Books

There's a great thread on here for any readers. I've got a good few tips from it when struggling to find something to read.

http://http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=73853601

conorh91 wrote: »

I like factual writing: biographies, history and textbooks.

Can't remember the last fiction I read. It wasn't recently. I just don't see the point. I'd rather learn something useful than waste my time with unemployed chancers describing the colour of a wood at sunset, which is a laborious waste of time and paper.

It's called escapism, nothing wrong with it.

Aongus Von Bismarck wrote: »

I'm not a lover of the Kindle, but I have come around to acknowledging that it does have its purposes. One, it is extremely convenient when travelling. Secondly, living in Germany, the bookstores tend to have a limited range of English titles, usually amounting to little more than the latest Dan Brown or Stephen King. So I can get through my reading list using the Kindle.

I still miss the wonderful tactile quality of a good book. The way the spine cracks as you move through the book. The simple pleasure of picking a book off the shelf, heading out to the balcony, and passing an hour away engrossed in the work of someone who has toiled to put these words in a form worth reading and talking about.

My trips back home to Galway will always see me spending at least an hour in Charlie Byrne's bookstore in the city, adding to the collection. A wonderful bookshop, and a veritable bazaar of idles, curios and the obscure. Suffice to say I end up having to pay a surplus charge when it comes to checking in my luggage!

Börsenstraße 17, 60313 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
+49 69 280492

conorh91 wrote: »

Another good way of escaping is to go and look at a wood yourself.

I dunno. Sometimes I have the impression that such fiction thrives because people are too busy wasting their lives on activities they find less fruitful. Whoever reads books about working in call centres or banks? Even if such books exist, such an existence is merely the background to a thrilling event not usually associated with those places.

Escapism is a symptom of personal dissatisfaction, maybe. I am happy with my job and my life, so I read books that make me better-able to do what I do.

Good for you. I read to relax, pass the time on public transport or to help me wind down at night. Same way I watch tv or listen to music. It's nothing to do with personal dissatisfaction, it's pure pleasure for me and I get the same buzz from a good fiction as from a good non fiction. A good book is a pleasure to spend time regardless of genre.

suicide_circus wrote: »

Says he posting on boards

What's your point? I mostly use board for discussion of topics with a practical focus on people's lives, i.e. law and politics.

I'm not suggesting that reading is ever bad, or that we should all be building models of suspension bridges in our spare time. I simply stated that I like practical/factual reading-material.

job seeker wrote: »

Thats a wild amount of books to be reading.. Do you read them at the same time?

Does the different plots not get mixed up in your head???

I pick one depending on my mood or the size of the book and what can fit in my bag. The game of Thrones is like a brick so that's a bedtime read, the others are small enough so I grab one on the way out. Never mixed them up plot wise yet.

kylith wrote: »

Jaysus, you sound like some dry shyte.

You sound charming.

I have better things to do with my time out of work than studying how to work.

(i) How many hours per week do you spend working?
(ii) How many hours per week do you spend reading fiction?

Give it a try, you might like it!

I have owned plenty of fiction books. Occasionally, I read fiction classics. Nothing wrong with fiction, I just wouldn't make it my main focus. Different strokes and all that.

Earthhorse wrote: »

I think it was your flip dismissal of fiction that elicited those responses not your preference for non-fiction.

Yup.

conorh91 wrote: »

You sound charming.

And you sound boring. Hey, you probably aren't, but 'not seeing the point' of fiction books, saying that 'fiction thrives because people are too busy wasting their lives on activities they find less fruitful', well, it's terribly rude of you, don't you think? We can't all have whatever amazing, stimulating job you have. Someone has to work in the call centres, do the admin, process the lodgements, so that the little aspects of the world keep working. And those of us who do, and many doctors, astronauts, philanthropists, and the like, enjoy spending some of our day battling baddies in a desperate race to find the last piece of the jade monkey before the Triumvirate can complete their death ray.

conorh91 wrote: »

(i) How many hours per week do you spend working?
(ii) How many hours per week do you spend reading fiction?

I work 40+ hours a week and read about an hour a day, more if it's something that's really grabbed me. What does that have to do with anything?

conorh91 wrote: »

I have owned plenty of fiction books. Occasionally, I read fiction classics. Nothing wrong with fiction, I just wouldn't make it my main focus. Different strokes and all that.

