Just Reading

This is the post I was thinking of writing last time, but I got distracted thinking about why people just don't read. The fact remains that most people read words on a page/screen, & then put them together in the way that they expect them to be arranged, rather than the way they are arranged in a particular context. Reading requires imagination.

People tend to read what they think is there. This is why, if yuo wreit in scuh a way taht the benginig & end are croerct, tehn msot popele wlil udnresatnd the wrod. However, the effort of doing so  has diminished the meaning of the sentence, because it took so much effort to interpret the micro-level words that the macro-level sense & meaning would take another reading.

The same goes for poorly-constructed paragraphs where the sentences need grammatical manipulation to make sense, poorly-constructed articles where the paragraphs don't connect, etc. We spend so much time deciphering the small linguistic units that we fail to get the message of the writer. A good reader can understand a paragraph's intent immediately, without needing to read the words.

I do agree with you that that's mostly the writer's fault, but it's the fault of all of us for tolerating such writers - encouraging them by accepting their shoddy workmanship, their slap-dash approach to competitively producing quantity & relevance over quality & timelessness. What have always been described as "the classics", are those books written in such a way that they can be read many times, garnering new meaning with each reading - if you are discerning enough.
Meanwhile, the best-seller list consists of the latest tome from writers who pump out near-identical ideas multiple times a year, so as to survive in the cut-throat publishing business.

This is what people are reading - the words thrown together to be digested easily like the equivalent of fast food. You don't think about it, & chewing is even optional. Just swallow it & come back again when you're hungry. Good books should be like fine dining - it takes planning, time, expectation, delight, & satisfaction - to the point of wanting to share the experience with others.

Aside from most people missing the exposure to good books through their "education", a lot of people simply don't know what a good book is, so they start reading low quality pulp, get put off by the experience, & return to either not reading at all, or else limiting themselves to technical manuals & the like.

Encouraging people to read more means helping them to read the sort of books likely to make them want to keep reading. Even if they don't get the full depth of possibilities with their first forays into the world of books, they are far more likely to keep trying if they get something out of each book they read.