I forgot about all those software and gaming magazines I read throughout my teenage years, not just books! xD I really enjoyed reading your post. Similar experiences. ;) I'm also enjoying reconnecting with that tactile feeling of reading a physical book and the soothing sense of time coming to a full stop as I lose myself in the pages I'm holding. While I notice many people reading as they commute on public transit, I have this need to be intimitely acquainted with the book when I read and thus, prefer reading in a quiet environment (usually at home) and often, I read using my voice, as if I am telling myself the story. :P

I rarely read a book while out and about, for me too it's not as relaxing. Reading aloud, I reserve for passages that have a huge impact on me, re-reading them aloud; I dig how you are actively telling yourself stories in that way though.

There are so many aspects when it comes to reading a book, and practice makes perfect ... or somewhat.

For many folk, it is hard to get started, and takes some effort. More so when you are reading an author for the first time, though like with some people when you first meet, some instantly click.

And in this age, we have so many competing entertainments, especially videos and games. It can be easier, certainly with movies or TV Series, to just sit back and let someone show and tell, which requires very little effort on the watcher's part.

While I love movies and games etc, I prefer a good book any day. There have been periods in my life though, where I did not do much reading for one reason or another ... especially in my late teens early adulthood.

Many folk only read when they go to bed, and before they know it they are drifting off to sleep, maybe having only read a page or three. So reading can be difficult because it is stop starting and hard to gain momentum, especially if you are needing to re-read a good portion each time.

Some find it easier to read and or listen to audio books. I personally don't, as my reading speed varies depending on author and subject matter and mood and tiredness, and so I either can't keep up or the audio book can't keep up, which gives a feeling of disjointedness for me. I prefer a natural pace, which varies on demand. I also prefer to hear the voice in my head.

Reading for me has gotten easier over time, but then I have learnt to be more discerning about what I choose to read and when. Plus I have learnt the value of pushing hard in the beginning ... sometimes. I have also learnt to put a book down on occasion, and read something else for a while, and then come back to that other book. Some moods make reading some stuff hard, especially when based on things happening in our lives.

There can be value I guess, in reading aloud to yourself, which I have sort of done when reading to my children, which I have done with the Narnia Chronicles for instance, which I still love as an adult, having read them first as a child. But not reading them aloud is always better I find.

As it is, I often re-read passages, to get a firmer grasp of what is being said, which is also another issue for me with audio books.

And while for most of my life I have read physical books, for several years now I have preferred the benefits of ebooks read on an E-Ink device. I do make sure they have a good cover though, to imitate a hard cover novel. They took a little while to get used to, but now I don' really think about it. I've even gone back to using the next page buttons, rather than using swipe, on my most recent Kobo ereader device. Occasionally I will read a graphic heavy novel on my 10" Samsung tablet, though I find E-Ink devices are much kinder to my eyes ... and lighter weight wise.

I recommend persevering with reading, as the rewards are substantial, if you have chosen what you read, well. I tend to read one to two books a week, have done so for years now. I used to push my reading pace, and force myself to read some things (i.e. classics), but I eventually burnt out, many years ago now, so I take a more relaxed approach. I have a reading list as a guide, but it remains flexible, and I make sure not to read too much of the same thing in a row, and have a mix of light and heavy reading material.

Unless I am reading to be educated, I am reading to be entertained ... though of course it sometimes ends up being both.

I used to bring books with me to read while out, but what I kept finding was that no one respects your privacy when they see you with a book. It's like they interpret the sight of you reading as an indication that you're bored and need company, so they start yapping at you without even apologizing for the interruption.

Can't say that has ever happened to me. Maybe you look too friendly and I look too forbidding. LOL

There are very few public places I like to read. Maybe in a park in the shade and definitely on a train, a bus sometimes but they move around too much. Sometimes I'll read if I am waiting somewhere, like in a doctor's waiting room.

Sometimes I don't read in public because I get too absorbed in what I read. Easy to miss your stop on public transport etc. I also don't like being unaware of my surroundings for too long, much like I don't like being out of control by drinking too much alcohol.

I even had a job in a call center many years ago, where I was looking forward to reading between calls, especially late at night. But I found it too hard. Either I would take too long to respond, which would annoy some other team members (even though it was only a few seconds at most) or it kind of spoiled what I was reading (ruined a moment).

