Hey: Owning up to a possible mistake? In 2023??? That. Takes. Balls. Good for you, man! I love it. I think everyone reads with some level of unconscious bias and some type of desire/expectation. Ideally we remain as open as we can. You are extremely human 😎
"In yesterday’s post, On Reading, I bashed readers who conceive notions and expectations before opening a book." I thought you wrote something to the effect that if people want to, it's up to them. It didn't strike me as hypocritical. Still, we are all hypocrites in one way or another. I think sometimes going into a book, especially a non-fiction one, with oreconceived ideas is actually useful. (See https://marytabor.substack.com/p/guest-post-by-terry-freedman)
Glad to see you posting this. You sounded elitist, telling 'the general public' why the way they read is wrong. We don't need that sort of thing. We need to encourage people to embrace literacy and reading for whatever reason they see fit.
I believe you lost your thesis in yesterday's post. Your complaint at the beginning focuses on poor reviewing and then it ends with gripes directed at Emotional Readers / Escapist Reading, but the two are not the same. Not all books are written with the same audiences in mind and a good reader is aware of this. It strikes me that what irritated you was that the reviewers were approaching all books in the same manner rather than being critical reviewers: to whom is the book being written? what is the purpose of the book? To presume that fiction = emotional / escapists narrative is poor reading practice because it inappropriately levels all fiction texts. I think your ending may have been a cry for reviewers to acknowledge that not all fiction texts are written to provide emotional / escapist venues. Your statement that you search for philosophy in a book (it seemed to me) was a means of throwing down the gauntlet to reviewers who seem to presume that every reader reads books in the same way while at the time treating all fiction as if it being written for the same audiences / purposes.
An Apology
Hey: Owning up to a possible mistake? In 2023??? That. Takes. Balls. Good for you, man! I love it. I think everyone reads with some level of unconscious bias and some type of desire/expectation. Ideally we remain as open as we can. You are extremely human 😎
I am a hypocrite too.
"In yesterday’s post, On Reading, I bashed readers who conceive notions and expectations before opening a book." I thought you wrote something to the effect that if people want to, it's up to them. It didn't strike me as hypocritical. Still, we are all hypocrites in one way or another. I think sometimes going into a book, especially a non-fiction one, with oreconceived ideas is actually useful. (See https://marytabor.substack.com/p/guest-post-by-terry-freedman)
Did an AI bot actually create your illustration? It just looks like a crappy old cartoon with no caption for a punchline.
Glad to see you posting this. You sounded elitist, telling 'the general public' why the way they read is wrong. We don't need that sort of thing. We need to encourage people to embrace literacy and reading for whatever reason they see fit.
I believe you lost your thesis in yesterday's post. Your complaint at the beginning focuses on poor reviewing and then it ends with gripes directed at Emotional Readers / Escapist Reading, but the two are not the same. Not all books are written with the same audiences in mind and a good reader is aware of this. It strikes me that what irritated you was that the reviewers were approaching all books in the same manner rather than being critical reviewers: to whom is the book being written? what is the purpose of the book? To presume that fiction = emotional / escapists narrative is poor reading practice because it inappropriately levels all fiction texts. I think your ending may have been a cry for reviewers to acknowledge that not all fiction texts are written to provide emotional / escapist venues. Your statement that you search for philosophy in a book (it seemed to me) was a means of throwing down the gauntlet to reviewers who seem to presume that every reader reads books in the same way while at the time treating all fiction as if it being written for the same audiences / purposes.