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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

How do you read?

  
 
Mourne Kransky
20:37 / 01.09.05
I often leaf through this forum and feel ashamed at the way my reading habits have deteriorated and become more precarious through the years. I was a bookworm as a child, always my nose in a book. I was an avid reader for years after, staggering home from the library, weighed down, and gouching with a book all the time in the house. Always had just a little portable tv and a video and didn't much indulge in viewing marathons. Never could get the same quality of being absorbed in a narrative, in an alternate reality, with tv as I did with a good book.

Then computers came along to engage me. And the ubiquity of three for two giant bookstore chains tore me away from my library habit. Being a hopeless hashhead for years didn't stop me reading, although I would spend a night reading the same sentence on occasion. Commuting up and down between London and Edinburgh was definitely palliated by some cracking good reads, working my way through the entire oeuvre of some authors.

Latterly, I would still have a book, or more likely a pile of them, beside my bed and would read for an hour or so every night. Since getting wifi and the iBook, I seem to be spending more nights pounding the keys when I get to bed, or watching DVDs and downloads. The books are still being bought but they're increasingly not being read, just gathering dust and looking pretty, piled around the house.

I wolfed down some of the waiting pile when I had no broadband for a fortnight or so recently. Whenever I go on holiday, I still get through a book every day or two. But, otherwise, it's Posh Spice time. I've also noticed recently that, if I leave the laptop behind when I go to bed, I read about a page and a half and I'm snoring.

Of late, I've increasingly been listening to booktapes and podcast books as I travel about. I may have to pay lecteurs to read for me soon. I'll have forgotten how. I would be slightly less concerned by all of this if I weren't still buying books at much the same rate as I always did but just not getting them read.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
22:06 / 01.09.05
This year I have only read 13 and a half books. Partly because I like to read when I'm travelling, in a foreign place (country or town, any place that I don't know that well. The reading seems to be intensified by the isolation of an area and I find that isolation doesn't depend on the location being empty) or alone/with people I can ignore and these things happen less and less. The computer of course intrudes though TV doesn't, I don't watch more though I often have it on as background noise as I type. Whatever the reasons may be 13 and a half books in 9 months is quite an embarassingly low number. Despite all of this I'm aware that I read less partly because I'm more discerning about books, if I don't like the language or an aspect of the story (theme, character) then whether I've bought it or bumped into it I just stop reading. I notice that a lot of people find themselves compelled to finish novels even if they dislike them, which I've come to think of as a waste of time. There's little to be gained from a book that you didn't enjoy at all.

I find myself turning away from British and American writing, I don't feel like I learn from it, the books often seem like an analysis of a world that I already know quite intimately and often those books don't analyse things in a way that I find meaningful. I quite like reading literature from a Britain that's vaguely recognisable but quite culturally different, so classic novels from the early C20th and a little earlier or later often appeal to me. My reading habits have tended towards B.S. Johnson and Vita Sackville-West this year, I got about a quarter of the way through Orlando, which I was enjoying but forgot that I was reading.

I like short novels. I find long novels horribly over-written and often find myself wishing that someone had edited them down. This detracts from the book so much that I feel disinclined to read it past a certain point in the story. My perfect book is generally around 150 pages long, short, intense, focused and compact. An author doesn't usually need more than that to express the story and this also contributes to the lack of books currently being published by British authors that I tend towards reading. The language often loses something as there's yet more waffle stuck in the middle of what could be a neat and rather fantastic paragraph. If I don't get lost in every other paragraph I feel rather annoyed, if a novel doesn't make me smile on the tube just from the sheer joy of reading it then I'm not sure why I'm reading it. This may seem judgemental to more avid readers but I love the process of reading and if it doesn't work for me then I don't see the point of engaging in it.
 
 
astrojax69
23:56 / 01.09.05
usually read in bed if i can - head off there, grab s/o's pillows and prop up into position. take book one from pile, usually continue from bookmark [that is more often as not a shopping list or receipt] and read til i stop. sometimes it is to make dinner, eat dinner or do some damn other thing, but if i am engrossed, i read for hours. tv? pfft!

also started to read in a chair in my office, feet on another one. usually it is books for weork, but occasionally i spend lunch in the book i am in at the moment. just started joyce's 'ulysses' for the first time and loving it, but a slog to take in. hard to read more than an hour of that. but other writers i can read right through a novel...

used to be young bookworm too and recall reading LOTR right through in a w/end - and more than once! have fond memories of reading kafka's 'metamorphosis' in a morning-after a uni chum beach house party, while everyone else yet slept,
under leaden sky while dolphins loped in a bay on whose rocky shores i perched and read...

