Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

Reading for me goes through cycles. For months, I would not feel like reading at all, except for the daily dose of WSJ.com or HN and Reddit programming. Then, all the sudden I happen to discover a book from those online sources and spend most of my free time to read it. Sometimes, I went back to finish books I abandoned ages ago if they happen to coincide with what interest me at the moment. For example, I started to learn playing piano with some of Bach’s easy classical pieces (1st prelude in WTC book 1, minuet, etc...). It strikes me that I have a book discovered from HN called Godel, Escher, Bach from 2009. I stopped reading after the 1s chapter back then. Now, I can’t seem to put it down and am on chapter 5. I think knowing a bit about music and appreciating Bach make this book approachable for me again. The other example is Enterprise integration patterns. I got it in 2006 but never finished it. Now, I start reading it again with a lot of interest after getting involved in a project at work with a lot of teams tangled with integration issues.

I go through periods of intensive reading, then downtimes. These both span for months.

Problem is a lot of it is dreck.

Some books draw out a story for 1100 pages then stuff all the cool stuff in the last 200 pages. It feels dishonest.

A lot of classics aren't.

A lot of pulp is captivating and fast paced.

I tried reading infinite jest - I had to return it.

I finished fear an loathing in las vegas in a day.

It's a crap shoot.

I was never in to reading as a kid, and it drove my dad crazy as I am wired personality-wise like him. Reading would become too hard after 3-4 paragraphs and I just thought I was always lazy. I found out I had a print-related disability when I was an adult, specifically severe convergence insufficiency, after I was diagnosed with a rare disease.

I use screen readers now for immersive reading, specifically Voice Dream Reader (iOS|Android) and Kurzweil 3000 (Windows|Mac|Web). I finally got in to reading habitually after reading some history books. It can still be physically painful for me to read, but it is worthwhile.

>a chief factor seems to be the household one is born into, and the culture of reading that parents create within it.

Aye, my mother regularly took us to the biggest public library within driving distance. Every few weeks. And we didn't just grab and go, we would spend some time browsing the stacks.

As her mother did before her. It was inexpensive entertainment for those that weren't well off.

I developed very wide interests in everything imaginable, just from stumbling upon really good books.

Mind you though, I didn't develop an appreciation for fiction for a long time. To some, "readers" are those who are always reading fiction.

My kindle helped me fall in love with reading books. Plus, not having to worry about physical books (heavy, easy to damage), being able to borrow books from the library electronically, and control font size and lighting easily has turned me into a convert, and I couldn't be happier.

I absolutely love reading. I can't make it through four seasons of TV (my most recent failure is Battlestar Galactica '04) and I can't seem to get myself to suffer through repeated failure at video gaming for more then thirty minutes at a time, but I absolutely love books. My trio of hobbies are coding, writing, and reading and it's a really happy and productive combination!

I prefer fiction, generally hard science fiction and high fantasy (less so the latter), but occasionally if I come across a truly exceptional historical fiction book I'll and that to my TBR list as well (Shogun, Silence, and Pillars of the Earth, for example). I also prefer longer books, since if I'm sitting down to read something I really want a lot of detail and meat there. Even irrelevant details are welcomed, I almost just enjoy the act of reading. When it comes to selecting books, I value some kind of novelty of uniqueness above almost anything else, but it also has to have a sense of craftsmanship.

I must confess I'm addicted to buying physical books, as well. I have quite a few books on Kindle, and do read them, but whenever feasible (and it isn't always) I prefer to buy books from Amazon. Specifically, Mass Market Paperbacks, which I find to be the perfect form factor (and cheaper than Kindle books, too).

If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read. - Carl Sagan, 'Cosmos' (1980)

... from https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

I used to read constantly for fun and interest.

Then I entered "higher education" which involves a large amount of "required reading." Although I was able to complete the "required reading" and coursework, I no longer enjoyed reading the way I had before. Reading had become an unpleasant chore.

Now I seem to lack the motivation and attention span for "recreational" reading and when I try it I just don't enjoy it. Reading non-fiction for interest is a bit better, but it still feels too much like drudgery to be enjoyable.

