For Markus, who introduced me to The Economist and cowboy coffee, and for my brother, who struggles to read an entire play without having to tolerate my bewilderment.If it takes roughly two to four weeks to read a book then you could read 26-52 books a year. If you start reading between the age of eight and 12 and live to about 60-85, that's roughly 1,250-4,000 books in a lifetime. Therefore, don't read books. In the same amount of time you could probably see a shit-load of films and listen to a massive earful of albums. Both forms of art are better, shorter, don't make you go blind and require less effort.
After finishing a book, actual feelings of relief and self-satisfaction are mistaken for a sense of enlightenment or increased knowledgeability, an easy mistake to make for something which takes so long to complete.
You only need books to understand the occasional clever reference in conversation, so just make sure you know these for when people refer to them, but don't make the smart-arse comments yourself or you may get caught out. And if you don't know the book being referred to then be honest and save face. You can't read all the good books out there.
Still, however, read something, such as the football section of The Guardian and The Economist because it's brilliant.
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4 comments:
This is bollocks, sir, and you know it. Literature can be an immense source of comfort to the human soul and a decision to lead a literary life can be an immensely civillsing one.
Perhaps one could say that music consoles one better in times of distress, but reading and thinking the thoughts of other people might stop us getting into distress in the first place. Literature is also our best way of interacting and indeed experiencing what it was like to live in times other than our own, and hence helps us to identify what it is that is really essential about life and what is temporary frippery.
Here's one of my rules of thumb - it's always better to do something than not to. And your post recommends not reading and not learning. So it fails my test!
Dear JHarris,
You know I know it. It is bollocks. Books are bloody great, comparable to radio comedy. The listener/reader pictures the scene in his mind.
"It is always better to do something than not to."
Does this include incest and rape Jharris? just checking
I think Cheesepie made his argument very well and shouldn't have been so quick to retreat in the comments. Books are not innately better than films, and many are pure frippery. The point about books providing a false sense of enlightenment is very astute.
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