reading on a bus is good - a good way to devour an author's canon. i cycle to work now, but when i caught a bus, even though it was only a fifteen or so in trip, i got through a lot of reading in a week...

love reading. can't say i am enamoured of the dvd, i-book or other thing yet. will i ever be? hope not...
 
 
solid white in water
01:31 / 02.09.05
For me, the act of reading is all about the ritual of recreating the mega-bookstore experience at home:
1)Music- Must be without vocals, either classical or new age faux celtic crap
2)Beverage- Borders brand chai mix(which they now sell in tubs) with whole milk
3)Ambiance-artificial lighting only, shifting daylight is a distraction
4)Temperature- brisk- leave the AC on high, open the window a touch in winter- not cool enough for a jacket, but too chilly for short sleeves
Am I the only one with this fetish?
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
05:58 / 02.09.05
Xoc, that totally sounds like me... I tend to buy more books than I actually read these days, and it's kind of annoying me... I blame the internet and video games. And society.

I always read on the bus- this is the reason that, no matter how nice a day it is, I'll genberally get the bus home from work rather than walk (which isn't a bad walk, really)- I need my half-hour of escapism on the way TO work, and I spend the night looking forward to it on the way home.

I also always read in the bath and on the toilet, but I guess you really didn't want to know that.
 
 
lonely as a cloud...
07:28 / 02.09.05
Chalk down another Xoc-alike here. I love buying books, but there's a large pile of them waiting for me. I generally read before sleep, or just sitting on the sofa in the middle of the day if I've nothing else to do.
I was rather worried about my reading habits towards the start of this year - I just didn't feel I had the energy to read, and was worrying about my mind rotting away, or something, but then I picked up a copy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail - rather silly yet self-important "serious" book on the whole "Jesus didn't die and ran away to France, honest!" thing - a book I'd been meaning to pick up for ages, and I just devoured that and haven't looked back since. Little discoveries like Koji Suzuki (Ring and Loop are both great reads) and Sax's wonderful Hinterland have kept any fears I had of brain-rot at bay
Only problem is...I can't read on the bus. I get very travel-sick if I read. Not that I actually get sick, I just feel rotten, for some reason...
 
 
illmatic
08:16 / 02.09.05
Not having a telly helps a great deal. I did cut down on my reading a bit a few years ago (not because of anything like TV, but because I wanted to do a bit of work with my eyesight - thing called Bates Method - another story) but I have picked up again hugely since getting with my current partner, who is also a bookworm, and the owner of a multitude of fine books.

I currently read on the tube in the mornings, and always have a carry around book on me which is dipped into if I'm waiting to meet people or if I decide to go to the park at lunchtimes. I also read a bit in the evenings, sometimes a lot if I'm really engrossed with something. This tends to happen a lot more with novels (just polished off the first of Pullman's "Sally Lockhart" series. Not having a telly or DVD or internet access at home is what's behind this I think. But I think the quality of access to information you can turn up with a bit of ferreting more than makes up for it. I still end up with a big unread pile on the bedside table, but I plough through a significant chunk of it.
 
 
Benny the Ball
08:54 / 02.09.05
TV is also fairly non-apparent in my life - no tele at Mrs The Ball's, and a bad reception on the non-arieled tele at home, make the news bareable, and the odd football game okay, but mostly listening to music and reading - either on the sofa, or more often than not, in bed/on bed. I tend to spend most of my time in the bedroom, not that the rest of the house is bad, just like the lighting and mood in the bedroom more. I read a lot, but work gets in the way, so have lulls when too tired. Still have an ever growing pile of to read's though, even when flying through them. I just really like buying books.
 
 
Psych Safeling
08:55 / 02.09.05
Public transport mainly, particularly trains as increasingly I get travel sick reading on buses. I used to be able to read in the car as a kid, but now I can barely even read roadsigns without retching. Unfortunately (for this reason only) I cycle to work, so that removes the regularity and habit of a good commuting read. I tend now only to read at weekends, or waiting for SO to get home in the evenings if I've managed not to turn on the TV and metamorphose instantly into Ed from Shaun of the Dead (zombie phase). Or weekend mornings as I tend to wake up before he does, though this is scuppered if the Home & Away omnibus is on early shift (that looks much worse written down than it sounds out loud).

Quite looking forward to bump getting bigger so I can legitimately stop offering my life on a platter to Royal Mail van/South London bus 'drivers' every morning and start trying for a book a week. If this fatigue thing carries on I'm more likely to wake up at London Bridge with my face in my lap and dribble all over the page, though.

