Hacker News Reader

Comment by allknowingfrog | Hacker News Reader

Do what makes you happy, but don't pretend that reading "difficult" books makes you morally-superior to the rest of us. I read fiction for fun, and non-fiction for personal growth.

View on HN

> I read fiction for fun, and non-fiction for personal growth.

You could read fiction for personal growth and non-fiction for fun as well.

This is mostly how I do it.

Some people find Dark Souls style games fun, I assume this is the book reader's version of that. I don't get it, but whatever floats their boat.

There's always that person who needs to make a knee-jerk inferiority feeling into the author's problem. The author never made value judgments about people. In fact, he starts by pointing out that he thinks those kinds of judgments either way are silly.

The first paragraph labels me a "social media poster who identifies as a reader", based on my reading preferences.

It doesn't, really. It labels a person a "social media poster who identifies as a reader" based on them passing negative judgment on difficult books ("fundamentally fraudulent") and those who read them ("anyone who would read such a book must be pretentious, phony brodernist snob").

Sure, there is the middle part ("books are supposed to be fun and the world is so awful why would you want to suffer"), but I took the bit about negative judgment to be the main thing the author was complaining about.

Given the way he framed it, if you somehow will admit to fitting his scarecrow of a reader who considers these "fundamentally fraudulent because books are supposed to be fun and the world is so awful why would you want to suffer and anyone who would read such a book must be pretentious, phony brodernist snob" then I'm not sure what sympathy you are expecting here? Yes, the author laid out a comically philistine portrait of an anti-intellectual and you're like "yeah that's me I'm mad!!!", so yeah maybe think about that and why you think it's ok.

For sure; engaging in any particular difficult hobby (be it reading hard books, lifting heavy weights, or playing an instrument extremely well) is unrelated to how moral a person is.

I’ll do as I like.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com