Some of the best advice that could ever be given. Whole heartedly agree.

@BenjaminMcEvoy

7 күн бұрын

Thank you, Jess! :)

I went into a big reading slump from 2018-2020. Last November I started reading ‘Bleak House’ at a rather slow pace compared to how I used to read. I’ve found this means I’m really living with the characters and the story. I’ll find myself considering the plot and the characters decisions and motives whilst I’m cleaning. On top of this I’m reading poetry by Ted Hughes and a Shakespeare play at the weekend. This has really re engaged me. I’m looking forward to starting my undergraduate journey at either one of Bristol or Durham this October. Great video Benjamin

@BenjaminMcEvoy

3 жыл бұрын

Ah, I most certainly had a reading slump myself mid-2018. I think the book that broke the slump was Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung. And the book that broke the post-university slump was Haruki Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland. I love how you've described living with the characters of Bleak House. Yes!!! Exactly right - and slowly too! A Shakespeare play at the weekend sounds good to me - you'll have to let me know your favourites. I'm also a fan of Ted Hughes' poetry - 'The Thought Fox' is beautiful :) All best wishes for your upcoming academic journey!

Watching this channel for the last few months rekindled my love of reading!

@BenjaminMcEvoy

Жыл бұрын

I'm so happy to hear that! Thank you so much for being here :)

"Rekindle" it by getting yourself a "kindle" (or preferably a Kobo ereader) Ereader has helped me read 10x as much as I used too. I can read in the dark. Take annotations and highlight stuff. I can take my books everywhere. I can read in bed with the lights off without a uncomfortable book on my chest or my night light ruining my sleep. Etc

@BenjaminMcEvoy

Жыл бұрын

Great advice. My Kindle is my own personal Library of Alexandria. I still read it in the dark, under the covers, and absolutely love it!

Discovering your channel has saved me. Im just finishing high school which has been hell, books have been my only friends and i plan on strengthening that relationship until i die. Thanks for being my Virgil

I’ve been glued to social media (please note I found you surfing KZread!) for so long and was recently bemoaning this fact to a friend that I can’t read books anymore. My brain no longer functions in such a way to read each word, slowly build on a story ( get impatient and bored easily) page by page for a whole book. I’m so used to short sound bites of information flashing before me that I’ve become cognitively lazy. Feel like my brain synapses have been fried and not functioning like they should. Kinda shocked when I recently realized this. Maybe I should start with short stories to get back in the reading groove. Thanks for your video about re learning to read - going to have to study that one for sure.

I really really needed to hear this, I feel like I put so many unnecessary pressure on myself into finishing books asap that in the process I lost what reading actually meant to me. I would take your advice and hopefully I shall find the joy I felt when I first started reading.

@BenjaminMcEvoy

2 жыл бұрын

I'm so happy to hear that :) It sounds like you'll have your love of reading back in no time at all!

Ben, I've never lost my love of reading, but listening to you, my love and enjoyment have increased, joyfully!!

@BenjaminMcEvoy

Жыл бұрын

Aw, thank you so much, Sophia :) That is so incredibly lovely of you!!

I remember staying in a villa in Spain when I was a kid and finding a battered old copy of Christine on top of a wardrobe, I spent that holiday by the pool just tearing through it. We never had cable or the internet when I was a kid so most of my enjoyment came from reading. Now as I've gotten older I hardly read anymore but I've made it my goal to get back into reading and read the classics. I'm about one hundred pages into Crime and Punishment and loving it. I'm not the smartest person in the world so a lot of these classics intimidate me but I'm going to give them my best shot, see what I enjoy and take it from there.

Your take on reading being a solitary habit or its lack of being so is so on point. You've mentioned that in numerous videos and it's absolutely true!

Benjamin you are amazing. As I mentioned before I am turning 70 soon and on a mission to read Marcel Proust "In Search of Lost Time" along with one of Thomas Hardy's books and writing a journal along this journey.

@BenjaminMcEvoy

7 ай бұрын

Aw, thank you, Yolanda! Your mission to read Proust's masterpiece is tremendous :) And Thomas Hardy! Beautiful choice. One of my personal favourite writers of all time. I would love to know how your reading project goes 😊

About to finish finals then I'm Goin on a summer reading binge. My love for reading was awakened through college but I often did not have time to read much on my own. So this summer is my first long span of time with this newfound passion, encouraged by ur vids.