Nina, I think your 13 is relatively impressive, reckon I'm on about 9. David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is taking me a while - I was going to try IJ next but think might sandwich something a bit lighter in the middle. Or The Sound and The Fury, which has been top of the list for a long time now.
 
 
modern maenad
09:11 / 02.09.05
Definitely think physical and mental environment matters big time readingwise. Have noticed that at various times of life settling into books has been hard, as brain too scattered with/by detritus to focus. During chronic times with chronic fatigue could hardly lift my attention beyond most trivial nonsense, and got very depressed when couldn't handle Tolstoy. Happier days now in abundance and enjoy lying in bed, on sofa, on lawn and in bath with books (OK, so that sounded bit too intimate.....). Also trains, planes and buses (damn automobiles). Like Xoc etc. feel its important to have enormous piles of unread books as you never know what you're going to fancy next, and as charity shops are so bursting to rafters with never-opened super bargains why not?? Can't do music when reading, and get inwardly cross with noisy talking people on buses etc. who distract me!!!
 
 
Smoothly
09:17 / 02.09.05
I’m practically a non-reader these days. I think I have read two, maybe 3, books this year. Moving to within walking distance of work 4 years ago, and becoming increasingly reluctant to travel anywhere, has been devastating to my book reading. I do pretty much all my reading off a screen now, in fact.
But I’m a painfully slow reader, and always have been. I just find reading quite hard. The idea of reading LOTR in a weekend sounds superhuman to me. So, like Nina, I have to be very selective about what I decide to start because, unlike Nina, I find it almost impossible to give up on a book that I’ve started. It seems like such a waste of my investment, although I recognise that it doesn’t make much sense really.
It no doubt sounds dreadfully philistine, but I’m actually okay with the not reading thing. If I’m at home there are just always things I’d rather be doing. I know the old saw about the man who does not read having no advantage over than man who cannot read, but I find myself unmoved by it. I’ve pretty much cut novels out of my life and I don’t really miss them. The amount of TV or music or films I can consume in the time it takes me to plough through a 300 page novel just makes it a bit of a no brainer. I’d pretty much always rather have a conversation than read a book.
Fortunately for me stopping reading novels has also meant I’ve stopped buying them. And I quite like having fewer books about. If I could get digital copies of all the ones I currently own, I’d burn the papery fuckers happily.
 
 
Loomis
10:15 / 02.09.05
I read a lot less than I used to but also buy less so it works out okay. I always have a to-read pile but it's not as large as it once was since I don't do the rounds of second-hand bookstores anymore, something I used to do almost every weekend.

I read every day on the bus to and from work, and usually in my lunchbreak (at my desk since I don't like reading outside), so I'm always getting through books but over the last couple of years I've got out of the habit of reading at home during the evenings. I'm getting back into it now though.

There are a few reasons why I read less than I used to, mostly to do with fatigue, and unlikely to change really. From the moment I leave the house I'm reading all day. My book on the bus, then work and the internet all day, then book on the bus again. Then during the evenings it's the internet, some book reading, working on my own writing, plus a bit of tv thrown in usually (could be anywhere between 0 and 2 hours). I find that my brain just gets tired of concentrating on text. Well, not so much tired as bored of doing the same thing but then how many things can you do at night that don't involve using your eyesight?

I often worry that the internet has destroyed my attention span as when I was younger I was able to read for hours without moving from my chair, but it's probably because I have simply not been reading enough to sustain that ability.

One major change in my habits is that I used to be a stickler for finishing books once I'd started, but these days I don't bother. If something is really shitting me then I put it down.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
10:29 / 02.09.05
I'm getting concerned that I'm reading purely to dull the boredom of my commute and that the vast majority of the books I read have no effect on me whatsoever. This worry is partly because the last time I read this much was when I was 15, and there are books I know I've read (mainly Cry The Beloved Country, but there are others) of which I have no memory at all. No character names, no plots, just the title. The total time I spend travelling to and from work is about 2 hours, and since I almost always get a seat on the various trains I don't even need to worry about falling over because I'm too absorbed in my book. I read a bit in the evenings, but since that's when I read books on which I couldn't concentrate on trains I'm frequently too tired to concentrate on them after work as well.

It seems like such a waste of my investment, although I recognise that it doesn’t make much sense really.

Glad there's someone else who feels that way... I think I always cling to the hope that they're going to get better at the end (which actually happened with If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things), or that someone's going to say, 'Oh yes, there are about 200 pages of rubbish but it's really good if you stick with it' the day after I give it to charity.
 