Well, that's certainly a different attitude to not wanting to "waste my time with unemployed chancers describing the colour of a wood at sunset, which is a laborious waste of time and paper".

kylith wrote: »

We can't all have whatever amazing, stimulating job you have.

Most people would not be stimulated by my job. It is stimulating for me.

kylith wrote: »

I work 40+ hours a week and read about an hour a day, more if it's something that's really grabbed me. What does that have to do with anything?

It has everything to do with everything.

You said you don't have time to read non-fiction related to your work.

And yet you spend, what, about one-third (or possibly more) of your waking week in work? But you only spend one-twelfth reading fiction.

Fiction can indeed be escapism. Escapism means escaping from a world we'd rather not inhabit.

Yes, someone has to man the phone in the call centre in the industrial park in Balbriggan. Someone has to be the on-call nurse. Someone has to reject loan applications. Someone has to do those jobs, but in an ideal world it should be someone who wants to.

If you want to do your job, then great. My job is dull in they eyes of some people, but I enjoy it.

In any case, escapism is something which should be escaped to begin with.

Earthhorse wrote: »

sorry but your escapism argument doesn't really hold water.

Sorry but read the thread.

'Escapism' isn't my explanation for the popularity of fiction, I am responding to another poster's 'escapism rationale' for reading fiction.

Nevertheless, if someone is spending a substantial portion of their week engaging in escapism, that's probably symptomatic of a lifestyle or career problem in my opinion.

I go to the movies for maybe two hours once a month; if I were doing this every day I'm pretty sure my friends and family would begin to feel concerned.

conorh91 wrote: »

Sorry but read the thread.

'Escapism' isn't my explanation for the popularity of fiction, I am responding to another poster's 'escapism rationale' for reading fiction.

Nevertheless, if someone is spending a substantial portion of their week engaging in escapism, that's probably symptomatic of a lifestyle or career problem in my opinion.

I go to the movies for maybe two hours once a month; if I were doing this every day I'm pretty sure my friends and family would begin to feel concerned.

Everyone has their own form of escapism, it could be a book or meditation, going for a walk, cooking....who is to say reading a novel has lesser value than doing something else?

conorh91 wrote: »

It has everything to do with everything.

You said you don't have time to read non-fiction related to your work.

No, I said I have BETTER things to do with my time. Like go for a walk along the canal, which does remind me of various novels I have read which describe things like the play of light on water, stories of nomadic water-gypsies with no concept of untruth, tales set on coal barges in the 1900s

conorh91 wrote: »

Fiction can indeed be escapism. Escapism means escaping from a world we'd rather not inhabit.

I live in Dublin City. Excuse me for wanting to escape to an unspoiled wilderness every now and then.

conorh91 wrote: »

Yes, someone has to man the phone in the call centre in the industrial park in Balbriggan. Someone has to be the on-call nurse. Someone has to reject loan applications. Someone has to do those jobs, but in an ideal world it should be someone who wants to.

If you want to do your job, then great. My job is dull in they eyes of some people, but I enjoy it.

I'm glad you enjoy your job. I quite enjoy mine too, I get a real sense of satisfaction from completing my tasks. However I don't fancy spending my leisure time reading about MS Excel and filing when I a) am already more than proficient at it for my needs and b) could be sailing across the Atlantic in a 19th century tall ship with pirates.

Are you suggesting that the doctors, physicists, mountain rangers, and millions upon millions of other people who enjoy a good novel don't like their jobs and don't want to do them? Should a surgeon only read about surgery? Should a mountaineer's only reading material be about the tensile strength of various types of rope? To me that seems a terribly one-dimensional life.

I am a member of a book club. We get together once a month and discuss a novel we have agreed to read. I have made friends doing this. I have found authors I never knew existed who have introduced to me ideas about life and ways of thinking which I have never thought of. I can't see that kind of thing happening if I only read books that had a practical purpose. There is so much more to life than being practical all the time.

conorh91 wrote: »

In any case, escapism is something which should be escaped to begin with.

I wholeheartedly disagree. Were it not for escapism we would be nowhere near the level of progress that we are currently at. Humanity's imagination is what has led to every piece of progress that we have made, and fiction is a very important aspect of that imagination. If you cannot imagine something that is fictional then you can never make anything that does not already exist.

Here's a wee link to a paper discussing how science fiction has influenced modern technology.
https://www.academia.edu/1906685/The_Power_of_Science_Fiction_Exploring_Sci-fi_s_Relationship_to_Real-World_Innovation