Thomas K Carpenter's The Reluctant Assassin. If i'd realized before the very end of the book that this was a spinoff from his Hundred Halls series, I might have read that first, and the book might have made more sense. As it was, I enjoyed it, but a lot of the world felt unexplained. I'm also not a huge fan of chapter-long flashbacks every few chapters.

Teen wizard-in-training joins the Assassins Hall to escape small-town Alabama; after graduation he'll have to go back home. In the meantime, he joins a team, and they try to compete against other teams to reach first place. Accidents keep occurring. There seemed to be very little hope in the lives of the book's characters. It was mostly enjoyable, though the sex-related jokes were unnecessary and didn't add anything.
5/10 overall; there wasn't enough details about the schooling.

Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity by Gary Cross

Went into this book hoping for deeper insight into how the fact that people who seem to experience arrested development in some areas of mature life and identity might be interconnected with nostalgia-fueled escapish activities that are traditionally associated with youth, like comic books, toys, video games etc.

Men to Boys was published in 2008. Centered mostly on the author's personal experience and from a white middle-class American point of view, the bulk of the book consists of a lengthy history of pop culture (Movies, TV, roller coasters, mostly) and how it reflects societal values of what was at the time expected from males as fathers, husbands, mentors of children, sons. What it meant to mature as men, changing over time. The aim of the book is to explore why there appear to be generations on hold and more and more men refuse to grow up now.

While I found a history of Western films, US-sitcoms and roller coaster design and subculture for example interesting to a certain point, Cross seems to inflate the book by listing an unnecessary number of examples with too much detail that in itself fails to be essential for his general conclusions. What could have been covered in a column or brief essay gets thus stretched to about 260 pages. Reading the text on the inside of the jacket and the final ten pages or so would suffice: it's where the meat of the author's arguments is found: a loss of social markers/rituals for male maturity over a couple of generations, infatuation with youth, youth equalling freedom, and the resulting nostalgia marketed and commercially exploited might be the main ones.

On top, some pop culture bits are slovenly researched, incorrect, and presented in a jargon that feels like it's merely adopted to give off a natural credibility to the subject in question when Cross likely does not authentically possess it. This is most blatant when he is talking about video games (in places referring to a game pad as a "video pad", the game Myst gets defined as a roleplaying title I believe, several sound bites to crudely support the violent-influence argument...)

Overall, this was a disappointment, even if some of the history was interesting and several conclusions I could buy into. Ends with nothing substantial offered in the way of solutions.

Interesting topic, and I'm sorry that the book wasn't up to your expectations. I say interesting, because I believe that a variety of socio-economical factors changed what a "mature man" is and created an impression, to the older generation more than anyone, of eternal immaturity and refusal to grow.

I think that's that, an impression. Because so much changed, and what is expected of us changed as well. What we can achieve with a similar effort to those of our fathers also changed (for the worse). This is not something these kinds of books/discourses usually take into consideration because it hurts the narrative that the older generations were better.

It's a way different, more complicated world, to navigate and, hey, we have so much more fun stuff to play with and escape a bit from reality, other than alcohol and drugs.

I recently gave away my copy of Atlas Shrugged (more accurately, abandoned it in a visible part of my building and a passerby grabbed it). That was a book that at the very beggining seemed amazing, but as you progressed through it, it seemed to completely misunderstand what rich people are, how good they are at their jobs (or in life in general), and what their actual goals are (get even more filthy rich at the cost of everyone else).

But, then, Ayn Rand didn't live to see the world "trickle down economics" created, nor to see our richest businessmen being utterly stupid publicly over and over...

If one wanted to control society, infantilize that society (in that process, undermine both adulthood and masculinity). The Romans feared the "toxic" barbarians. But what if the barbarians could have been "softened" into Eloi (The Time Machine)? And made to desire youth above all else? The age at which there is much energy to change the world but often not enough understanding to effect it (or to know what's best); best age to be manipulated. Love some Logan's Run.

We are living in the most extensive experiment in social engineering that the modern world has ever known... but most don't understand that, yet.