 
Axolotl
14:49 / 02.09.05
My commute is too short to allow me to read on the train, which is a shame because I always rather enjoyed doing so. I do most of my reading at the weekend, as during the week it's too easy to slump in front of the telly with a beer and a joint. I nearly always fit in 10-30 minutes reading in bed before I fall asleep as a way of switching off.
In terms of location I guess I do most of my reading in or on my bed as it's comfy, I can stretch out and put some music on.
 
 
Quantum
17:07 / 02.09.05
Not having a telly helps a great deal. Illmatic
That's true. Think about how long each week you spend in front of the TV- how much could you read in that time?

I read ferociously like a fire consumes fuel, at least a couple of books a week and more if I'm not working. I always have several on the go at once so I can read something suiting my mood. For example in my bag and by my bed at the moment I have Gareth Knights 'The Occult' non-fiction, 'Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf' fiction, a Simone de Beauvoir bio, 'Jedi Search' crap sci-fi, just finished a little literary theory book and am about to re-read 'Cryptonomicon' while I wait to re-read 'System of the World' from the library.
Then there's my 'to read' pile...

I read at lunch, I read when travelling, I read in the evening and in bed, in the pub, bath or bog, when there's a lull in conversation, if a video gets dull, waiting for things or if I've got free time. It's an advantage reading quickly, but even if I was slow I'd read constantly.

On finishing books you've started- a friend once pointed out to me that if you read a book every week, you will only read 2,500 books in the next 50 years. If you read a book a month, that's only 600 books you've got left before you die- if a book is rubbish then bin it, why waste your precious and finite reading time? Chilling thought, and a reason to avoid Dirty Dan Brown and his ilk.


Ill- Coincidentally (thing called Bates Method) I read Huxleys 'Eyeless in Gaza', which then led me to the book 'The Bates Method'. But as you say, another story.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
18:14 / 02.09.05
I am cheered to find myself in better company than I feared.

I've been mulling over this in idle moments today, having posted the threadhead last night, before reading your interesting replies. I had a moment of Stop whining and adapt epiphany. The cure for my present unbookedness is simply to turn off the distractions and pick up a good book. I have The Historian and The People's Act of Love whispering seductively from beside the bed and both should be a bloody good read if word of mouth and reliable reviewers don't disappoint. And if those prove too heavy, I was bestirred by a fit of Stoatie-inspired nostalgia to buy a couple of favourite Moomintroll books yesterday that'll be perfect for those time-limited bogside grabs.

It does seem to me that more books than ever are being sold and yet less (book-)reading could well be occurring. I had a theory that I have become more restless, less able to settle in the couch and focus on several chapters in a row, due to becoming used to the pace of surfing or channel-hopping, and yet I can watch a whole series of 24 or Battlestar Galactica at one sitting more or less. If anything, a book should be easier, because I can take that with me wherever I go: bath, bus, tube, for the lunch break at work.

Maybe it's just been too long since I got into a big, thick book that gripped me so I had to read through the night. I think the last book I read at one sitting, more or less, was MacEwan's Saturday, back in February, and I didn't even like that all that much.

I think Nina's on to something about contemporary long novels often being over-written. Publishers seem to favour quantity over quality as a selling point. A fine thick volume seems so promising as you queue at the till but can just be self-indulgent and exhausting when you're gasping for air on page 666. I have never forgiven A S Byatt for Possession on those grounds.

Like Loomis, I tire of a book and just abandon it much more often than I would have done previously. In fact, I have ploughed through some utter crap in the past and given over weeks of my life to such as Mailer's Ancient Evenings just because I had the feeling that my investment of time would have been a total waste if I never got to the end. I can't actually remember now whether I ever did finish the fucker.

Just as a threadrotting sidenote, I found Pullman's Sally Lockhart books a let down but I loved Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf, Quantum. I did read it when on holiday though.
 
 
Persephone
18:15 / 02.09.05
but then how many things can you do at night that don't involve using your eyesight?

You can try making the spoon with two backs...
 
 
Shrug
23:36 / 03.09.05
I luv reading I do and over the last few years as my salary has increased my thriftiness has decreased dramatically. Thusly I had a-l-o-t of unread books lying around. Under the bed, over the bed, in drawers, in the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom etc.
This thread however has encouraged me to organise and categorise and now those unread reside on the bookshelf adjacent to my bed while personal favourites lay claim to the larger shelves downstairs and the rest to storage.

Beginning to think that the new books adjacent bed wasn't such a hot idea though as unfortunately I've already begun to wonder if the unblemished spines are beckoning or taunting me. Guilty visions of unfulfilled books besieging me a la The Brooms in Fantasia or perched on a jungle gym glaring at me with beady little umlaut eyes in the manner of Hitchcock's The Birds.

