While attending college, I’ve come to get acquainted with people who enjoy literature much in the same way I do. So far I’ve met about four or five fellow students with a similar passion for reading—and writing—literature. That’s a shockingly small number considering the fairly large student body of this reasonably-priced public university. A great deal of college students have MySpace or Facebook accounts, and both profiles have a section entitled “Favorite Books.” A lot of those sections say, “OMG I hate reading” or “books are so boring.” This troubles me to a great degree.
What drives high school and college students away from reading? I think it’s got to do with the fact that as students they are required to read. It reminds me of high school English classes, where I’d pick up the book and finish it days before the rigidly thought-out schedule told us to finish it. I think my father was right when he said, “school teaches everything about literature except for how to enjoy it.” High school literature classes are especially guilty of this. We all learn that Orwell’s Animal Farm is an Aesopic allegory about communism, and that Camus’ The Stranger is a piece of literature stemming from themes found in existential philosophy, but what does that all mean to us as readers? It’s all a bunch of mechanical terms found in textbooks all across the world, even though I do believe it’s a relevant topic that should still be taught in schools (more on this later). Therefore, students often associate reading with schoolwork, and it’s a shame how reading for hobby is meshed with reading for academic purposes. Now, I’d understand if a person professes hate for his or her obligations. It’s quite reasonable to get annoyed at things that must be done, such as washing dishes, taking out the trash or whatever. But to actively say a person hates reading for hobby is ridiculous. To me it’s the same as saying “I hate video games” or “I hate watching football.” If reading as a hobby does not fall into a person’s interest, that’s perfectly fine. But there’s no reason to go out of one’s way to exclude reading from one’s hobbies.
In the same vein, I’m definitely not saying that a student should be forced into reading for pleasure. What sense would it make to impose a hobby on someone? It’s just that the connection between school and reading tends to disenchant students and direct them away from reading for pleasure. By this I don’t imply we get rid of literature in schools, that’s just absurd. Learning the mechanics of literature helps students to increase abstract thought and application of less tangible concepts to life. For example, as a psychology major I must learn to recognize parallels in two seemingly different patterns of a person’s behavior. I learned to detect psychological parallels through learning the literary applications and adjusting them accordingly. But my point is that is the teacher can educate the student that good literature can be enjoyable, and at the same time teach how learning the logic behind literature can help in his/her future field of interest. That way, one can still be open to explore literature as a hobby while learning the lessons that can be derived from analyzing it. I was lucky to have such a teacher in the tenth grade, and I’m thankful that she had the ability to preserve my interest in literature while other students had seen it extinguished a long time ago.
This anti-reading sentiment affects me as a student and a writer. I’m sure many writers in this community feel the same way. I’ve grown to resent the phony opinions I got from people who have seen samples of my writing. I used to post a lot of my work on a LiveJournal account, and while in high school I’d show people in my classes. I got a lot of stupid responses such as “I like it because it has big words” or “it’s… creative.” The worst response I’ve ever gotten was, “I didn’t like it because it sounds like something I’d read in a textbook!!” Frankly, I find a lot of the literary selections in textbooks rather interesting. But in closing I encourage all people in my age group and younger to pick up a piece of literature and read. There’s at least one thing in the entire literary spectrum that will cater to your interests. A lot of people who say books are boring are usually making a hasty generalization. Really, it all depends on what books you pick up.
Cheers!
Dave
harriedpsychmajor posted on Sep 13, 2006
| views: 914
Comments
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SeanRenaud said on Sep 13, 2006....
Reading is largely a dying art because it has largely become less neccessary in the world. Instead of reading 500 pages on World War Two you can just watch the History Channel's special on the subject. Since television can include both text, visual and audible even if there is less information presented (which can be argued depending on what book and what shows we are talking about, but we are giving books the benefit of the doubt here) you're still likely to retain more from the television version than the written.
Add on to that I've always felt that the opinion that the book is always better than the movie is a bunch of intellectual bullshit. I can name off the top of my head two authors whose movies are almost invariably better than the books. Stephen King, ( I love to read but it shouldn't take 500 pages to introduce all of your charachters and have the first meeting with the point of the story. Even with the charachters they dropped from the Stand it was still close and It is wicked as a movie, one of the few movies (and books) to scare me) And Micheal Chrichton. You can't count Timeline or Lost world as they slaughtered both, it wasn't a movie based on the book, it was a movie with the same title as the book. Jurasic Park the movie blows the book away, to bad we didn't get the swimming scene but I can live with that. Wish we'd gotten the tiny elephant.
