11 is a lot of hours, but notice that one component of that time-spending is reading. Can we get a pat on the head for being big readers?
Or is reading on an electronic device just one more way of staring at a screen, like watching TV? If you read a book, what a good boy/girl you are!
But if you read on a computer, you're interacting with media.
(The painting of the girl reading is from 1871, by Johann Georg Meyer.)
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43 comments:
Heaven help us if the Americans start coordinating!
If you're not on FB, Twitter, some porno site, or playing solitaire, it must be useful to some extent, no?
I think production of media stacks up as about 100 times as important as mere consumption. So thanks to everyone, particularly Althouse, for the posts and photos.
Another day another Trump Rally. In the meantime the whole world awaits new drops from Q and tweets from Trump,from sea to shining sea. And Kindle and Audible roll on.
The only media I watch is the local weather in the Morning before work, and the evening local weather to plan for work tomorrow.
Hell, I can spend that on a Saturday NYT puzzle.
She's not sticking to her knitting.
The painting is from the Biedermeier School. Painters of that sort - a group of painters who were educated in Central Europe in the early 19th century, full of hope in their hearts - tried to show people at their best - either in groups of friends, treating each other with respect, or in family groups, exemplifying the love we should all feel for siblings, parents, children, grandparents, et cetera, or alone, thinking kind thoughts.
When I was a kid in the 70s I knew a lot about art but I had almost no cash. One day traipsing around Manhattan I saw a great painting by a French painter on sale for 750 bucks (Bouguerau, not exactly a Biedermeier type painter, but close). I had, grand total, about 20 bucks to my name: if I had a thousand bucks to spend I would have bought the painting.
10 years later Sylvester Stallone, of all people, bought that painting for about 50k and resold it, much later, for around a million. You can look it up, as Casey Stengel used to say.
A painter of the Biedermeier school would refuse to subscribe to HBO or Netflix, by the way. They had ideals.
I suspect they are padding their numbers. For certain, the information is self-serving to Nielsen and their customers.
Who doesn't sit down and read Ostrich Fashion Monthly from cover to cover?
what a good boy/girl you are!
Which restroom do we use?
Thank you S Cooper for the background. An art movement intent on providing a positive vibe. I learnt something of note today.
I like the flowers and bird in the window.
I seem to remember something from the old days when there were paper straws but no social media. Something about folding the straw along its length and then? I think we also at other times tore the top of the package the straw came in and then we .. what ... blew the rest of the paper? at Henry A....? I seem to see desks but how could I be blowing paper in school? And I seem to remember something we did with books, something to do with writing on the outside edges while the book was open on a slant. I think there were (what I now know were hurtful and sexist) comments on Henry A...'s book which could not be seen unless the book was furtively turned to be at the correct slant? which is why paper was soaring through the air at him? The sixth grade had a poor teacher and was all coordinated inauthentic behavior, I think, but no one could take it down or record it and initiate legal action. Paper decentralizes and maybe we're going back. Maybe using a paper in small circle of friends will get to be like having a simple happy, vacation house in the mountains or by the sea. Escape from The GAAF (Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook) will be like escaping the city. Maybe we've seen the first straw in the wind.
Odd--I probably read books two or three hours a day---usually get at least one, frequently two and sometimwes three books in week. The more serious books get read in hard copy; the sort of mindless recreational reading gets done on Kindle. Probably anothe three hours a day on the Internet--and maybe 20 minutes if that watching national TV news; drama shows--don't watch 'em. NFL and college football yes. I'd say those two are the bulk of my TV watching in a year.
Ah well I also read the WSJ and the Los Angeles Times every day. Although most days it's easy to sskim the Times. They don't like Trump, and they will tell you that on every page in every section of the paper. Business, sports, California, the arts, national and international news---anti Trump screeds everywhere.
That is a charming painting. It made my (otherwise awful) day.
When I read in bed, I read on a Kindle which has 174 books on it.
When I read on the back patio or in the living room, I read a hardcover book. Once in a while, trade paperback like the biography of William Donovan I'm reading there.
In the car, it is an audio book. I read / listened to, Max Boot's very good biography of Edward Lansdale.
