I like the idea of being well read but I don't like reading that much.
I know this makes me a pseud but I don't want to be one. How to fix this?
inb4 just open books and read.
It's not easy. My attention span is fried, I can't focus for long.
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>Seroius replies only
You spelled serious wrong.
well this just exposes me
I think this still is in line with literature.
YOU THINK ERRONEOUSLY.
WE ARE NOT PSYCHOTHERAPISTS.
OP, never go on /adv/, it is the worst board on IQfy. It will actually frick you up inside.
in my experience the non-pseud, sincere reading enjoyers are typically people who got into it as kids. your parents are supposed to ease you into reading at a young age (ideally before school makes you do it) and if they didn't you're probably screwed. when you try to "become a reader" as an adult your logic is all screwed up: you're not reading to read, you're reading because the kind of guy you want to be WOULD BE reading, which both ensures you won't enjoy it (because you made it into a chore) and paradoxically only makes you more different from the guy you want to be. it's never a good idea to pursue other people's dreams. a whole new level of embarrassment emerges when people like that try to be writers.
So, It's joever.
Thankfully I didn't follow cum genius advice.
You should figure out why you want to be "well read", as opposed to being something else. If you force yourself to read when you don't want to you can probably get there (although you will be miserable and mogged by those who enjoy it, your work is their play). Reading lots of litrichah doesn't have many ancillary benefits, so apart from being arguably "well read" you won't gain much.
I expect you desire mastery of some sort, and you've fixated on reading as a special example of this, although it is ill suited to you. (Being able to name drop and quote from books is a common movie trope to signify depth of character etc, because screenwriters are wordcels writing self insert heroes.) Find a better one, one that doesn't feel like a chore. There are many, and most of them pay better.
>you're not reading to read, you're reading because the kind of guy you want to be WOULD BE reading, which both ensures you won't enjoy it (because you made it into a chore) and paradoxically only makes you more different from the guy you want to be
This happens to everyone. I sincerely like reading, but my shelves are full of "aspirational" purchases, books I didn't so much want to read as wanted to be the sort of person (I imagined) would read this book. Mostly they look as new as the day I bought them.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, many of my favorite books were bought this way, and it turned out that I actually enjoyed reading them.
This guy
is right. But it's not quite as bleak as he suggests.
Almost no-one is educated properly these days, and people read far less. So when you arrive at adulthood and try to read books (especially old books) written for adults, you probably aren't as good at reading as the authors assume, because you haven't read a tenth of what they assume you've read. And I don't mean, "Tolstoy assumes you've read Saint Augustine". I mean, "Tolstoy assumes you've read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Rumpelstiltskin and Tales Of The Greek Heroes and The Wind in the Willows and King Solomon's Mines and Tom Sawyer and On Her Majesty's Secret Service."
I think a lot of people on IQfy have had this experience:
>Arrive at age 20
>"Shit, I'm completely uncultured"
>"Public schools have wasted my youth"
>rage dot exe
>"Right, better fix this"
>Pick up acknowledged classic
>"Damn, this is really no fun."
This is like sitting down at the piano one day, never having seen a piano before, and trying to play the Hammerklavier. You can't go from nought to sixty in zero seconds.
It's never worth reading any fiction that you find a slog. (Philosophy is a bit different, maybe, but not that different.) Any novel or play or poem, whatever else it's meant to be, is meant to be an aesthetic experience. If you don't enjoy it, you're wasting your time. You're like a deaf man at a concert. Learn to hear first. Read the most difficult books you enjoy.
>Read the most difficult books you enjoy.
Thanks for your long post. I'm having trouble finding books that I like. It's obviously because I haven't read much. I guess I'll just push through about 10-20 books to find out what I like.
>I'm having trouble finding books that I like.
Don't be ashamed to read books originally aimed at children and teenagers. Most really good children's books are still satisfying to read as an adult. (I'm certainly going to read Watership Down for the fourth time rather than Sally Rooney for the first.)
And many good adult books are not heavy going. (Raymond Carver, say.)
It's easy to make the mistake of thinking that "good" correlates 100% with "difficult". (It's especially easy on IQfy. Most people here, if asked for examples of "good prose", tend to pick the densest, heaviest stuff they can, presumably because they want to appear high-IQ.) Good does correlate with difficult, but not 100%. The important thing, as Schopenhauer says, is:
1) Read good books.
2) Do not read bad books.
That doesn't mean you can't read easy books. There are bad easy books, good easy books, bad difficult books and good difficult books.
You can catch up; it's not impossible. Just don't let IQfy intimidate you into tormenting yourself with doorstoppers.
There's no hope for you, you're doomed. Accept your place as a normie and prepare to wagecuck-tv-wagecuck-vidya-wagecuck-pornography until death.
stay off the internet and away from your phone then try again in a month
I think someone recommended me this book 5 years ago when I expressed a similar problem. Good luck.
I used to read a lot as a kid. Even as a teenager too actually... Not philosophical treasties to be fair or classics that much, but you know Stephen King and stuff. But I feel like I stopped around when I went to college. I wonder what happened...
I guess come to think of it I started reading more manga and visual novels around that time. The occasional light novel series too, which I guess is still a book. Maybe if you include those 3, I don't actually read with all that less frequency than I did in the past. In fact I am sure I read with more frequency. I do still get through the occasional real book though. But many I start and don't really finish.
>My attention span is fried. I can't focus for long.
There are two possibilities:
1. You have ADHD.
2. You're neurotypical, but so overstimulated that your brain simply isn't used to focusing any more
If it's the former, then no-one here can help you. You need to consult a medical professional.
If it's the latter, then read picrel. It's genuinely really good. (It does that obnoxious thing a lot of self-help books do, where it assumes that the reader is either a Uni Student with good prospects, or a middle-aged office-worker, with a decent salary, so that if you're 28, and stuck in a go-nowhere job at a petrol station, then about a third of the advice doesn't apply to you, and another third does, but is communicated very badly, so you wouldn't know how to make it fit your life, specifically, but as a guide to rebuilding a fricked attention span, it's the best I've come across.)
If you're wondering how you're supposed to read a book, about getting back the focus to read a book: Find the audiobook version, read a few pages at a time, just for frick's sake, get the advice in your head, digest it, and embrace it.
As for getting better at reading, specifically: Practice. If you can't focus on one book specifically, get two, and switch any time you find your eyes glazing over. You'll eventually find that the number of sentences/paragraphs/pages you go through, before needing to switch keeps increasing with time.
Good luck Anon!
i have a similar problem but its not attention based. i have no problem focusing. its just that after i read i feel like i got nothing out of it. not even really entertainment. i havent found a single author or book that i actually get into and passionate about.
Listen to the audio version WHILE reading. Not joking, try it