In middle school, you had free time to commit to hours of reading.
yeah, it’s not brain cells. it’s how many competing activities you can do at a given time. i used to read most when i rode public transit to school/work. now i’m working from home and there’s so much more i can do in the extra time and i’m not even mad i don’t get to reading any more.
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I read before bed every night, no exceptions. I can be hammered drunk and still get some chapters in. Might be a bit hazy on the next read, back track a couple of pages, but I get right back in the game.
I’ll binge a novel whenever I actually have an entire day free
I have felt the same in recent years, but then I started listening to audiobooks while driving/commuting/cleaning and damn, I feel like I have unlocked a super power.
I started last month, and have experienced the following books in their unabridged forms:
H. G. Wells - The time machine
H. G. Wells - The invisible man
H. G. Wells - The war of the worlds
Arthur C Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama
Arthur C Clarke - 2001: A Space Odessy
Isaac Assimov - I, Robot
Jules Verne - The journey to the center of the earthAs you can see, I started with classic sci fi, and it has been great!
Audio books are not books. You only get the story part, but the stimulation is from reading itself.
Who are you to tell me what does or does not stimulate ME?
OP’s an ass, but reading is a very different sort of stimulation, and I think reading is more valuable to one’s brain health. Some can’t read and derive enjoyment, and that’s fine, but reading is nonetheless helpful to stimulate that part of our brains.
I can see that, and if they hadn’t been a dipshit from the start acting all superior, I would have been far more receptive to their point.
Your feelings are not a factor in stimulation of the brain, dumbfuck.
You’re mostly right, but gods you’re an asshole. That working out for you?
Please note that I mention nothing about feelings.
Are you saying that listening does not require the brain? No language comprehension? No imagination? No critical thinking?
Or maybe they simply stimulate different parts of the brain? At different intensities, sure, but stimulation nonetheless?
If you’re misinterpreting my usage of “stimulation” as “enjoyment” or “engagement”, which you were, by the looks, then those are feelings.
If you were interpreting me accurately, and yet still dispute the fact that reading is magnitudes more engaging cognitively, and that the original post was about cognitive decline, which cannot be fixed with a stopgap like audiobooks? Then you’re an idiot. Plain and simple.
So you’re saying stimulation is being misrepresented as engagement; then in the next paragraph says, “reading is magnitudes more engaging” to support your argument about stimulation? Or is my cognitively addled brain misreading your comment?
Instead of name-calling, which is usually a sign someone has no good argument, I’ll just drop a link to this paper that used fMRI to scan the brain when presented with information in either audio or written form.
although the representation of semantic information in the human brain is quite complex, the semantic representations evoked by listening versus reading are almost identical.
Thank you for engaging like a mature adult.
EDIT: Or this one that shows that both activities simply activate different parts of the brain. And I would argue that brain activation is stimulation. Unless you’d like to present an alternative definition for stimulation?
“engaging cognitively”, so that’s the first half of your point in shambles 🙄.
Also, I can do articles too,
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11303134/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5105607/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5105607/pdf/nihms805826.pdf
You are projecting your own feelings on me.
Just because you get more enjoyment out of reading a book instead of listening to it, does not mean that you can decide how everyone else should feel.
Notice you’re distorting my words because you couldn’t argue against my real point? Or not, because your brain fried from not needing to use it through audiobooks 🙄…
I said “stimulation”, as in, of the brain.
Clearly you need a strawman to argue against that point.
Oh and shut up about “feel[ings]” it’s literally proven that audiobooks activate the brain less than actual, physical reading. You know, with your fucking eyes.
Clearly already tanked your reading comprehension, for one.
You keep shitting on me, you are not the sole arbiter on how others may enjoy books. Just because I dare to enjoy books in a way that does not comply with your own standards, does not mean you get to comment on that.
It’s a post about literal cognitive decline. Your red herring about audiobooks is misleading. I merely corrected your wrong and you’re sensitive about it.
Since you are so good at reading, please read up on tact, you really need it.
If I’m telling a truth, emotions don’t come into play. If not, feel free to correct me (spoiler: you won’t because you can’t)
False
He’s being an ass, but he’s right. The two activities are very different sorts of stimulation. I’m both watching and reading The Expanse right now. Love them both! But it’s a different experience and I think the reading is the more valuable to my brain health.