Some friends that I know only read books for fun and relax, with physical/ebooks or audiobooks. So since the intention is for relax, they don’t pick books that are too complicated. Maybe they can read 20 books/month cause using audiobook during commute on train. So yeah read anything that you like and read anything depends on your situation.

@BenjaminMcEvoy

3 жыл бұрын

Yep, absolutely. When I was reading popular fiction, I'd easily hit 20+ books/month. And marathon training resulted in me eating up A LOT of audiobooks.

Hi Ben x This is an excellent video highlighting what I've come to see as, 'competitive reading'. Cracking that TBR list; setting unachievable goals that would mean (for me anyway) probably having to read in my sleep. 🤓😴 I love the idea of savouring a book. Making it part of you; allowing it to influence you. Having a relationship with it, the characters and, vicariously, with the author. I also love, especially with the classics, entering a part of history that is dead to us now, but for that brief moment comes alive through the text. A window into a place or time long gone. So exciting! Hubby and I have started Anna. Oh my! We're loving it. Discussion already well under way. Reading an amazing book should be like going on the journey of a lifetime. Take photos, keep a journal, record every moment. . . . . and then choose a new 'destination' and do it all again 💗📚. Stay well! The end is in sight 😉. Sharon x

@BenjaminMcEvoy

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you, Sharon! I love that term - 'competitive reading'. I had a slightly crass way of phrasing it a few years back, but I'll refrain from saying that here! I totally bought into the never-ending TBR lists myself and things like the 'Goodreads Challenge', where the measure of success is books read, rather than how deeply you've read and the insights you've gleaned. I had to change my reading when I realised I wasn't enjoying it this way :) I'm so happy to hear you're both enjoying it - and even more exciting, you're discussing it! Absolutely agree with everything you've put here, and love how you've phrased everything. Stay well too! We're getting there :)

I recently discovered your channel and I am now watching most of your video. Your content is very interesting, I trying to come back to love reading and for me Dickens seems to work. I read Great Expectations and loved the experience, then Oliver Twist and I am waiting for Christmas to reread the Carrols. Thank you for your insights.

About two years ago I was in a reading slump for about four months. Socrates Apology broke me out of my slump.

@BenjaminMcEvoy

3 жыл бұрын

Niiiiice. That's a good slump-buster!

@Will.a12

3 жыл бұрын

@@BenjaminMcEvoy thanks. It was very interesting even tho it was really short.

@BenjaminMcEvoy

3 жыл бұрын

​@@Will.a12 You might also enjoy Plato's Symposium (if you haven't already read it). SUPER short, and REALLY interesting stuff. I made a video deep-diving into it in the book club. Highly recommended!

@Will.a12

3 жыл бұрын

@@BenjaminMcEvoy I have heard of it but I have not read it. But I definitely will read it thank you for the recommendation.

@jackking2225

3 жыл бұрын

I just read Apology too - I had started listening to quite a few philosophy channels. An incredible teacher from Wheaton College - Arthur Holmes - got me interested in Plato. The Apology is such and incredible real life speech of someone (Socrates ) who is 70 and has decided he is going to die in a few years anyway and seems to understand that by holding his ground and not giving in to his foes he will prevail. He is willing to die for what he believes in, knowing that he will be remembered for this for many years. I never knew that Plato was once sold into slavery! Apparently his patron in Sicily died - the new rulers in the Greek colono there were complete phillistines and had him exiled. In his travels back to Greece he was captured - just like Russell Crowe - although they didn't make Plato fight as as gladiator. Ironically for me the lecturers were all from Christian colleges. It's a struggle sometimes when they start to drill into church theology going for hours about Luther and Calvin but it helps get a different point of view. One teacher who is a very good teacher when it comes to getting the basics but his also a bit of a horse's ass when it comes to his religion and sttitudes surprised me. He's pretty old school in his dogmatíc beliefs and very dismissive about "atheists" and other religions. But then he started talking about Nietzsche. I was quite surprised that Nietzsce was the writer who affected him the most. He couldn't stop reading Zarathustra, was forced to rethink everything he had learned and believed up until that point in his life. It can be interesting to find out which writers have powerful effects on other people - even a dogmatíc Christian. Usually they will start talking about C.S. Lewis who all too often ends up being the Christian apologist that many religous believers refer to when trying to reach out to their less religious colleagues. Granted I know comparatively little about Nietzsche and philosophy. I'm starting to understand how much Greek thought influenced Christianity at various times. It's incredible to think how much it framed the religious development in the early days, the New Testament was written in Greek and yet almost all Greek thought was forgotten or lost for centuries. It must have been an overwhelming intellectual experience for people in the middle ages to rediscover Plato and Aristotle and re-evaluate everything they thought they knew. You take it so much for granted - the Greek philosophers have been easily accessible for centuries in librarías and now on the internet and on KZread in very well presented talks. We're kind of on the cusp of technical era where AI's may overtake a lot of human capabilities. It takes a certain kind of philosophical approach to try to understand what knowledge and critical thinking, teaching an AI how to learn and think for itself. It all goes back to epistomology and asking what knowledge itself is and whether our minds are fundamentally based on some inherent structure that determines what we experience or if everything starts from our experiences first and our minds are molded into what we think makes sense. Kind of a chicken and the egg problem when it comes to human consciousness.

