Yeah, school does a decent job at putting you off whole genres of things but there's still many things I'll happily read. Classic literature is so dull.

I knew someone who hated reading in highschool but shortly after highschool discovered she liked reading for pleasure. She started with books like Twilight and The Hunger Games. I personally don't recommend Twilight but I do recommend The Hunger Games.

I think some people are bad at reading through no real fault of their own. Then they feel, consciously or subconsciously, embarrassed and angry when they try.

I also think a lot about a woman I knew that was like "analysis is stupid. Sometimes a story is just a story!", and that was very strange to me. I asked some more questions, and she said she hated how in school they were always reading and being told to find the secret meaning. I was like, your education failed you. The game isn't find the meaning. The game is finding a meaning you can support in the text.

Like, Dracula can just be a book about a dude that bites people. But you can also look at it and be like "hmm so these women abandon their 'motherly' duties of raising children and staying in the home, and the only way to 'fix' them is for some men to hold her down and penetrate her with a big piece of wood? Hmmm"

But, also, you don't have to think hard about everything you read. You don't analyze every TV show, even though you could.

Tbh I hate reading because of school but it's not because we had to read classics, it's because in my school we weren't allowed to read anything out of an arbitrary reading bracket.

Even if you wanted to take home an interesting book from the library you weren't allowed to unless you read all the books between your current level and the level they put the book on. We had to pass comprehension tests to see if we understood the book we just read but we could only do it once a week so going up a single level could take most of the school year.

I was a voracious reader but there are so many time wasters now. Well and my eyes are not as good as they used to be making reading sorta a pain.

I can understand their attitude, I don't share it but I can understand it.

It is quite hard to try new books when you're not sure what you might like, it is trial and error with each trial requiring a commitment of a few hours.

I agree with audiobooks, they are a easier to get into just because they don't require to stop everything and allow to do other stuff at the same time.

That's amazing!