[sho_hn]

I think it's important to be a bit careful in "ranking" entertainment activities in the absolute, rather than purely by personal enjoyment. The knowledge/information retention rate from most light reading (i.e. without taking notes, researching context, re-reading, etc.) is surprisingly low, really, and it's better not to drink one's own kool-aid in that regard - no, the quantity of books read in a year doesn't neatly equate to understanding, just to, presumably, a lot of good fun.

"I spend my time doing better things than you do" risks coming across as arrogant, rather dissuades others from reading more, and also closes one's own mind to considering the strengths and depth of other types of media.

That said, I enjoy reading as much as you do. I am extremely grateful to my parents for encouraging the habit - I think reading books taught me as a young child to empathize with others around me, by letting me into the internal thought-worlds of their characters and getting me used to inhabiting other viewpoints. In that sense I think reading can also be very formative for comm skills during a certain time of life.

[nontrivialRZ]

This is incredibly well put, and it reminds me to read on a more active basis.

I have two different "modes" when reading - 1) for novels and light matsrial, which is just casual reading, 2) for material that warrants study, typically using a pen to underline critical information and write thoughts in the margins.

You seem to suggest that casual reading, while I'm sure shares some spillover benefit, should not be mis-characterized as active study and is closer to entertainment. Do you make a conscious effort to read most things actively?

[sho_hn]

> You seem to suggest that casual reading, while I'm sure shares some spillover benefit, should not be mis-characterized as active study and is closer to entertainment. Do you make a conscious effort to read most things actively?

For the most part, no. I'm OK with a lot of the reading I do being purely for entertainment (yes, even the non-fiction books). To some extent the primary spillover benefit is that even years later, I will vaguely recall that I encountered a concept before and where - so when I need the details, I just go look them up again.

I don't think that reading for entertainment only is such a bad thing. Ok, so I just let a popsci book on $subject wash over me and in a year nearly all of it will be gone from my mind again - but while reading I felt immense joy at the new understanding and information. It positively reinforces curiosity and knowledge-seeking as an activity and and makes me happier. That does help with life.

With a number of books what I do is highlight references to names/concepts/ideas I feel are under-explained or worth some more research on, and then rather than googling them immediately, I finish the book first and then make some time to work through my list of highlights afterwards. It's tedious, but it also effectively forces me to skim through the book and the context of the highlights again. That (slightly) improves my recall later on, but it also often makes me realize the super-structure of the book much more (i.e. how was the author building up their argument over the length of the book, why did they chose to order things in the way they did perhaps, etc.)

[Bakary]

The more important distinction is not to treat it as if the activity itself has magical properties that automatically translate into a better life in some form.

Ask yourself what you want to read and what you want to get out of that.

If you read casually but don't actually enjoy the activity beyond the satisfaction that you are reading and that this is a Good Thing, there's no point. If you underline passages and study but nothing really comes out of that study over time, there's no point either assuming it is not an activity you inherently enjoy for its own sake.

That's why just having a vague goal of 'reading more' is a bit of a trap

[mark_l_watson]

I was actually saying that everyone gets to choose how they spend time.

Although I don't usually do this very much for for fun fiction, I otherwise select/hilite text that I think is important while I am reading. When I think of a previously read book, it is quick to open just the hilites - for me this is a great trigger for my memory (I am almost 70, so this helps!)

re: joy of reading: this really hit home when my grandchildren were really young, especially the transition from my doing all the reading to them taking over reading.