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Comment by hirvi74 | Hacker News Reader

Why is reading for pleasure always placed on some sort of pedestal? I would argue that what is being consumed is more important than the medium of consumption.

I am not trying to say there is little value in reading, but I have always found it odd that some forms of consumption are more coveted than others.

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Quality of what's produced in that medium might be one thing. People reading for pleasure are usually reading works published by authors that have gone through some sort of filtering process for quality. Sure, it might be "trashy" novels relative to literature, but at least there's a floor to the quality level or else it just doesn't get published.

But with the advent of other forms of media, more easily produced and consumed, the quality of what is being consumed is lower than the quality of pleasure reading. Combine that with the firehose rate at which it's being consumed and pleasure reading seems better than it might once have.

Similarly, I listen to a lot of podcasts, but whenever I listen to The Guardian Long Reads (read articles) I’m kinda surprised every time how much higher quality they are than typical podcasts, since they’re based on well written articles.

> published by authors that have gone through some sort of filtering process for quality

You can say the same for movies and tv if you filter by IMDB score (which i do). Heck even podcasts get millions of views before I ever hear about them.

Because it is exercise for the imaginative mind. Reading can force a reader to build worlds. Some readers are good at this, others need practice. To call reading “consumptive” is severely minimizing literature’s impact on communication throughout human history.

Even looking back at my mother reading Stephen King and romance novels … her reading undoubtedly shaped her and helped her understand the world and her experiences within it.

Note: this comment written from the bathtub after putting down “The Stand” by Stephen King, you know, one of those “little value” books.

> Because it is exercise for the imaginative mind.

So is playing, daydreaming, acting/theater, various visual arts, etc..

> To call reading “consumptive” is severely minimizing literature’s impact on communication throughout human history.

The topic is centered around reading for pleasure, not for all facets and purposes that reading serves, e.g., documentation, communication, etc..

> her reading undoubtedly shaped her and helped her understand the world and her experiences within it.

But why does the medium have to be reading to get this benefit? Would listening to a storyteller or an audiobook not confer the same benefits?

Reading connotes all sorts of hard-to-measure advantages and growth that nothing else even comes close to. And while there are works that are better and worse, no matter how lowly the thing is that is being read, that growth still accrues. You could have a child who read nothing but cereal boxes and truck stop restroom graffiti, and he'll be ahead of his classmates on every single thing you can score.

It's not the work, but the medium. Bad dimestore romance novels are therefor superior to someone watching one of those drivel tiktok soap opera things (no idea what they're called). The audio book might be the exact same story as the paperback, but the effect is not equivalent.

> Reading connotes all sorts of hard-to-measure advantages and growth that nothing else even comes close to.

For example..?

> And while there are works that are better and worse, no matter how lowly the thing is that is being read, that growth still accrues.

What growth and based on what evidence?

> The audio book might be the exact same story as the paperback, but the effect is not equivalent.

Again, what is this 'effect?' You keep repeating some ethereal benefit that has yet to be named. While audiobooks and paperback are not perfectly equivalent, the two are not meaningfully different.

https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/08/19/readingbrainmap/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/003465432110608...

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