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How often do you read books?


nightsedge561

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A strange question, but a question I became suddenly curious about.

A lot of times with other large fandoms I see large video essays dedicated to examining parts of their fandom consistently, yet in touhou fandom in the west, that area seems to be lacking. I don't believe I am entirely qualified to fill that role, and it could always be because we simply lack fans in the west, but as far as I know there are as many as around 100k-200k. I was reading a study on why people struggle to write essays in general, and it stated that one of the bigger reasons is that people read actual books less nowadays. We lack finding things to give us strong opinions, and have difficulty with sentence structure. 

This leads back to my question, as I'm curious to see if it holds any water. How many here read books? (not counting manga or comics)

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I usually read for about 30 minutes before bed. I used to read a decent amount when I was a kid, but then I stopped for a period of time only to pick the habit up again. As for the study on how people who read less have trouble writing, I might just be an outlier. I've always struggled when it comes to writing and I constantly rewrite sections of text, even with simple posts like this. 

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I am an avid reader, and have been since my early teens!

Books I am currently reading:
Epistle to the Ephesians* by Paul the Apostle
Mother Teresa: An Authorized Biography by Kathryn Spink
Faith has its Reasons by Kenneth D. Boa & Robert M. Bowman, Jr.
Ben Hur by Lew Wallace
The Fellowship of the Ring* by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Second Confession* by Rex Stout
North, Or be Eaten! by Andrew Peterson
Seven Arrows by Matt Rogers & Donny Mathis
Gently and Lowly by Dane Ortlund

Books I love and would recommend:
How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
The Hidden Hand by E.D.E.N. Southworth
The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas
That Printer of Udel's by Harold Bell Wright
Gods, Graves and Scholars by C.W. Ceram
The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer
The Gospel of John by John the Disciple
The Acts of the Apostles by Luke the Physician
The Epistle to the Romans by Paul the Apostle

To the proposed theory, reading is one of the most effective ways of growing your vocabulary, which has been speculated to diversify cognitive processing. Additionally, fiction can help develop imagination, while non-fiction can help develop understanding, but both are somewhat dependent upon the level of engagement. Of the mediums of media, books (reading) are the most likely to be mentally engaged with, whereas with film and video games it tends to be less common (distinguished from emotional engagement). I speculate this to be a consequence of the cognitive demand placed upon the person; film does most of the work of comprehension for you (especially modern day film), while books leave much of the work of comprehension to the reader. Put another way, more effort is required of the reader than the viewer, and as with any skill, practice assists with development.

Edited by Ken Hisuag
*re-reads
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2 hours ago, Ken Hisuag said:

 

To the proposed theory, reading is one of the most effective ways of growing your vocabulary, which has been speculated to diversify cognitive processing. Additionally, fiction can help develop imagination, while non-fiction can help develop understanding, but both are somewhat dependent upon the level of engagement. Of the mediums of media, books (reading) are the most likely to be mentally engaged with, whereas with film and video games it tends to be less common (distinguished from emotional engagement). I speculate this to be a consequence of the cognitive demand placed upon the person; film does most of the work of comprehension for you (especially modern day film), while books leave much of the work of comprehension to the reader. Put another way, more effort is required of the reader than the viewer, and as with any skill, practice assists with development.

I see, thats probably why i feel dumb all the time haha. I used to read a good amount, you may be convincing me to get back into it. Are you a christian as well? Most of the biblical ones I have read already too. also how are you reading like 7 books at once, jeez

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These days the term "Christian" gets thrown around a lot, to the point that hardly anyone knows what it means anymore (Acts 11:26, literally translated as "disciples of Christ", or "dedicated followers of Christ"). I refer to myself as a believer of the Bible, because that establishes to others my understood standard for discerning truth. I hope I am and strive to be a Christian, but it remains for others to see Christ in my behavior and assertions. :)

To be fair, I'm only reading two of those books on my own. The others are books I'm reading to other people, but I figure it still counts (technically the last two are being read to me).

Edited by Ken Hisuag
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15 hours ago, Darksymphony777 said:

i mostly read fanfiction

same honestly, im far too obsessed with these characters haha. last really good one i read was "rise of the evening star", one written back in 2013 on maidens of the kaleidescope forum. its very good, detailing an oc villain who doesnt follow spell card rules. the quality of the villain itself is debatable, but they did a good job making a villain who is op but can still fail, and man is it satisfying whenever the protagonists get a good hit in against her. i reccomend.

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OK so returning to this thread after my somewhat memey response I feel like I actually ought to say something more intellectual since it's a really interesting topic. However, I'm having trouble formulating my response, so I think I'll have to come back to it later. But I have loads of different things I'd like to cover that I'm not sure how to link together concisely into one post - tried writing it earlier and it turned into a post about religion instead.