I am a writer myself so I can sense your frustration. I do read my fair share, though not as much as some others. I'm currently reading the Eyes of God series by John Marco.
Plenty of things don't even translate well into the written particularly things that have a lot of action, the Matrix would have been a boring book. But its a blast to watch.
No literature isn't that boring to me, but it is to some others and I understand why.
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harriedpsychmajor said on Sep 13, 2006....
Oh, yeah, I defintely agree. Different hobbies cater to different interests belonging to different people. My gripe, more or less, is with people who don't afford themselves the chance to at least try. Though I love to read, I'd hesitate to call myself well-read because in the grand spectrum of literature I've read relatively little. Oftentimes when people say they dislike reading, it's when they've given up on finding a good read, assuming they even try.
And I also agree, movies and television offer better understanding of stories and information through visual and audio content, but can't one make the argument that this is how we are brought up? Though I won't delve much into how television is touted as a brain-rotting machine, I believe television, since it provides imagery through visuals, can potentially cut down on a person's ability to forge imagery through their own interpretations. That, I believe, is something that's been lost becuase of the downfall of literature.
Your point is well taken, Sean. TV and movies are good storytellers, but lose something when trying to compete with books. Art and music have coexisted for thousands of years, and I'm sure television and literature can do the same. Look forward to hearing from you in the future!
-Dave
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SeanRenaud said on Sep 13, 2006....
I don't think that there is really any fair comparison to be made between upbringing and television vs reading assuming the content is the same. It might in some ways stunt the person's ability self visualize, that I don't know. I know as a writer that I had something in mind when I described a charachter. I don't really want the reader interpreting shit, I want them seeing what I'm seeing. When I have a visual medium to back up my vision you can't get it wrong.
As for art and music they don't really run opposite to each other in the same way that TV and books do. Listening to a good song, doesn't mean you can't enjoy a good picture. Movies however were truely destructive to plays however because you could do more, didn't have the risks of hurt or sick actors, if you got it right once it was right forever, etc etc. etc.
We'll never see literature truly go aay so that isn't something that we need to be afraid of. I'm much more concerned with the habit of people not being able to separate fiction from fact and watching docudramas and not knowing what parts of it are fake.
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silverwhisper said on Sep 14, 2006....
i think that people have just gotten lazy, to be honest. if you watch a TV show or a movie, you don't need to engage your brain to the same extent that you can with a book.
i deplore this turning away from the letters.
ed
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SeanRenaud said on Sep 14, 2006....
I hate this mentality about it that Silver is saying here. The Television is obviously a more effective way of conveying the same amount of information. If a picture is worth a thousand words how many words is a moving talking picture worth? I don't feel any less engaged reading a text book on WW2 than watching a program on it complete with recreations of the battle to show how the Allies were flanked.
Us bookies really need to stop viewing the TV as the enemy and start working on what is actually important. The fact that more people enjoy fluff than even somewhat educational stuff. The same problem is largely present in literature as well, when was the last time something non-fiction was in the top ten best sellers?
People are more interested in The DaVinci Code, Jurrasic Park, Tom Clancy, than they are the actual facts surrounding these things. Now this the frightening trend in my opinion. A whole generation (at the least) were introduced to DNA by a movie on dinosaurs filled with half truths and fabrications. That most peoples, to include most religious people that I've come across, learned more about Revelations through Left Behind (Great series, even if you're an Aetheist like me) than they did through the Bible.
There is definitely a problem but I'm really not sure that TV is the problem, or even the core of the problem.
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silverwhisper said on Sep 14, 2006....
sean: you can hate it all you like but it's correct. :>
by definition you're less engaged watching than by reading specifically b/c you're being given vastly more information when viewing a visual medium: the actor's clothes, set design, lighting, makeup. when reading a text, you supply all those things yourself, b/c you know the author probably hasn't. hell, the author doesn't have to, but the director of a TV or movie does.
further, when you're speaking of visual representations, the director's impressions are what you're being fed: your own impressions don't stand a chance against acting and a good score. it's like hearing a song on the radio, having some impression about the song, then having that impression ruined when you see the video.
