/lit/ - Literature

>tfw I want to start reading books
>tfw Always losing focus half-way through the pages and having to re-read

never could realize how people have nerves to watch tv and patience to watch movies/anime

>>4531919
You've allowed yourself to become completely incapable of giving proper attention to something that requires you to think.
Don't touch your PC and TV for 3 days.
You'll feel restless, empty inside.
Take some time to think about what that means.

>>4531919
>there are people out there who don't read books at all

I find it very hard to believe this is possible. Like, if you've got a block of chocolate to eat while reading surely that's enough dopamine for you.

>>4531944
By now, his hunger is probably synonymous with having to watch a movie or show.
Going to watch a movie? Have to eat, so I enjoy it more.
Having a meal? Have to watch a show or movie to enjoy it more.

>>4531948
lel, this describes me perfectly. I get hungry every time I watch tv, and want to watch tv every time I eat.

>>4531919
>tfw you falsely believe unrelated activities to be the cause of your personal failings.

It's not social awkwardness that causes spaghetti to flow out of your pockets, it's the spaghetti inside you.

what if I don't have an attention span for media because my mind moves a lot faster than any media?

I sometimes think this way too. Then I pick up a book, a good book, and can't put it down. I'm losing sleep over it.

>>4531919
>tfw OP is retarded enough to think those 2 things could possible be correlated

you get better at reading by reading, you stupid idiot fuckhead bastard bitch

>>4531919
That's not right I can play a video game for hours. Sometimes replaying the same section for a long time too. Isn't that a significant amount of attention span in the first place. I think your problem is you just value your time with T.V. and video games more than reading a book

You lack discipline. If you truly want to create a habit of reading, you'll start reading, at first forcing yourself to focus. Keep forcing yourself to read and you will train yourself to focus for longer and longer periods of time. The process will be a lot easier if you read away from your computer and keep your phone on silent. I have the same problem you have, except with video games. Aside from Dark Souls, whenever I try to pick up a game, I almost immediately lose interest. If I were willing to invest more time into gaming, I think SC2 would be my game of choice. Anyway, another thing that might help is finding a book that really interests you. Don't worry so much about a book's popularity or reputation. Read a synopsis, maybe read a little sample of it on Amazon, and if you're interested, read it. You should develop a more discerning attitude towards reading through reading, not through listening to /lit/ or critics. Obviously, popularity and reputation can be indicative of a book's quality to some degree, so don't read a book that everyone hates. But my point remains: focus mostly on the books that interest you.

>>4531944
You're that fat ass who always eats when he reads / does anything, aren't you

>>4531978
Nah. I'm 185cm and 65kg.

>>4531986
what the fuck is this, europe?

>>4531969
ah but what if you can read posts on 4chan for 12+ hours and can't read for more than 30minutes?

>tfw desire to read book
>tfw desire to browse 4chan is greater

>>4531990
And what did you think?

>>4532006
Interactive mediums are superior to non.

Books are an old people's game.

>>4532025
s-so interactive books are the answer? Do we embrace Visual Novels?

>>4532037
'Games', I'd say.

>visit a thread on lit where everyone talks about what books they read during january
>everyone posts at least 5 books
>i've been reading the brothers karazamov since early december
>im only 300 pages in

I used to feel the same way, was a big reader as a kid but just fell off when I became a teenager. Then I got a nook recently and I've been having a blast catching up on all the classic literature I've missed out on.

I think it's the convenience, I don't have to remember a book, go to the library, find it, then hope I am in the mood to read it. I can just get in the mood, get on irc, and download something. I can be reading a book in 3-5 minutes easily.

Funny, I've found that my lack of an attention span works better for books than it does television or video games.

A book I can read for five minutes, get up, do something, pick it up again and resume as if nothing had happened, whereas videogames always have some idiotic unpausable cutscene thing going on that doesn't let you leave them alone. And movies look stupid when you pause them in the middle of people doing something.

