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Comment by anon7000 | Hacker News Reader

It’s odd, I read ravenously as a kid/teen, as did my siblings. You need to read what you enjoy, and for it to not be forced. (For example, summer reading at the library gave out prizes kids cared about for reading books.) Plus, we didn’t have access to much digital media like TV/video games (though it was the early 2010s) because my parents were strict, so books were a solid source of entertainment.

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I read a lot of books that fit my tastes as a kid, usually adventure/fantasy genre stuff.

Never enjoyed the stuff that got assigned in school though. I’d probably like it now.

Anything you're forced to do too much you lose all enjoyment of. If you're given at least a bit of agency, it's far more enjoyable.

I read because I wanted to all the time, but every reading assignment was a chore.

It is not just it being homework. It is not like I hated evything in school - I actually discovered quite a few intersting things there.

It is that books everyone here is said that kids dont read anymore or brags they read ... are just not interesting books for a kid.

That was my problem too. Not in the US but in Europe. The stuff we had to read was all by 'highly acclaimed: authors who have carved out this niche of 'literature art ' between them.

However their books were dusty, tough, whiny and horrible to get through. Yuck. I never read fiction in my own language ever again just in spite.

I too read ravenously as a kid. Strangely, in the 90's we were never assigned full books in English classes, just short stories or chapters.

I'm older than you (graduated high school in 1975). I read tons of sci-fi as a kid. I also don't remember reading any whole novels for English class. Maybe we did, but if so I have successfully blocked them out.

I have been amazed at the number of houses I've been in over the years which didn't appear to contain a single book.

I graduated high school in '92 (S.F. Bay Area) and can recall several assigned books we read for class in either junior high or high school. I think there were more, but these are the ones I can recall easily today.

Pride and Prejudice. Last of the Mohicans. A Separate Peace. Tom Jones. Beowulf. Grendel. Crime and Punishment. Waiting for Godot. Tale of Two Cities.

Also, several Shakespeare plays, though I am no longer sure which were read when.

We also had other reading assignments where we chose our own books. The above were assigned to everyone.

interesting. Assuming you're talking about high school I had a totally different experience, we were assigned maybe 6 books/semester for the year I spent in mainstream classes (and about double that when I did the IB program but I expected that to be uncommon)

It doesn’t happen anymore because of phones and the internet. Most people in the past read because they had nothing to do and they were willing to invest the time into a good book. You sacrifice a lot of energy in order to get enjoyment from a book.

Now with the internet there’s an unlimited stream of zero investment snippets of entertainment. People naturally dive into that because it’s more rational in the short term to do that.

Schools stopped reading but it’s as a result of the way students behave. The causal driver is student behavior.

Good point. I am old enough to have lived in a pre smartphone time. Hour long train rides would mean folks opened up a book or newspaper.

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