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7 hours ago, nightsedge561 said:

same honestly, im far too obsessed with these characters haha. last really good one i read was "rise of the evening star", one written back in 2013 on maidens of the kaleidescope forum. its very good, detailing an oc villain who doesnt follow spell card rules. the quality of the villain itself is debatable, but they did a good job making a villain who is op but can still fail, and man is it satisfying whenever the protagonists get a good hit in against her. i reccomend.

i've read a few touhou fanfics, mostly loved being meiling, would recommend for all the fans of our favorite gatekeeper. or marshmallow loving fairies

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I used to read a lot as a child. Back then, I feel like I  had a greater drive to do it, which started to get lost during high school though. I used to love reading Jules Verne (consuming as many of his volumes as I could), then probably one of my greatest achievements in terms of reading was going through Lord of the Rings in just 2 weeks. As I got into high school though, the passion for literature started to fade out, as we were getting dug into unlikeable mandatory reads. At least i still had the specialized history stuff...

Getting into college, I pretty much ended up reading more material in a week than I read in years before. Might have still been mandatory readings, but they were more interesting. I started to slowly get back a little bit of my old interest for reading fictional literature, even if that started through visual novels. First, this little thing...

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...then, as I got into Touhou, I ended up reading the first 4 volumes of Forbidden Scrollery (and intend to complete the collection until the end of this year). It just makes you feel as if you missed a lot of stuff by not having read until now. 

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3 hours ago, CountVonNumenor said:

I used to read a lot as a child. Back then, I feel like I  had a greater drive to do it, which started to get lost during high school though. I used to love reading Jules Verne (consuming as many of his volumes as I could), then probably one of my greatest achievements in terms of reading was going through Lord of the Rings in just 2 weeks. As I got into high school though, the passion for literature started to fade out, as we were getting dug into unlikeable mandatory reads. At least i still had the specialized history stuff...

Getting into college, I pretty much ended up reading more material in a week than I read in years before. Might have still been mandatory readings, but they were more interesting. I started to slowly get back a little bit of my old interest for reading fictional literature, even if that started through visual novels. First, this little thing...

 

...then, as I got into Touhou, I ended up reading the first 4 volumes of Forbidden Scrollery (and intend to complete the collection until the end of this year). It just makes you feel as if you missed a lot of stuff by not having read until now. 

 

I was also in a phase where I read a lot of visual novels. have a few fictional books i wanted to try seeing them referenced in other stuff (and then there were none, salems lot).

How is forbidden scrollery later on? It didnt hook me too much in the first 3 chapters, but i want to keep going.

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Comics, manga and other forms of image-assisted reading are something of a transitional medium. The visual assistance means a slightly less cognitively demanding experience, but still more than a film or stage play. I tend to appreciate them more for the showcase of artistic skill, but otherwise they have the same balance of merits as any other medium, mainly a tradeoff between mental engagement and emotional immersion, and again dependent upon the investment/effort of the one engaging. I'm not sure exactly where audio dramas fit in; certainly between film and visual novels, but on which side of stage plays?

Fanfiction is a fascinating subject. In theory, it should be equal to fiction books as a written medium; however, it tends to exhibit its own unique pros and cons. For example: private online publications are not constrained by production considerations, and may be published as short or as long as the author desires. However, they also seldom have the benefit of a professional filter, meaning the quantity is staggeringly vast and the quality ranges from unintelligible gibberish to classically styled epics. Wading through the moors in search of treasures is rarely worth the effort (I speak, as usual, in a comparative sense), but that isn't to say it's never worth it.

I'm not sure if I would "recommend" these titles, as they all cover more complex themes with results I don't always agree with. Nonetheless, they are some of my favorite fanfictions.

Sever and Shatter by "hoopdedoop" (Touhou Project): Likely the best Touhou fanfiction I've come across, taking a few select characters and putting them in a situation where their deeper motivations and personalities can be displayed more powerfully.

Stage Beetles and Broken Legs by "Aryashi" & "relationshipcrimes" (Hollow Knight): The trend in all of these is the focus on character development through events, as opposed to character reactions to events.

Yesterday Upon the Stair by "PitViperOfDoom" (BnHA): Despite certain themes that I don't personally appreciate, this is largely the missed potential of the BnHA universe realized, albeit with an alternative premise.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild by "The Zed of Ages" (LoZ:BotW): One of these days, I may have the opportunity to discuss the nuances of adaptation. Until then, this serves as an example of what it means to properly adapt a video game into a novel.

The Sword and His Flowers by "Freya Thorine," a.k.a. "Free Thought" (Redwall): This served as a turning point in my understanding of fiction as a concept, taking a premise I though I understood and turning it into something much bigger. On a side note, if anyone ever comes across some archive of this, or better yet the anthology prequel (I think it was called The Journey Home), I'd appreciate being informed, as it has otherwise been lost.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Although I don't have much time for pleasure reading now, I was definitely an avid reader earlier in my life, able to get engrossed in a variety of fantasy (and other genre) novels, ranging from easy to very difficult in how hard they are to read (the hardest in my experience being the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I tackled at the age of something like 11 or 12 and was ultimately defeated by. And I was so close to the end too! But I had become completely mentally drained by it and was no longer absorbing anything on the pages. I did manage The Hobbit, though!).