A book, on the other hand? The end of every paragraph is a valid place to leave off and to return to!

>>4531919
>start reading a book
>get into it
>lose drive
>sits on my bedside table gathering dust

>>4532099
That's a good way to think about it just keep a book with you throughout the day and read stop then read again when you feel like

>>4532051
I thought I was doing bad. I started mid January and I am 450 or so pages in, and I finished The Prince and American Psycho in that time too. I must be better than I thought.

That and 4chan OP. Viewing the Internet as entertainment is the biggest killer.

I think reading doesn't give you that instant pleasure that most vidya and movies give you. It's actually bringing in the effort to think that makes you lethargic and makes you want to do something 'brainless' that feeds you instantly instead.

>>4531969

I don't know why, but I laughed uncontrollably at this post. Thank you.

>>4531919
Excuses excuses.

Binge television watching helped me read if anything. You don't have the attention span because you don't do it.

I got a virtual reader that really helps me stay focused on a text. I like audio stimulation, but I find music distracting. The best part is that I can speed it up to ~500 words per minute so I'm not really wasting much time by using it.

>>4531996

Electronic stimulation is like a meth analogue. Quick bursts of info and action/reaction. Stay away from the internet for a day and get an interesting book.

>>4532025

That's retarded as shit. You can't get a detailed chain of thought and explanations in any other medium.

>"muh video games"

The only thing that would approach the power of a book in terms of the depth of argumentation would be a virtual reality demonstration.

When the cost of manufacturing a VR representation of chains of argumentation and emotion outpace the cost of simply writing down shit for parsing by human entities, then you have a point.

>tfw you have insomnia
>tfw it's impossible to focus and read

Fuck, i barely have the attention to read threads on here most of the time

>>4532187
The depth of a chain may in most cases decreases its interactivity. But as interactive mediums become more widespread, most chains will start to resemble dialogues more than some scholar writing shit down for others to consume with no feedback. Like when oral traditions were still dominant. It will naturally happen because people will be engaging with others more. It'll just be recorded automatically this time.

I guess these interactions might resemble 'books' but they'll have multiple authors and such, and the possibility of being changed due to direct criticism. You know, like a website, such as Wikipedia.

>>4532025
all mediums are interactive, you're interacting with the creator/artist

I have the problem of not finishing books. I still can't make it past the first couple chapters of Catch-22, I've tried like 4 times

>>4532216
That's not the definition of interaction I'm using. That's an academic definition, that sometimes academics and lay people alike confuse with other forms of interaction.

>>4532221

well that is because an awful book

>>4531919
>Implying that's not your fault.

Has nothing to do with attention span. I don't understand why people here believe that it's unintelligent to enjoy anything other than reading.

Vidya, movies and books all get boring as fucking shit when you only focus on one for too long.

>>4532417
well, OP seems to be focusing on vidya and movies more than anything else, so I don't think that it was just that one more 19th century Russian tome that made him/her become bored with literature.
Why wouldn't you think that the incredibly fast and brief nature of modern entertainment has been decreasing people's ability to indulge in more detailed activities?

>>4532230
ill wreck u m8 i sware on me mum

>>4531940
This. But be more extreme.

I used to be on the computer all day, every day, from 1pm to 4am (after school). Always the internet. I couldn't even watch movies, because I had to browse stuff.

What I did? I cancelled my internet.

Done. I went to the near LAN house if I ever wanted to check something. My life was meaningless and I felt empty, but I tried to see that as an addict in recovery sort of thing. It was painful. But after a week or two, I found better things to do, people started appearing in my life. It's incredible how much of ordinary life followed something like "I have to tell 4chan that." or "I have to google that out" or "I need to watch that again on youtube" and shit like that. After a while, it fades out and you find different things to guide your life. More real things.

At a point, I was without a computer as well. Borrowed someone's laptop or used the LAN house to check my email and stuff like that.