From 2007 to 2017, I read zero books. Before that, I only read self help books. I didn't find any use for fiction or novels for that matter. Self help books were actionable to me.

But then I stopped. The most I did during that decade was read Wikipedia entries or cliff notes. But one day I stumbled upon the alchemist. The book came to me at a moment I truly needed it, and it offered me some answers. Little after I read another fiction, Life of Pi. These are simple books with profound messages that can easily lure you back into reading. I ended reading more than 20 books that year.

Today, I can't imagine myself not reading. Books are where smart people take their time to clearly and precisely formulate their ideas. And the great advantage is that when you forget what's in a book, you can read it again.

The author talks about picking up a book as an alternative to your phone or watching TV as a post dinner activity. If anything, modern life has consolidated activities from specialised ‘things’ like radios, phones, books, TV to computing devices. I’ve been reading on my iPad and phone for years now. This makes me wonder what the impact is to kids - since they learn so much by watching you.

If you pick up a book, you arouse their curiosity to do the same. If you pick up a phone and launch an epub reader - not so much.

I'm a life long reader. Finished the majority of the classics section one might find in an american library. I find it hard to get a steady stream of quality narrative with engaging ideas, so I tend to find a good author and read everything I can find they've written. I'm also one of those can't-sleep-more-than-4-hours-a-day people, so I spend time reading books then.

If your're reading non-fiction, then you're probably learning something.

If your're reading fiction, then it is most likely just entertainment. So, its equivalent to watching a fiction movie or tv show, or whatnot.

I find it odd thats its encouraged and considered good to just read, regardless of content. What you're reading is critical.

You can read 'Harry Potter' and divert and entertain yourself, or read 'A Brief History of Time', and do the same, but also learn a bit.

I used to read a lot and then stopped. There are things that I find more interesting these days, and I've already read the most important books about the subjects I've been interested in. There comes a point where the diminishing returns are too small.

There would have to be a tectonic shift in understanding to get me interested in reading another book.

I used to read a lot, until I entered middle school. You see, in middle school, we had to read 4 books a year from a whitelist and write a report about them and such.

This meant I no longer felt motivated to read a book not on that list; after all, if I read a book from that list instead, I'd be killing two birds with one stone. Reading a book not on the list just seemed like a waste of time. Of course, I decided which books to read by randomly stumbling upon them, not by picking them from some list, so I was rarely motivated to read books that were on the list either. Not to mention that reading was now homework, where I'd need to think about how to write the report and which excerpts to use at all times.

The result was that I just stopped reading for the most part. It sucked all the fun out of it.

> They can be identified by their independent-bookstore tote bags, their “Book Lover” mugs, or—most reliably—by the bound, printed stacks of paper they flip through on their lap. They are, for lack of a more specific term, readers.

Is there some hidden irony in the pointlessness of this paragraph?

I've read 50 books this year after reading only 30 last year. I want to really crank then out in these next few months.

It is so important to me to keep reading and keep improving.

I am a voracious reader and have been since I was a boy. Travel books, historical fiction, science, biography, history, westerns, sci-fi, detective/suspense, I read them all. I am very fortunate to live in a city with a well-funded (and well used) library system so I have access to just about anything I read or hear about that sounds interesting. It is time well spent.

I always found it extremely hard to read anything at length. I could read just fine, but my mind would start to wander, and then I'd have to re-read a page 3-5 times unless I was extremely focused.

I was later (as an adult) diagnosed with ADHD.

Audiobooks work much better for me, as I can do other things at the same time, but I still get the information passively.

In primary school I read anything and everything but my favorite was science fiction. After finishing school, I didn't read as much and noticed something: my creativity seemed less and I wasn't coming up with many big 'next step' ideas. After starting to read regularly again, it came back.

With mobile devices if you count reading articles etc most people are gonna be life long readers

I've never read a book.

At least not a non-technical, fictional one. At school I'd just dig up a summary. Didn't stop me from getting a job at a FANG.

Whenever I read, I feel like I'm wasting my time. It's slow, boring and feels superficial. Just something arbitrary someone wrote. I can't focus and get no value from it.