Comments on: The Long Decline of Reading

By: Samuel Sukaton

Samuel Sukaton — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:48:59 +0000

I know I’m a year late on this, but what’s your take on “flash prose?”

By: Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer: Who’s laughing now? - David Knowles - Paradigms Lost - True/Slant

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:41:35 +0000

[...] read every tea leaf correctly, either. A few years back, for instance, he had this to say about the newly-released Kindle: It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read [...]

By: On literacy « Discursus

On literacy « Discursus — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:33:43 +0000

[...] relationship between TV and reading). One link I clicked on led me to an article called “The Long Decline of Reading” on the blog Mssv, which quotes some sad statistics (like this one: “In the US, only [...]

By: Adrian Hon

Adrian Hon — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:15:08 +0000

Chanel: I completely agree that the teaching of ‘literature’ at school is very poor. What’s irritating to me is the one-size-fits-all nature, where you have an entire class of different abilities and tastes being forced to read a book on a schedule; if you do that, you’re bound to put off most of the class by going either too far, too slow, or reading a book that people find boring.

By: Chanel Dailey

Chanel Dailey — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:59:07 +0000

I found your article very interesting. I am more or less neutral on the issue. I think the greatest factor in the decline of reading is the rise of other media like TV and video games. (Internet is also on the rise, but it involves lots of text, though.) I suppose all the media forms have their pros and cons. The decline of general reading may be bad, but the rise of other media is pretty good. The other media probably fosters a shorter attention span in the audience, so they have less patience for reading. I think another factor, which wasn’t mentioned in the article, is English education. There is an irony. I love to read and write for leisure (I even seriously considered a writing career at one point), but I disliked sometimes even hated English class. The difference is that in my opinion the “classics” I had to read were horrible. They were boring junk that had no relevance to my life or even my daydreams. I also noticed that enjoyable books are easier to read, because my mind doesn’t wander off. I think that newer books are probably more enjoyable to read due to advancement in literature, more modern relevant themes, and greater competition weeding out the worse books. That could be a factor of the steep decline of reading in younger people. If they are bombarded by boring literature at school, it will severely cut down on their time of leisure read. I would rather read something exciting like Harry Potter and DaVinci Code than something vapid like Huckleberry Finn and Hamlet. There are probably some people that never learned to like reading, and would rather watch the movie versions of the former pair. It is quite sad. One advantage to reading is that is very easy to pace myself. I can breeze through parts I don’t care about. I can also stop and ponder about things that really pique my interest. When my pondering stops, I can pinpoint exactly where I stopped. I have seen videos where somebody just sits/stands around talking. Even if it is over a very interesting topic, the show is boring. I prefer it to be in a print medium. I guess it is because I am used for the print medium having depth while the TV medium has flash.

By: 20081231 - Adam Crowe

20081231 - Adam Crowe — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:10:26 +0000

[...] Mssv — The Long Decline of Reading "In the first ten minutes of many new games, players receive such a blizzard of rewards that they’d be forgiven for thinking they’d won the lottery, cured cancer, and completed the game. It sounds ridiculous, and sometimes it is, but this constant encouragement keeps players with the game long enough for them to get into the story and gameplay. Books are not interactive. You can’t give readers rewards for reaching page 6 (although…). The principle is the same though – you need to give readers momentum. You need to help readers along those nervous first ten minutes when they haven’t quite gotten into the flow yet, and when they’re still being battered by distractions from their TV, radio, mobile phone and computer. After those ten minutes, if they’re hooked, they’re hooked." rewards immersion literaryculturevsoralculture literacy language reading [...]

By: Le tableau suivant - Hors champ

Le tableau suivant - Hors champ — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:22:30 +0000

[...] 1 Adrian Hon soulignait récemment, dans un billet intitulé The Long Decline of Reading, les similarités entre l’écriture d’un récit et l’écriture d’un jeu vidéo. Books are [...]

By: Lesetipp: Adrian Hon über den Niedergang des Lesens « Buchnotizblog

Lesetipp: Adrian Hon über den Niedergang des Lesens « Buchnotizblog — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:24:22 +0000

[...] Lesetipp: Adrian Hon über den Niedergang des Lesens Zu den Kommentaren The Long Decline of Reading [...]

By: Wortfeld » Mehr Buchpiraten | Adrian Hon über den Niedergang des Lesens.

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:39:28 +0000

[...] Unverschämtheit — bis man Adrian Hons Überlegungen bei Mssv.net gelesen hat: Für The Long Decline of Reading hat er sich viel Zeit genommen, über Belohnungsmechanismen nachgedacht und über die Lesepausen, [...]

By: The Quick Rise of Reading | Mssv

The Quick Rise of Reading | Mssv — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:31:00 +0000

[...] mere two weeks after I wrote about The Long Decline of Reading, which drew largely on the US National Endowment of Arts’ (NEA) 2007 data, the NEA promptly [...]