That being said I read quite a lot and always have a book to hand when out and about. I was similar as a youngster though not quite so mindful of their condition, resultantly many childhood favourites are well worn and in literal tatters. I quite like the idea of them being literary tatters too. (arf)

I hate to leave a book unfinished because of a silly notion of the characters left in text static and waiting, also a large amount of curiosity as to the stories dénouement is involved. Curiosity doesn't kill the cat in this case but quite often it bores the absolute Fuck out of it.

Actually reading What Quantum has said above "600 books", left makes me feel very conflicted about this approach so I may reconsider yet.


I don't read much in day-to-day transit as I'm told my face becomes very expressive when reading. Seemingly it's quite comical. I know the likelihood of people actually looking at me reading on public transport is highly unlikely but being conscientious of it ruins enjoyment of the text and is generally unpleasant. On an occasion when a long train journey is necessary I secrete myself in a two-seater corner where I can read facially unfettered.

Television and the interwebnet do sometimes impinge more on my reading habits than they used to but every now and again I have a mammoth surge to compensate.
Increased workload and the following brain drain also have a part to play.

(Not the intention of the question I know but "How do you read? Really c'mon how do you not read!)

Love this thread!
 
 
Mazarine
04:56 / 04.09.05
I mostly read on slow days at work, or when I'm waiting in line or something. The latter only really works with small books. I tend to go full tilt and then drop off on long books for months, sometimes years at a time. Short books get read in one night. Books that fall between Infinite Jest and the average mass market, could go either way.
 
 
astrojax69
02:59 / 05.09.05
Like Xoc etc. feel its important to have enormous piles of unread books as you never know what you're going to fancy next

put the finger on it, modern! and isn't that one of the worst of all feelings - perhaps even beyond a break up with a lover - of wanting to but..... having nothing to read!

sheer terror; s'why you *have* to keep a pile of twenty three or so books going at any one time, with an eye on a section of the bookcase in the living room and one on the bookcase at your friend's house... mere survival.


not surprised you didn't like saturday, xoc. i am flabberghasted it got onto the booker list. if it were written by ethel noname it would not make it across the editor's desk... why can't *i* have a name...
 
 
DaveBCooper
10:05 / 05.09.05
If it’s any consolation to people who feel they’re not reading enough, I recently came across some statistic claiming that the average adult in the UK reads less than one book per year…

I live and work in London, so do the reading-whilst-travelling thing, and this pretty much enables me to, like Finchy in ‘The Office’, read a book a week. I try to alternate fiction and non-fiction if possible, sometimes the deluge of facts just gets too much for me and I need to have some tales from the madeupiverse.

As regards the physical arrangement, when travelling I usually put the headphones in to block out the sounds of loud-talkers on the tube or bus, but at home I’m less fussy about music, or drinks, or whatever. As the mood takes me…

Though when I think about it, I do have things pretty strictly separated: magazines are read whilst I’m having breakfast or generally lolling around, I read books on the way to and from work and on journeys, and I tend to read comics in bed (shorter on the whole, so can finish one off even if I’m very tired). I’ll rarely read a novel in bed nowadays (in case my eyelids droop and I’m just turning pages whilst not really taking it in) or a non-fiction work as I might get all interested and fired up and then not go to sleep…

Couldn’t agree more about the need to stop if you’re not enjoying a book. On the whole I operate the policy of abandoning books I’m not enjoying after 100 pages, or one-third of the book (whichever’s the shorter); if it hasn’t got me by then, I feel it’s not for me.
 
 
Psych Safeling
13:33 / 05.09.05
Crikey, Phyrephox - I'd read that post before and was just bringing myself up to date on this thread when I stopped short: hang on, didn't I read Cry, the Beloved Country last year? then what the HELL happened in it?

I've given it a few minutes and I THINK it was a priest in South Africa going to Jo'burg/Capetown to try and find his wayward son who was accused of murder and had got a young lady in trouble. Damn fine book and very depressing.
 
 
Psych Safeling
13:34 / 05.09.05
Sorry, schoolboy error - last post should have been directed at Vincennes.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
19:31 / 05.09.05
A priest -all that sounds familiar now that you say, I'm really going to have to read it again. I'd thought the main character was a doctor (with a limp?) I remember thinking it was terribly moving at the time, anyway, and was quite mortified when I thought about it several years later and realised it was entirely gone.

when travelling I usually put the headphones in to block out the sounds of loud-talkers on the tube or bus

Likewise -but as a result I never have much of an idea how loudly I'm laughing, I think I've made people jump quite badly a few times...
 
  
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