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Comment by constantcrying | Hacker News Reader

I think the most important thing for literacy is a nationwide culture of reading.

That has stopped existing over the last decades. Parents do not read and so neither do their children.

Reading is now a niche hobby. If you visit a book store you will also find out that most "readers" are a very niche group, who mostly read genre fiction or crime slop.

The amount of people actually reading intellectually challenging literature is miniscule. Is it any surprise to have an illiteracy problem in a country where nobody reads?

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"We should read fewer books that I don't like, and more books that I do like."

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/23/science-fictio...

I have read maybe a thousand books of fantasy or science fiction, including 10k pages long fantasy series. Some of it was good, but most of it was pure slop.

People read for a variety of reasons and I am not saying that people should not be reading their genre fiction slop. But to a culture of reading belongs the idea that reading challenging works is also important and that a deeper meaning is to be found in classical works.

If we want a society which reads we need books which are more than movies without images. We need to tell adults that reading is a worthwhile endeavor, especially when reading complex material. Only then literacy can rise again, because only then will people believe that it is important to be able to read.

Who is it that distinguishes the "slop" (you love that word) from the complex? You seem to be focused on the idea of genre, which is orthagonal to the quality of the prose, the depth of the characters, the complexity of the themes, etc. You might as well focus on the size of the font.

>Who is it that distinguishes the "slop" (you love that word) from the complex?

Why do you just completely ignore what I say? The answer is already part of my last response to you.

Again, the distinction is the why if you read it for entertainment it is slop. Most of genre fiction is terrible slop which totally fails at "quality of the prose, the depth of the characters, the complexity of the themes, etc.".

You should ask yourself why you are so upset by this distinction. Classics are books which stood the test of time, which have been read for hundreds if not thousands of years. Engaging with that or the 1 millionth Harry Potter clone, magical school romance, is incomparable.

You're making three distinctions here and lumping them all into one. Let me check my understanding here. To you, for a book to be worthwhile, it must satisfy 3 criteria:

1. It must be "complex".

2. It must be over 100 years old.

3. The reader must seek it out for reasons other than entertainment.

The first one sounds good on paper, but I ask again (and observe how you tried to dodge the question): WHO defines which books are considered "complex"?

The second one is baffling. Certainly if a book is still sought out centuries after being read, it is probably good! But this also rejects the idea that anyone writing in the 21st century - or most of the 20th, for that matter - is at all worthy of consideration. I don't think we're going to create a culture of literacy by rejecting everything modern.

And the third, the real bee in your bonnet, the idea that people would seek out a book for entertainment, read it, and be entertained. You claim to want a culture of literacy, but you've spent more words bashing the fiction of Sanderson and Scalzi and King (and the readers thereof) than on the increasing number of non-readers this topic is about.

If Sanderson recommended that his fans read The Odyssey, or King recommended Poe, their readers would surely seek them out to be entertained, right? Does that eliminate Homer and Poe from your consideration?

You want to create a "literate society" which treats reading as an exercise in self-flagellation. Like giving yourself homework. I don't think this will work.

Say what you will about Rowling (and I will: she sucks!) but she got kids reading, and interested in mythology, for a good number of years. Notably before the rise of social media.

Let me be honest, I despise your post. All your arguments are just made up and are totally disconnected from anything I said.

According to you I bashed certain authors, but I did not name any author at all. Nor did I even say that you should not read genres fiction, in fact I said it is a perfectly fine thing to do and that I was an avid reader of genre fiction myself. How you went from my words, to your claims about me is baffling.

>The first one sounds good on paper, but I ask again (and observe how you tried to dodge the question): WHO defines which books are considered "complex"?

What a meaningless question. It does not matter at all. What matters is that the reader is challenging himself.

>The second one is baffling. Certainly if a book is still sought out centuries after being read, it is probably good! But this also rejects the idea that anyone writing in the 21st century - or most of the 20th, for that matter - is at all worthy of consideration.

This is just false. A totally nonsensical arguments. Classics can exist and good authors can exist as well. There is no contradiction.

>And the third, the real bee in your bonnet, the idea that people would seek out a book for entertainment, read it, and be entertained.

What a convincing argument. Except I said the exact opposite.

>If Sanderson recommended that his fans read The Odyssey, or King recommended Poe, their readers would surely seek them out to be entertained, right? Does that eliminate Homer and Poe from your consideration?

No. How did you even get the idea?

>You want to create a "literate society" which treats reading as an exercise in self-flagellation.

Just another made up argument.

>Say what you will about Rowling

But I did not say anything about Rowling. Not a single word.

Genuinely. I hate your post. You are responding to an argument which does not exist. I hate talking to you. If you are the average genre fiction reader than illiteracy is truly preferable.

Person A: "We need to tell adults that reading is a worthwhile endeavor, especially when reading complex material." Person B: "But how do you define complex?" Person A: "What a meaningless question. It does not matter at all."

Person A: "The distinction is the why; if you read it for entertainment it is slop." Person B: "If we read Poe or Homer for entertainment, is it slop?" Person A: "How did you even get the idea?"

I will admit that I misunderstood your "classics" argument. I thought you were saying a book has to be a classic AND complex (a term which, at this point in the thread, is literally meaningless) AND not read for entertainment, but really you're saying it can be ANY of those, right? Like, Doyle's Holmes stories are not always challenging literature, but they are classics, and thus worthy of attention. Whereas if we were speaking in 1925, they'd be "genre slop". I think I now CORRECTLY understand your arbitrary criteria.