IMHO Cross (and many others) only scratch the most basic of surface levels -- still not fully understanding that this problem is not the organic result of spontaneous culture but in fact the purposely generated result of engineered culture (social engineering). And the purpose? Always control.

The Boys in the Boat - the basis of the movie with the same name, which is very good. The book was even better, the way books usually are better than the movies they inspire. When we hear about the 1936 Olympic Games, we always hear about Jesse Owens giving the finger and a black eye to Hitler's racism, but these guys from Washington showed him up too.

Fairy Tale, by Stephen King - very good story, like all of Stephen King's non-horror stories are (Shawshank Redemption, The Body, The Eyes of the Dragon, and others).

Next up is The Mysterious Case of Rudolph Diesel - just started it but so far it's fascinating and making me not want to ever sleep or go to work. True story too. Highly highly recommended even though I've only finished two chapters.

Sharp Ends - a book of short stories by Joe Abercrombie. It's definitely a book that is intended for people who have read his other books up to that point (The Blade Itself's trilogy, as well as the barely-connected three book following that, Best Served Cold, The Heroes, and Red Country), as there's a lot of basically cameos that really depend on your knowing the characters and having some knowledge of them and their history.

There's some fun moments here, and Steve Pacey's narration as always is excellent (I listened to the audiobook). Abercrombie's books have always been a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine - they have some anachronisms and are definitely GrimDark, but the dialogue is very natural, the humor is excellent, and the characters are always interesting, and this is no exception. It's neat to see an author delve into a different medium like this and pull it off. Could have used more Nicomo Cosca, but I'm happy to see more Whirrun of Bligh and the story about Logen from Bethod's point of view really brought out how he's such an unreliable narrator, if you didn't get that already from Red Country.

You are right, these issues are all the more confusing and difficult to get a grip on since the world has changed so much from early/middle 20th century. Cross seems out of touch when it comes to newer generations at least in some areas and, I suspect, is too lazy to care much. Men to Boys may just be another quick effort, the next book to just crank out regarding what he's chosen to publish about, American pop culture.

Good point about the manipulative desire part behind this, it being about control. I lately got fixated on just the economic exploitation drive, while that might be a mechanic and not the root cause.

Being a bit of a "rusty" reader, I was recently reminded of yet another benefit to picking up a brick of pages and losing myself in a printed adventure: being stumped by new words! I forgot all about this aspect of the reading experience! xD Back in my teenage years, I'd have a gigantic dictionary within arm's reach whenever I was involved in a one-on-one with a book. And this, I now realized, is how I learned new words and expanded my vocabulary! Thank goodness nowadays I got my trusty old smartphone to help me out whenever I meet a new word. ;) Here's a couple of words I learned so far while reading Compleat Cat:

"She answered peremptorily that it was of virtually no importance."

"That was a name, I told him frankly, that even someone as persnickety as he was could not possibly have anything against."

"In point of fact, three of the most famous cardinals in history were also three of the most famous ailurophiles."

Edit: corrected a typo!

That's one benefit of reading books for me as well. Thanks for sharing your recent word findings, I learned something new. Usually, I have a notebook beside me when reading a book where I jot down interesting thoughts, things to research further and also: unfamiliar words.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

I might have figured out why I am drawn to the post-apocalyptic genre. In part at least, it's because it feels like a relief that a global catastrophic shift entails the falling away of most of modern age society's expectations of what to strive for in life. The loss of complexity, existence reduced to something like a hunterer, gatherer, survivalist perspective where it's mostly OK to simply be.

Station Eleven is delivering daily-life scenes in that vein, from general civilization changes to the challenges of the individual, all fairly plausible. The tellings of these I found really worthwhile.

The story centers on a travelling Shakespearean theater & orchestra troupe, told through protagonists' flashbacks of before a global pandemic and what followed in the aftermath for them. It's well written, if not overly complex and riveting a narrative. There is one particular device used to tie the main characters' lives together, as well as shape the structure of the book. I felt that this was an overused element that in itself wasn't interesting to an extent that it would justify its prominent presence throughout.

The descriptions of facing gritty reality in a world changed forever, adapting, surviving, is where Station Eleven succeeds well enough. It never reaches the visceral impact and realism of Cormac McCarthy's The Road though, which I cannot recommend enough.