:>
ed
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SeanRenaud said on Sep 14, 2006....
But they shouldn't. When I'm writing something I don't want you supplying your own visuals. I want you see what I saw and what I'm telling you to see.
More than that how is it more engaging for you to be wasting time trying to imagine these things when you could be trying to look at the details on the screen?
Though I'm sure that brain scans probably agree with you.
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silverwhisper said on Sep 14, 2006....
sean, no writer on the planet either could or should supply anywhere near as much detail as a visual representation can convey and here i'm talking on the most literal, superficial level
consider: when you write a scene, you give greatest rein to your descriptive powers in the scenes the matter. you don't waste the eyespace on the inconsequential stuff. by contrast: a director of a TV show or movie has to do that for everything.
do you see how much more complex this becomes when you consider the possible permutations that a director has when dealing with symbolism, the power of repeated images, etc.?
ed
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SeanRenaud said on Sep 14, 2006....
That Television is more involved, for the creator than writing? Yes and no, it is definitly more of a pain for symbolism, but it also provides new avenues. You couldn't do Hero in text.
I agree that no writer should supply as much detail as a visual. I would argue that Stephen King oft times tries and that's why I have to try so hard to get through his novels.
Once again when I'm describing a room at the least I have to describe everything of importance, not everything but most of what the charachters are going to interact with. I could solve this with a single camera shot and move on to getting to know the charachter. It takes me an average of three pages to accomplish introducing a charachter and background and stuff around them. It would have taken about 30 seconds worth of movie though.
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silverwhisper said on Sep 14, 2006....
sean: so if you agree no writer should supply that much detail, you also agree then that the viewer of a TV show or film receives considerably more information than the reader of a book, right? :>
ed
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anonymous said on Sep 14, 2006....
Wow, damn that hurt I feel baited! :-)
I think that a writer shouldn't provide that much detail because to much detail just becomes redundent. Nobody wants to read about every detail in a room, with a camera they can quickly show it give you an idea that would have cost many more words.
Its weird because I love to read, I love to write but I still respect the other medium. I think you can be more subtle with it, but you can also be more blatant. As far as purely educational purposes however books will always have an edge.
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secretlife said on Sep 14, 2006....
Gee, I was a literature major more than 25 years ago.
I remember there were groups of students who loved reading and sitting around discussing ideas, but I also remember a whole lot more people who really hated to read and didn't understand the value of it.
I don't think the times have changed that much in regard to reading literature.
I have kids in the school systems here, and I really feel they're making an all out attempt to instill a love for reading in them. It starts in Kindgarten and it follows them thru High School.
Of course I read to them, and sometimes I still read to the 10 yr old as a way to 'hook' him into a story.
My girls who love to read. My son would rather watch TV or play video games...I'm still working on him-
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anonymous said on Sep 14, 2006....
In all fairness depending on the video game it can have just as much reading as any book.
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StrangeOne said on Oct 05, 2006....
I agree with silverwhisper. Reading takes effort. Watching TV, you can sit there and be a drooling idiot and still watch it. I fully believe that TV is the greatest modern evil and is turning the brains of the masses into mush.
I also find that there is a huge difference between, using SeanRenaud's example, reading a text book on WW2 and watching a history channel program about it. If you are watching the program, you are spoon-fed whatever it is the creator of the program wants you to think. If you are reading, you can be an active researcher, read from as many sources as possible, and draw your own conclusions. Also, even if you are just reading one source - it is a slower, steadier activity leaving you with time to contemplate every sentence and think for yourself. With TV, you are fed a non-stop torrent of sights and sounds leaving you no chance to stop and think.
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SeanRenaud said on Oct 05, 2006....
You're absolutely right Strange, in no way are we being spoonfed when we read books or newspapers. Why didn't I think of the perfect way to be unbaised is to be written rather than spoken! I mean and if you watch something on tv that instantly means you can't look it up online or in your library too, the two sources must be mutually exclusive!
