this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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IDK why reading books is considered such a worthy activity per se, and nobody ever analyses what people read.
If we are going to be honest, most books are mere entertainment and there are also a lot of titles that actually make the reader a worse human being (I am thinking of books about conspiracies, neo-far-right manifestos, and similar waste of paper).
I think you make some interesting points... Content is important.
Although I think there's such a desperation to get people into the reading habit that anything is considered good enough.
Remember the Harry Potter book when they first came out. I seem to remember a lot of chat about how those books were low effort, but that they encouraged a lot of life-long readers.
I know that here, in the UK, our education system tends to make people resent reading. Furthermore it instills some awful habits... Like feeling you have to finish a book even if you aren't enjoying it (which usually means you stop reading altogether).
Anyway. That's a long way of saying I think you are right.
Here too (Italy) the education system makes a pretty terrible job at teaching the joys of reading (or those of music, maths, and... pretty much anything to be honest).
Maybe that's why people love soccer so much... because they have not been properly taught to like other things?
I've been told by people who live in the US (California, IDK if it's the same elsewhere) that kids have reading periods at school where the class is silent and each kid sits by their own and reads whatever book they please.
It made me chuckle at first, but then I started wondering if that could work better than assigning books to read at home and report on like they do here.