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Comment by erelong | Hacker News Reader

I think from seeing articles like this a few times, that there's a lack of definition from people as what counts as "real reading" and about what materials "count as real reading"

(since I think probably people are reading these days more than ever - it just may be on forums like HN, social media, and AI output, etc.)

so if you just define that specifically then we could just promote it on social media, people reading these specific things, and then "boom" more people are "really reading"

(I presume people want to see more people reading "Great Books of Classic Literature" which is probably a great goal, things like Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" or Dante's "The Divine Comedy", etc.)

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I've seen many of these types of articles, and usually they are taking about long form reading, meaning books.

What's a book, though? I suppose people would at least count a traditional e-book. Does long-form fanfic count? How about a book-length website? What about one that was originally published as a book and then republished online?

I'm sure the general population being asked whether they read books have a very clear idea of what a book is.

Is that understanding also cross-culturally consistent? That's a typical failure mode in comparative surveys between different countries - the meaning of the question depends on the translation used in each language. I imagine here the implied frequency might also vary between languages; maybe English speakers don't say they "read" unless they read once a week, while Spanish speakers are laxer?

I think it's obvious enough without getting into the weeds like this unless their sample size is unreasonably small. E-book yes obviously counts. For the rest, like fanfic? Probably, but does it matter here? Is this actually going to move the needle?

Be cool if they would research that, instead of asking rhetorical questions and assuming that none of it matters and everything is "obvious."

I think it's just people being snooty. Bestsellers are trash, and by definition a plurality of readers are reading them. I don't think someone who reads Gladwell has any greater cognitive power than somebody who reads twitter.

All your examples could be printed and read as books - whatever form they are consumed in. What differences are you seeking to highlight with these examples?

People don't usually count reading an online piece of writing as equivalent to reading a book, even if the exact same content could also be in book form. Hence if you ask speakers of a language with a lot of available online reading material (English), you may systematically underestimate how much they read long-form content.

I think most people would consider it something published alright, as other definitions start to become a bit absurd (e.g. reading the menu at a restaurant or the match day programme probably aren't what people consider as 'reading for pleasure').

Outside of that, I don't think we should gatekeep it too much though - the biggest benefits come from reading anything at all.

The study focuses on books (and comics, but that only bumped it up by a couple of percent).

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