As for speed that is relative to the length of the program, the speed of your reading and the lenght of the article. Not to mention there are all kinds of things I'm willing to sit through say mythbusters where they proved that jumping off a 5 story building and going through the awnings is quite plausible (who knew?) than I would be to read through a book of revealed myths.
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lfbno7 said on Oct 19, 2007....
I bought a book called The Lifetime Reading Plan by Clifton Fadiman. I read all of the novels he mentioned. I liked most of them. I didn't read the philosophy books or poetry books though. They didn't hold my interest. My favorite may have been Don Quixote. Parts of it are hysterical.
One problem with motivating kids to read is that in school they are forced to read at a certain pace in order to take a test, so they aren't reading for enjoyment. They feel compelled. That's not a good way to develop a love of reading. That makes you resent having to read. Particularly when you didn't choose the book in the first place. So we are getting our kids off to a negative start.
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kruuyai said on Oct 28, 2007....
harried: "If reading as a hobby does not fall into a person’s interest, that’s perfectly fine. But there’s no reason to go out of one’s way to exclude reading from one’s hobbies." Please explain your logic here. Why would anyone include anything in their hobbies that doesn't interest them?
"To me it’s the same as saying “I hate video games” or “I hate watching football.” Well, I have often said that I hate football, and I don't see it at all the same thing as saying "I hate books." Books contain information and entertainment on every subject under the sun. Even if you break it down to fiction or non-fiction, each of those categories has an infinite number of topics that it could cover and an infinite number of writing styles. Football is pretty limited in comparison. And I do hate football. I started hating football when I was a child, and my dad had control of the TV, and on Sunday afternoons, when I wanted to be watching Shirley Temple Theater, he was watching the football games on TV. Besides that, it's boring... just a bunch of big, lunky guys (who aren't even attractive in my book) bumping into each other and throwing a ball around. To this day, I can't stand the sound of a sportscaster's voice and I absolutely refuse to allow football games on the TV in any house that I live in. So, yes, I do hate football, and it makes perfect sense to me. It's my opinion, and it's as valid as anyone else's opinion on the subject.
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kruuyai said on Oct 28, 2007....
Sean: "Add on to that I've always felt that the opinion that the book is always better than the movie is a bunch of intellectual bullshit." Your examples were all action-related book/movie pairs, and in those cases, yeah, the movies are probably going to be better. But those could hardly be considered "literature." In order to be considered literature, I think a piece of writing has to be more about ideas than just action or storyline. And that is where movies cannot compete with books.... usually. Take a book like Milan Kundera's "The Incredible Lightness of Being" which expresses so many ideas about so many esoteric topics that when people ask me what it's about, I can't really give them a storyline. I don't even remember most of the story...it's the ideas that I remember. I've never seen the movie, and I've heard it's pretty good, but I can guarantee you that they focussed more on the storyline than the ideas, so that if you saw the movie first, you might think it was a great movie, but if you read the book first and then saw the movie, you might very well feel that the movie fell way short of the book, because there's just no way that all those ideas could be expressed in a movie. Add to that the fact that most movies have to be compressed into two hours or less, and you can lose a lot of important detail, even whole chapters and characters that were in the book disappear from the movie. So, if you plan to do both... see the movie and read the book, it's usually better to see the movie first, because the book doesn't usually disappoint like the movie does if you do it the other way around. On the contrary, it usually fills in a lot of the gaps. All that being said, I can think of one glaring exception to my argument. I have both seen the movie and read the book Dr. Zhivago many times, and I the movie not only is more beautiful, but it also has more well developed characters and provides more relevant information about the Russian revolution than the book does. But, only in the remotest sense does it even follow the storyline of the book. It's like the only thing the two have in common are the name, the main characters, the love story, and the backdrop of the Russian revolution, but the details of the story, the description of the characters... all those are ridiculously different. -
lfbno7 said on Oct 28, 2007....