After two years of that, I bought a connection once again. But now I have to be careful not to stay for too long and deliberately schedule a start and a finish to my browsing. With a girlfriend and a job, I really don't care to stay much anymore. I've also grown to hate the internet in general.

I'm at my parent's house now and there is nothing to do here, I don't even have my books with me. I always fall back at staying the whole day online here.

Seriously, get out of the internet. Best thing anyone could ever do.

>>4532055
>reading a book on the computer
disgusting

>>4532426
Dude this happened to me with The Idiot and Anna Karenina.

>>4531939
>tfw I live with 5 of them

They don't own a single book that isn't for class.

I can't empathize OP; I don't have the attention span to play games most of the time. A book I can just pick up and read at my own pace, most games require waiting for it to load, going through bullshit tutorials when it's a new one, and then slow pacing. My backlog is ridiculous, but I read a book a week at least.

>Reading books/VNs and playing vidya
>Getting lunch with friends a couple times a week
>Sleeping a lot

I miss having nothing to do all day. I was reading a book every few days, while getting through on some RPGs and F/SN this past summer.

My parents put TV/movies/books and vidya side by side when I was growing up, so I never really favored one or the other. They all do different things for me, and it's pretty easy to focus on one without pangs for the others. I hope I can replicate that with my kids. Thanks mom and dad.

OP, you really should just ease yourself into a book with a small amount of pages a day, or read when you have downtime and you're out of the house (if you aren't on NEETbux). When you get into a book you won't want to stop reading it.

>>4532037
If talented writers started using VNs as their medium of choice, then maybe.

Same here, i used about half a year on 1984, and throughout it there were several times i realized i hadn't payed any attention to the last few pages.
It was horrible and demoralizing, but it got better, since i started reading 1984 it's been about two and a half year and i've only finished 5 books since then (3 i started with about half a year ago), but i can definatelly say i'm a more efficient reader now than then.

>>4531919

>video games

If you played god tier games that were made from 2007 or before (or Nintendo games from any time), you'd be much smarter than average.

Web 2.0 utterly fucks me up though

>>4531919
Pick an hour you have free most of the time, and every day, on the hour, turn off your computer and your smart phone, get a glass of water and a snack, and read for the full duration of the hour. All you are allowed to do during the hour is piss, shit, eat the snack, look around the room, and read. If it's early enough in the day, drink a full cup of coffee. It'll help you focus.

If you stick to it, you'll be surprised how much you get done. Increments over time produce more results than random binges.

>>4531965
The problem is staying consistent. If I read something interesting and drop it, it becomes very hard for me to pick it back up.

How do you guys get the motivation to just read a book nigga, read a book?

I suck at reading books Im not interested in. I was fascinated by 1984 so it took me only two days. But for a book thats not my cup of tea, its hell. I felt this way in high school and still feel that way.

I find modern writing a lot easier to read. Writing in the early 20th century I often find so stale....Dry and repetitous and doesnt seem to have a lot of internal monologue of the protagonist. Thats a big reason I like 1984, because it has so much of his thoughts

>>4531957
Me too, if Im watching something I pretty much have to have either a hot drink or alcoholic drink.

>>4531940
>>4532460
Thank you.

I'll try going cold turkey.

>>4531919
>mfw in pass three months i have consumed more film and internet content then in any other span of my life but i still read a minimum of two hours straight a day.

I used to read all the time as a kid, it's the only reason I can spell worth a shit now. Plus the English teachers fawned all over me, it was great.

However I stopped between ages 16 - 21 except for 6 hours daily reading 4chan posts.

My attention span has gone to shit, lately I've been trying to get into education and can't focus on what's being said. I have an interview tomorrow and I only remember the man's first name from the induction day and there was three other women there, one of which will probably be giving the interview.

I fried my brain.

I study English at university so I stopped reading books for fun. I still read good books, but it wasn't because I wanted to read them of my own initiative. Maybe when I graduate I'll start reading for fun again.

Start reading short stories and work your way up to long books.

>tfw I've never read a book over 300 pages that I wasn't required to read