I do like how reading is such a personal hobby. You can take a book and truly make it your own and there isn't one correct way to engage with a book. I am trying out tabs as a way to organize my thoughts as they're colour coded and each colour corresponds to a specific theme. Also it's fun and it makes my book look pretty.
Love RU-vid, but hate how much I watch shorts. I made it my 2024 goal to give up short form content. And naturally reading took its place. I haven't given up watching shorts, but it's drastically diminished.
Have you tried the browser extension Unhook? It allows you to remove features from youtube to make it less distracting. I disabled shorts completely so I don't even have the option of watching them. Helps a lot imo.
I have been getting back into reading recently and I wasn't really sure how to go about annotating because I didn't feel like using 4 different highlighters and trying to scribble thoughts between the margins but I have heard many times that annotating may enhance the reader's comprehension and engagement. Now I will try just underlining. Anyway, thanks for this amazing message. The world needs to hear it.
Hi, this may be happenchance however I just saw a video explaining there's no science to back up the highlighting thing, in fact the science indicates it's completely useless and a waste of time. It only helps to go back and check out the important information, but it does nothing to help you remember that information. And in that way highlighting, marking, underlining or whatever has the same effect anyway.
Hey. I know this comment is old buy to avoid having multiple pens you can use one of those 4-in-1 colour clicker pens. Muji does one thats not as big and chunky as the pens with 10 colours that are targeted at kids.
Yes ... as a teenager, I sometimes spent 3 days kind of disconnected, in a bubble of a book that took me out from reality ...Such an amazing thing! But now, having family and duties, it just can't really happen anymore. But I really miss it! I need to get back loving to read, though ... It was such a source of magic and joy. In my country (Estonia), every spring a teacher gave us a summer reading list with 20-30 books, first 9 years. Everyone was so annoyed, but I loved it, because I realized really eraly on, that these books are much less random that I pick. I was such a book-lover. I was "a client" in 3 different libraries. I read during walking the streets and during classes, holding a book under the table and pretending to do school tasks :D Fun times!
You appear so thoughtful as you speak. Thank you for the encouragement! I am attempting to regain this habit and the ability to memorize things well. Wish me luck!
Read what you love until you love to read. Great advice. All the Light We Cannot See > Cloud Cuckoo Land > All Quiet On the Western Front > East of Eden > The Grapes of Wrath > Shogun Pt. 1 (meh) Some non-fiction mixed in there too. Loving The Stand and looking forward to Infinite Jest.
I'm 19 and in my freshman year of undergrad right now. This video popped up in my recommended just as I've been trying to unlock the ability to sit down and read for my own enjoyment/fulfillment. Thank you for posting, and great words really.
I started reading last year as a 19 year old Freshman and have read most of what’s on that shelf. I want to learn Russian to tackle Anna Karenina tho so that won’t be read for a while. It’s really about making it a habit. Set aside even just 20 min a day to deep read and you will start to find yourself making this reading shit a fulfilling and satisfying hobby. As a math major it’s nice to find time and exercise that other part of the brain, it’s helped me a ton as a person.
I'm glad I found your channel. Spot on. I went many years without reading for pleasure until recently. I watched Station Eleven, a great show, found out shortly after it's an adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel's novel. I read it and had a great experience because I just wanted to enjoy every word. I savored moments that meant something to me through sitting and contemplating over a cup of coffee or underlining the passage, as you mentioned. I took time to imagine my world through the blueprint the author provides. It takes extra patience, but spending time really imagining architecture, atmosphere, colors of clothes, rings. Shoot, it's our world, right? All the little details like that add up for me in such a way that it's as if I've been watching movies rather than reading books.
Cool video! I agree with your thoughts on overstimulation and how reading can be very rewarding. I started my reading journey earlier this year by picking up Steinbeck's East of Eden which I fell in love with, I can't wait to reread it. Then I made my way to authors like Thomas Hardy, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Joyce, Hemingway, and realised how many great books are out there for us to read. Please continue making videos, I'd love to know more about your favourite works :)
Great messages! Personally working on reading slower. When I started reading again I started with War and Peace, because like you, I wanted to have read it It’s also became one of my favorite books). I did the Goodreads challenges for the past two years as a way to build to habit of reading but I have switched over to a daily habit tracking for reading rather than counting how many books/pages I read
great video man, reading has become one of the most enjoyable aspects of my life throughout the course of 2023. so many books i’m excited to get to in the future
Really great mindset to have that I wish I had understood when I was younger. Reading can be fun. It is a form of entertainment, after all. Something to keep in mind is to chose what interests you, and not just because you want to get it over with.
Thanks. This is a sincere endorsement of what is good about reading. Most encouraging. Active, thoughtful reading adds quality to our lives and definitely should never be eclipsed by other media because we simply forgot how to and why it was important. Greetings from Sydney.
Thank you. Happy I found you. I have adhd and caught myself having a really hard time focusing on my books, cause I know it's from scrolling and watching all kinds of videos for way way too long. My doctors told me that this would happen to me years ago, and guess what, they were completely right❤
Excellent advice. I love the 'read what you love till you love what you read' thing. I did try a Goodreads challenge once and you are absolutely right, you end up reading not for getting immersed into your own imagination as you picture the words in your mind, but as a race. How quickly can I get through this before I start another book. NOT good! Oh, and Stephen King is MacDonalds of books? Oh no! I LOVE his books. And The Stand has to be my favourite.
Thanks for sharing! I think our brains have changed due to the Internet and social media. It's harder to concentrate on a book. Stephen Krashen, in his work on reading, said something similar. He stressed reading for pleasure and because you want to. Doing so led to deepening your vocabulary so you'll eventually go onto something more elevated but you are always guided by reading what you enjoy.
Great to see someone advocating for reading. Personally, I've really struggled to get into those classics that you have there, especially the Russians. I just find them boring. But I do enjoy reading although now I am listening to audiobooks more than anything else.
Thanks for the good video and I agree with your points. Personally I keep a modest reading challenge of two books a month only as a way to motivate myself to read every day; I rarely devour a book in a day and if I do it's usually because it's so good I can't put it down. For people with reading goals of 50+ books I do also think it may apply though.
Honestly I dont watch social media. Even when it comes to youtube short I barely watch them. Its the Video games that I have that I need to play My steam library is huge along with other video game outlets but most importantly as to why I dont read a lot is because I dont have time. I work 6 days a week. I read a little and when I read I just to cram in enough to finish the book within 2 3 days give or take. Honesty this year I read 9 books and last year I read 4 books so I am proud of myself for reading that much in a short amount of time. They are not thick books but like around 200 pages. Thought I should point that out.
The one on the left side of the shelf is the Pevear and Volkhonsky translation. The one in the middle is the Constance Garnett. Same with the one on the right which is the modern library version
Two are different translations. I read the Constance Garnett twice and then wanted to check out the Anthony Briggs translation for my third read. One was just a cool vintage edition I found for cheap in a used book store I couldn’t pass up.
As someone who's never reread a book in my life before and is currently rereading Lord of the Rings ~6 years after I did originally: I'm picking up on a lot of details I missed the first time around and knowing where the plot is going allows me to focus more on the prose itself and the atmosphere/themes/worldbuilding underneath the story. I imagine it's similar for other stories as well. I used to think that rereading seemed like a waste of time but honestly I'm digesting such different parts of the book this time around that I can foresee myself doing this more often in the future.