Can we get a pat on the head for being big readers?
Not if your task was to finish knitting that sweater before winter comes.
Before one applauds their particular choice of medium or whathaveyou, I'd love to be able to access the Nielson site's methodology / sample size, etc w/out having to make an account. This might be just as esplosive as the Ashley Madison Business of a few years back.
That’s a great photo of a painting, Althouse. Love the expression on her face. Timeless.
The internet has completely destroyed my ability to watch TV news channels. It all seems so dull, slow, and padded out.
With all the same news being repeated over and over again. And the TV talking heads seem so dull and stupid.
Its amazing that 30 years ago, we had to wait for the "Evening News" or "Nightline" to tell us what was going on.
Now that my daughter has gone to college, the TV is almost always off.
500 Channels and nothing worth watching!
Wait, wait. That girl is Althouse, herself . You can tell from the shoes. Meade must be a painter too.
Tank and Mrs. Tank are WAY below average Way.
We are constantly amazed at how so many of our friends seem to always have the TV on in the background. And so much of it is aggressively annoying. Ewwww.
Never heard of Meyer.
I like that painting.
It's visceral.
How much would it cost I wonder.
Almost spent $9.000 for a painting by Wooster Scott once. Probably not a good investment, but I did like that painting, and it was so much more "alive" than any of the prints. I could not bring myself to spend that amount.
YouTube.
More than 500 channels.
Some of them good.
I'd love to be able to access the Nielson site's methodology / sample size, etc w/out having to make an account.
I wondered about that, too.
Some writers loosely associated with the Biedermeyer school include Chateaubriand (fairly low IQ but with a passion for verbal rhetoric), Christina Rossetti (my favorite poet, God bless her heart), Sigrid Undset, Mikhail Bulgakov (the triumph of Good over Evil, even if the author was slightly confused), Peguy and Bernanos, and TS Eliot in the better lines of his Four Quartets.
There is not a single "Comparative Literature" professor on the face of the earth who can come up with a better list. No, Walt Whitman and Hart Crane, despite their verbal talents, did not understand the world they lived in.
Althouse, your questioning comment on reading mirrored my thoughts.
rcocean said "500 Channels and nothing worth watching!". I seem to remember Springsteen sang that back in the 80's. Don't like his music enough to research what song.
There’s something about the Kindle logo startup screen which depicts a boy sitting under a tree reading a book that really, really bugs me. I know what they’re attempting to do: promote reading for boys. And, as a former high school English teacher and a male who’s a huge reader, I certainly recognize the value in that.
But the image disgusts me. Get off your ass, kid, and hit rocks with a baseball bat, or shoot hoops, or ride your bike. Don’t sit under a tree like an old man taking a break in his sojourn into the valley of death, reading a damn book.
Chateaubriand (fairly low IQ but with a passion for verbal rhetoric)
He was given the ironic sobriquet "Where's the beef?"
Springsteen's song is "57 Channels and nothing on."
Yes,
I agree there is a weird bias out there regarding reading on electronica vs papyrus.
Strange..since you'd think it would be celebrated vs the far more passive media of video.
Then there's the "hit rocks with a bat"=manliness shiite.
(manliness and enlightenment)
Who knew they had booklights in 1871?
Books
M Jordan - we are all going to live forever, and we are all unpleasant to look at, most of the time, in this world.
Fortunately, many of us are brave and have saved the lives of little people. even those of us who like to read books, and fortunately there is a better world in our future!
Maybe you are not a hero, M. Jordan, while Lots of people who read books under trees are..
Stolen Valor, M Jordan, if one says one is a hero and one says they never are. Some of them are, my poor little friend who is so easily disgusted!
Funny how some of the same people that tell me reading anything is good and to be celebrated scoff at my Kindle and on-line reading.
-sw
I have an app on my tablet that will scroll an ebook. So I can crochet (I suck at knitting) and not have to stop and turn the page.
Wrote down the books I read in July. It was only 15 books, but the page total was 5,877 pages. So at 100 pages an hour it was 59 hours, or almost 2 hours a day. That does not count all the on-line reading, newspaper, cereal box top, or random words read.
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