The Death, and Life, of Reading Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (2016)

Re:The Death, and Life, of Reading Have Been Greatly Exagger... by eksemplar on Wednesday August 01, 2018 @12:04AM (#17659559)

I’ll assume that you haven’t read a whole lot of lovecraft, because he really does the reader no favors, using references to classic mythology to describe whole sets of scenery and moods. Making it pretty much impossible to read quite a few of the stories if you’re unfamiliar with some obscure Greek myth.

I have read Knuth though them being part of the CS curriculum, back when I took my degree. They are very revered too, and reasonable so, because they are hard to fault. I personally think they are a needlessly waste of your time though. There are much more approachable books, that’ll teach you the same content in a much friendlier way.

I don’t think we’ll agree though. Especially if you hold harder programming books in higher regard than harder fiction. It took me significantly more effort to go through Dostoyevsky than it did me to go through Knuth, for instance.

And you still haven’t pointed out who exactly the numbers are a useless metric. If book sales aren’t down, isn’t it fair to say, that people are still buying books?

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Re:The Death, and Life, of Reading Have Been Greatly Exagger... by watwut on Wednesday August 01, 2018 @01:19AM (#17659906)

I just ignored those parts. When I read for pleasure, I happily not understand references like that and enjoy the rest. It is not like Lovercraft story mattered for literally anything, I rarely care about scenery anyway and Greek references even less. So, it is fine for me to skim those parts.

There are differently difficult books and trying to pretend that goosebump has anything to do with Dostoyevsky or whatever is odd. As for waste of time, if Knuth is waste of time, so are there adventures. They are literally meant for that.

I liked Dostoyevsky, dunno why that book I read would be difficult to read book. Maybe you read different book or worst translation.

I don't think original comments in thread we both joined had anything to do with sales.

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