Different, yes, but stimulation nonetheless.
Their argument was that stimulation is only from reading and not listening.
Cool, you’re as useless as audiobooks. Thanks for exemplifying that.
Unless you’re deaf, they’re not useless. You can not like them, but that doesn’t require such an idiotically dramatic reaction.
Shout out to Mr. Miller for punishing me for reading in class while I was in Middle School, really ground that negative reinforcement in while I was young and impressionable
Heh, I distinctly remember having the dubious honor of having the most detentions (sitting out from recess) in first grade because I’d be reading a book underneath my desk as the teacher was lecturing.
Today every child in America has a Mr. Miller ensuring th4y dont enjoy things.
Stephen?
That’s the one!
tbf there’s an art in summarizing a complex thought in a short piece of text. you could think of it as “enrichment”
She gave up on herself, that’s it. I started reading recently and I HATED reading for my whole life. It’s enjoyable as you mature and start to use your brain more.
Most people do not believe in themselves and do not trust themselves to do anything new or to retry something they didn’t like before. It’s a shame cause it hurts you for your entire life.
Don’t be like the post, improve yourself and find more hobbies.
You have to actively make the choice to read books. It doesn’t just happen. I did several years ago after not reading much of anything for many years, and I’m closing in on 20,000 pages read this year.
Not me. I can’t make the choice not to read. Been devouring fiction for 45-years. If I spend the night elsewhere and forget my tablet (cheap e-reader), I get a little panicky. Yes, even sleeping with a new lover the first time. “Aw hell! Where’s my book?! How am I supposed to sleep?!”
At our camp I have a shitty tablet I can charge up if I forget to bring one. It’s buried under the collapsed tent, but it’s there!
My intellectual decline correlated with game manuals; from 150 pages on the history of war to 15 random characters in an otherwise empty box.
Oh wow, 3-4 books in the whole of middle school.
What a peak.
I’m thinking she meant at the same time. I know I juggled a few books at once while in school, and I’m not counting textbooks.
It’s possible, but unlikely considering… America.
I started reading again, it really doesn’t take much effort. My husband and I carve out around an hour or so of reading time before bed. Been reading Stephen Baxter novels and I forgot how much fun reading is.
I’m a big fan of Sci-Fi so if anyone has some recommendations, gimme some.
what impact have you found it has on your sleep / life?
Problem is when I start reading and like the book I want to binge it, I was never a “read one hour each night” kinda guy but more like “read for 48hrs straight, forget to eat or sleep”.
Some recommendations:
- Asimov…
- Andy Weir novels
- Roger Zelazny chronicles of amber
- Douglas Adam
- Adrian Tchaikovsky children of times
u peaked at 12
The ‘u’ confirms it.
Books are just an outdated form of media.
Every other type of media is more entertaining and engaging to most people.
It’s just unfortunate that the majority of information is only recorded in text.
But I have been enjoying how many random video essays there are now.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading in my spare time recently using locally hosted open source text to speech models while doing chores. If not for textbyo speech I probably wouldn’t have time to read these books, and if not for the fact that it’s locally hosted I’d probably be on a watchlist for reading them too.
I don’t read paper books anymore, but I have 1,000 epubs to read on my crappy $25 tablet.
In any case, you’re comparing apples and oranges. I look reading The Expanse as much as I love watching the show. But nonetheless, they’re very different forms of stimulation.
Speaking of stimulation, reading is clearly better for your brain. It’s like exercise. What you do in your youth determines what you will be able to do in your old age.
Books are my favorite form of media. They seem to be the most complete projections of their author’s thoughts. In more expensive media there are many different influences that direct the media, while with a lot of books you can get away with just one author and one editor. It’s more pure and clear in that way. It’s also much easier for me to “get” books.
I do enjoy movies and television, but it’s a very different enjoyment. I can see how someone can prefer them, but I don’t. As for engagement and entertainment, I apparently have an average level of visual fantasy, and some novel scenes I have remembered for years. While reading I slowly stop reading words and start reading fully fleshed out scene, and my mind’s eye presents me with spectacle. It’s incredible and I love it.
SoftestSapphic
Clearly the softest intellectually.
How many hours did it take you to cook that one up?
Clearly less than it took you to type it.
Not that someone who despises reading could read a clock anyway.