Usually I like books more than movies. I have problems with the movies. I don't like the way they were changed from the book, or the way they were directed. One example of a movie that I liked a hell of a lot more than the book is Contact by Carl Sagan. Sagan has an ax to grind about scientific rivalries, and he takes up a lot of space in his book with it. He makes you hate the scientists. The movie doesn't deal with that issue at all, and they were right to avoid it, because it is just annoying to read about. It is just Sagan setting up a straw man to knock him down, giving us a real asshole scientist to hate for his ego and competitiveness. Sagan is no novelist. He sucks as a novelist. But Jodie Foster did a great job as an actress, and the movie script kills the book. In any event I found it a bit of a copout that in a book called Contact we don't get to see any aliens. Where's the little green dudes? -
kruuyai said on Oct 28, 2007....
7: lol... I don't know where the little green dudes are... maybe Dylan could write a song about them. :) But seriously, I don't think I've ever seen that movie (although I have seen a lot of previews for it). What you said about Carl Sagan going on about scientific rivalries reminds me a lot of the book Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind (or its sequel... I can't remember for sure). That isn't fiction, but the authors devoted chapters to whining about their falling out with the Leaky's. It just wasn't relevant and detracted from the book. -
SeanRenaud said on Oct 28, 2007....
1. The Wizard of Oz as a book is just a book. As a movie is immense and not particularly action driven.2. Schindler's List3. The Green Mile4. Anything by Steven King5. Anything by Micheal CrichtonI could probably find other examples to if I wanted to. The only reason why books tend to be better is because they have a rather unlimited budget and can obviously be longer though often that extra stuff is just that, extra. -
kruuyai said on Oct 28, 2007....
Sean: Yeah, I think a lot of children's fantasy and fairy tale stuff comes off better on film... those kinds of subjects lend themselves to visual richness... and of course the music in the Wizard of Oz is something that you couldn't get in a book. I didn't know that Schindler's List and the Green Mile were books, so I can't comment, but I'll restate that I don't really consider books like those of Steven King and Michael Crichton to be "literature." They're formula-driven commercial pieces churned out for profit with not a lot of literary merit... although, I do think that Steven King has potential as a good storyteller (he usually falls short by the end of the book). I have to say that I thought Cujo was better as a book than a movie. I loved the way he got inside the dog's mind. There's no way to do that in a movie without being corny. -
SeanRenaud said on Oct 28, 2007....
What do you consider literature? I mean I 'd mention Shakespear but that would be cheating since they are plays and thus were never meant to be read, they were meant to be watched. I'd mention Moby Dick but you'd just mention it's action driven and probably the same for Call of the Wild. I'd mention Lord of the Flies but the movie is horrendous and has no bearing on how good a movie could be.Hell even Ten Commandments> Genesis. -
kruuyai said on Oct 29, 2007....
Sean: Well, I guess the literary merits of any piece of writing are open to interpretation. For me, I would take into consideration both the motive of the author in writing it (i.e., commercial interest vs. a desire or need to express emotions, ideas, etc.) and how well it's written (and that in itself is open to interpretation). But when something is considered literature, I think of it as an artform rather than a mere conveyance of information. Does that make any sense? It's way to early to be thinking this much. :) -
SeanRenaud said on Oct 29, 2007....
That is a rather solid opinion, atleast I have an idea where you're coming from.
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crybabylu said on Jan 03, 2008....
I love reading literature. When I was in college, Literature was my major, history minor, but besides that I loved economics, etc....... English---that one is a hard one to believe, huh? How many people do you know actually enjoy english. -
tdaddy said on Mar 20, 2008....
A video is more representative when it comes to getting down to the point, and doing it clearly and efficiently. Texts are filled with unnecessary jargon that could be understood by a 3D scoping animation, with the voice of a narrator so you dont have to say the words aloud in your head and forget what you were reading. Reading I do like, but a good film is far more stimulating to the senses. Its psychology. You don't have music playing that sets the mood for scenes in a book. You may think you are creating a vivid scene in your mind, but if you notice it is usually choppy and discontinuous, or blurry, like a dream. When you use all your brain power to read the words it takes away from other perceivable qualities. A movie is clear and distinct. I mean, who has actually jumped out from fright or died laughing from a book? (Pretty terrible if you have.) I have learned more from physics videos than reading the books, and a hell of alot faster. Especially with film technology today, the lessons can be quite stunning. Reading is monotonous. I am speaking on terms of entertainment, or pure factual interest, and saying that information is processed to form more thorough perceptions through video.
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