A potential helper in why I read so much may be that many of the books I read were part of a series, and sometimes a pretty long series at that. So after I finished one book, there would always be the next to move on to, and when the whole series was done, I would look for the next series to get engrossed in. The popularity of Harry Potter (context: I'm British) may also have been a contributor in this regard - I haven't seen all the films, but I've read every book. As I got older, more mature fantasy novels also opened up to me as a thing that was appealing, so my options were expanded - as were what I got out of reading them.

As an aside, my favourite author is Phillip Pullman, notable for the trilogy His Dark Materials. I think he writes great stuff, although if you're going into his books, it should also be noted that he is very anti-religion, and his views extend to his writing. This isn't a sentiment I agree with; as a matter of fact, I consider myself pro-religion despite not being religious myself - yet it's in that context that I can find his work very interesting (it also helps that I just find his style of writing enjoyable - and it's not like everything he writes has to be read into at a deeper level). In his fantasy novels this is usually expressed - I won't say subtly - but unintrusively in a way that doesn't take away from the excitement of a fantasy adventure, however I have also read a short book by him that is more adult and expresses his views much more strongly - and it's the most thought-provoking thing I've ever read.

My favourite book by him, and my favourite novel in general, is La Belle Sauvage, which is the first book in a trilogy of sequels to His Dark Materials, although La Belle Sauvage specifically is a prequel. This novel works well as a standalone episode that doesn't need the following book to continue its flow, and in a nice change of pace, it doesn't even have any important themes of religion in it. Interestingly I started reading the second book in this trilogy but stopped - it feels very different in its pacing and structure, and I just can't get into it at all. So, you could say it's on the opposite end of the spectrum. I don't know if he's written the third book in this trilogy yet, if he has then maybe I ought to get back to finishing.

I would say my enjoyment of reading did and still does extend outside of books, too - when I play a videogame, I'm the sort of person who likes to read all the flavour text, no matter how pointless an endeavour it is. I will also never, ever skip through dialogue unless it's something I've read already.

Any time I get for pleasure reading nowadays, other than occasionally going towards Touhou manga and Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, seriously those can be engrossing, usually goes towards books on Japanese legends, folk tales, mythology, etc. You can see the youkai have clearly rubbed off on me, lol. So these tend to be more like collections of short stories, although I have also recently began reading a translation of The Kojiki, Japan's oldest surviving narrative that chronicles such legends as the Japanese creation myth and the origin of the emperor's connection to Amaterasu, amongst other myths important to Shintoism, although I haven't had enough time to properly get into it yet (I literally only read the translator's preface so I've not even properly started yet, haha).

Oh, did I also mention that I studied The Odyssey for one of my GCSEs? Mythology is cool.

So, to answer your original question - doing lots of reading does, undoubtedly, improve your writing (just look at all I've written above here, lol). However I don't know if that's really the case for explaining why we don't have many essay-style videos on Touhou Project. After all, there's something - several things, actually - stopping me from producing video essays.

The fact of the matter is, getting into the video-essay making scene is just very hard. Writing about the topic is one thing, but there are several other barriers to entry - for one, you have to be very knowledgeable on what you're talking about. Then you also need to have a good environment and equipment for recording yourself speak, and then you have to actually be good at speaking when you do it, and then you need to make an actual video for people to watch, and then you need to edit your recordings into the video, and so on...

I agree, it is unfortunate we don't have more essay-like videos analysing Touhou, and perhaps also surprising given the talent we come to expect from this fandom. But it's a hard thing to make, and although Touhou does have a large fanbase it is also quite niche, so we should be glad we at least have some people who create content like this such Surnist, even if uploads are infrequent.

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  • 1 month later...

I've been trying read books more often. The books I'm currently reading are the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) and Diodorus Siculus' Library of History. I also enjoy the old Legends Star Wars novels, I usually listen to the audiobooks of those.

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Hmmmmmmmmm

I think i read about 30 minutes - 1 hour everyday, is relaxing to read them while i drink some hot chocolate or coffee, is really cold where i live xd

Is like that little piece of your day that makes you forget all the worryings and focus on something simple and comfy !

 

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I read if and when I find a good book to read... Reading the digital copies just does not feel the same.

I agree with you, even tho i read digital ones too, when i wanna relax, i really prefer the physical copies ones, even if i need to read the same book again and again xd

 

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  • 3 months later...

I used to read a lot when I was in elementary school, to the point of borrowing books from both my school's library and another one near my house. Then I stopped for some years and picked up the hobby again around I year ago but this time with books written in English instead of my native language. So far I have finished 6 volumes of mostly light novels. But recently I started reading a book called "Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language" and have found it pretty interesting so far (definitely recommend if you like stuff like linguistics).

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  • 10 months later...

it's been a while since i read an ACTUAL novel (not fanfiction or random jumble of text)

but that's because i mostly prefer comics, documentaries, science magazines,...

*sigh* thinking about it, maybe one day i'll read a lot of short novels (i prefer the kinda-long ones) or probably mangas (slice of life eventually ;D)

 

oops sorry, i just dosed off hehe

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

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