So complexity is determined by the reader's intention, to either challenge themselves or to be entertained? I found Dan Brown difficult to read, due to my dislike of his prose style and incessant brand name usage; would reading Dan Brown be a worthy self-challenge by your standards?

Also, a note for your future discourses: the phrase "say what you will" does not imply that you already said a thing. It basically means "bash this person if you want, they're up for it, but I'm about to say something semi-favorable about them". Is this the first time you've seen that phrase?

You know what, I'm not even gonna wait for your reply. I'll come out and say it:

You want a culture of literary snobbishness. You want to look down at people who don't read "complex" literature, where "complex" is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder is you.

You think books that are recent, easy to comprehend, and entertaining are "slop" - a word used to describe pig food; you can't stop yourself from using it.

A lot of people don't actually want to look down on others in the way you're doing! If being a serious reader means looking down on others and calling their books "slop", you're going to drive people away.

Books should be for everybody. The full-time worker who wants to kick back at the end of the day and read some romance or fantasy (or romantasy :) ) is doing more for their literacy and empathy than any social media use would accomplish. By discouraging this - and you are, every time you call it "slop" - you are contributing to illiteracy.

What I wanted to say was that people should read books which challenge themselves. That the judge of complexity should be they and that it is not up to me to decide what people read. That reading for the sake of reading is actually always worthwhile and that nobody should be judged for what they are reading. That all reading is a joy. That slop was just a way to categorize, but that each person themselves had to categorize themselves. That there is nothing wrong with treasuring what other see as banal or slop.

All this is what I was trying to express to you. I tried to emphasize, because I am a reader of genre fiction and I do love books. Just like you.

But actually you made me rethink this. Reading slop is worthless. The only reason to do is because it is marginally better than watching tiktok. I will look at someone reading Kings slop novels just like I look at someone watching TikTok slop. Reading for the sake of reading is worthless. Someone being illiterate or only reading slop makes no difference at all. Yes I do look down at you. Reading romance novels does make you a worse person. Sci-fi is for people who are semi tech literate losers who do not shower enough. Fantasy is for people running around in plastic armor as if they were 5.

I guess a thank you is in order for making me come to this realization.

"What I wanted to say was that people should read books which challenge themselves. That the judge of complexity should be they and that it is not up to me to decide what people read."

If you wanted to say that, you would have.

You claim to see people browsing genre fiction in a bookstore as consuming "slop", but now that you're called out on it, you claim that everyone gets to decide for themselves what's challenging? You can't know what is challenging or complicated to those readers. You're being elitist and condescending when you judge people and books this way.

There's actually a pretty easy on-ramp from genre fiction to serious literature. You can take the average Sanderson reader and introduce them to more advanced genre authors like Bradbury, Wolfe, Le Guin, or Asimov. Here, they will find books which challenge the reader to understand the characters, and to reflect on their own society. At that point, the reader is primed for advanced reading - they'll have seen how themes, characters, and events all reinforce each other in interesting ways. And from this, you can introduce the "classics" and the "complex" and the "literary" - they'll be ready.

Where you see pig food, I see a path forward.

Are you sure that you read my entire post.

Do you really think I would care about the opinions of a slop reader after that.

It's funny that you are trying to present your overt snobbery as a "realization" you had after "rethinking", when it was already there in your first post in the thread.

"If you visit a book store you will also find out that most "readers" are a very niche group, who mostly read genre fiction or crime slop."

You are no more judgy or condescending now than you were yesterday.

Good. I actually tried walking back the scare quotes in my posts and actively tried defending slop (which you proceeded to attack me for, for some reason), but you are right. I really am judgemental, condescending and elitist, I just wasn't honest with myself. I despise slop, reading for the sake of reading is worthless and the idea of reading as torture inflicted upon oneself seems very appealing.

What you (claim you) wanted to say:

"What I wanted to say was that people should read books which challenge themselves. That the judge of complexity should be they and that it is not up to me to decide what people read."

What you actually said:

"If you visit a book store you will also find out that most "readers" are a very niche group, who mostly read genre fiction or crime slop."

Perhaps before refocusing on your snobbery, you should educate yourself on language and sentence construction. Maybe something remedial? For there to be such a huge gulf between what you intended to say and what you actually said, is an indication of deficiencies whose correction is beyond what these forums could provide.

It also doesn't help when we have programs like Accelerated Reader. The original goal of the program, from what I understand, was to encourage reading by rewarding kids for succeeding at reaching goals. Unfortunately, schools decided rewarding was bad and punishing was good. So instead of being an optional reward-driven approach, it became a mandatory part of your grade.

This sort of thing makes kids resent reading. Especially kids, like me, who were given extremely unrealistic goals to meet because they happen to have a high reading level. Plus you're restricted to books that are: 1. Your exact reading level. 2. In your school library. 3. Have A.R. tests available. That, especially in smaller schools, is an extremely difficult set of criteria for meeting a goal. It made me HATE reading because there were no books of any interest to me, but I had to read the most bizarre (and, frankly, age inappropriate) things to meet the goal and get a good grade.

Bring back Pizza Hut and toss A.R. back in hell where it came from.

I always hated school assigned reading. I could not really tell you why though.

At the same time I was a very avid reader, who spend a lot of time reading books.

Even treating it as a purely optional reward didn't work, at least for me. I remember doing AR and treating it like a game -- find the most points-dense book possible in the school library (for me it was The Hobbit, a whopping 70 points), read a summary of it online to get the details and ace the test. All without even opening the book. Well, I actually did try reading The Hobbit but I couldn't make it past the handful of pages without falling asleep.

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