You have to think and put some work in (all IMHO of course!)

It's more of an age thing. I was an avid reader as a child, teens and into my twenties. I read a lot of classics (British, American, French, German, Russian). Some were quite long like Crime and Punishment. I read everything by Conrad in particular.

If you have read Dostoevsky, you'll understand my comment! And if you think C&P is long, try The Brothers Karamazov!

I read pretty well every day, but always at the same time - between getting into bed and falling asleep, so no need to 'schedule' anything. Might be 5 minutes, might be a couple of hours if book is particularly good. I use a Kindle Paperwhite on a little stand and have a cheap pair of reading glasses with one arm snapped off so I can lie on my side (didn't fancy a monocle or pince-nez )

I struggle to read books that contain too many five letter words. I have a gap in my vocab for five letter words. In fact also words longer than six letter words with an odd number of letters in general I find tend to come up in academic works that I struggle to read and understand. They just don't seem to parse well.

I only read English, it may be different in foreign languages, they are a law unto themselves, and may even have strange extra letters.

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

I read it when in my early 30s. At that time it still had the aura of being a 'very serious classic' and hence challenging. This is now a couple of decades ago but I certainly clearly recall the process of reading it. Such was the impact it had. I initially found the style, structure and content very challenging, hard work, requiring a huge cultural shift to absorb it. Not long after it honestly was a tale of a spiral into utter moral depravity and as a story literally repellant.

I put it down for a few months, presumably wishing for something less dark and tormeting. I later picked it up again and the very long book became quite a page-turner. But heavens it sucks you in to anothers very very darkest places. Hell of an edge-of-seat story-line though if you can get through the initial cultural challenge of adapting to its style and content.

... I still have that book and sometimes re-read such things on our bookshelves. Just not that one, yet.

ps Conrad penned the line and associated story-line: 'The horror, the horror'. Crime and Punishment deserves similar, in spades.

I actually really enjoyed reading Crime and Punishment. I read at school for fun.
A book I did read in one day was Catch 22. I have occasionally read for 18 hours in one day.

Lootman wrote:

MrFoolish wrote:Anyone ever put a book down for a LONG time, then picked it up again to carry on with it? Did you remember the plot?
.
Are schoolkids still made to read books? Or instead do they watch video versions and/or read study guides?

I put JK Rowling'S A Christmas Pig on the kindle for an 8 year old. The next day I asked if it wasn't really her thing as she wasn't reading it. "Oh yes it was great but I've finished it." So some do. I put it in her school reading record.

I did once get look for my kindle in the middle of the night when struggling to sleep. Found it flat, so plugged it in. Only to find it was my old kindle and started to read the book that was half finished. I did continue, too lasy to go down for the new one. Fortunately it was a Lee Child book that I had already read once so was able to keep up.