Thank you for your words of wisdom. They were exactly what I needed to hear.

@BenjaminMcEvoy

Жыл бұрын

You're so welcome, Tracey :) Thank you so much for being here!

Thank you so much for this video, Benjamin. I really needed to hear this.

@BenjaminMcEvoy

2 жыл бұрын

You're totally welcome, Marie :) I'm thrilled you enjoyed it!

You have convinced me to revisit Dickens at a slow pace. Thanks for your discussion on other videos regarding this.

@BenjaminMcEvoy

Жыл бұрын

I'm so happy to hear that :) Happy reading! I'd love to hear what Dickens you're enjoying at the moment :)

Hi Ben, its me again. Thank you for such an interesting discussion. I love your channel and the direction you are taking it :) I said how War and Peace just completely rekindled my love of reading. I then got into a frenzy - I had to read all the Russian authors, from Dostoyevsky to Bulgakhov to Grossman to Chekhov (& others). I got to a point where I was just reading them too fast and not absorbing them properly. Just wanting to find out what happens and expecting way too much. I have now slowed down my reading pace, as you said, reading the book chapter by chapter, line by line, absorbing and comprehending these lively portraits. Also putting the book down, even mid chapter, and thinking over it. I was definitely inspired by one of your videos, where you said that you let the lines "wash over you". That is my new approach and it has transformed reading for me. I ask myself - why should we live in a world where language is beautiful? Taking each line as a gift, and letting my heart catch up to my mind. This is always better than taking utility from the book - "knowing the spoilers of a Tolstoy and being able to dissect the major themes," was never my approach, but I fell into it a bit.

@BenjaminMcEvoy

3 жыл бұрын

Hi George! Thank you for such a lovely comment :) What an amazing story. One of the greatest epics ever written got led you into a reading frenzy! I can totally identify - the Russians are my current literary obsession. They are SO good. That's the thing about writers like Dostoyevsky - one can absolutely inhale them. They are so psychologically compelling that it takes effort to slow down. But, hey, rereading is always a valuable way to spend one's time! "Taking each line as a gift" - yes!! I love that!!

@georgejoun6232

3 жыл бұрын

@@BenjaminMcEvoy thanks Benjamin! Yes, it's been hard to read anything else other than the Russians lately 😅 Do you have your absolute favourite book or author? How is it so?

@BenjaminMcEvoy

3 жыл бұрын

​@@georgejoun6232 My absolute favourite author is Shakespeare. If I could only read one writer for the rest of my life, or was confined to a desert island, it would be him :) As for favourite book, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is easily my favourite novel. Masterpiece!!

@georgejoun6232

3 жыл бұрын

Ok well that's interesting! How do you read Shakespeare? Do you read the play, listen to it or watch it (or all three?!)? Oh that's so cool about Anna Karenina being your favourite book. I was blown away by it when I read it. Do you have any favourite scenes/characters? :)

@BenjaminMcEvoy

3 жыл бұрын

​@@georgejoun6232 What a question! That's the subject of a whole series I'm doing called The Shakespeare Project. But - all three! Read, then watch/listen, then read again. And really visualise the stage in your mind... Favourite scenes in AK.... wow, so many to choose from. That final paragraph blows me away...

This whole year has been a reading slump for me and the resaons for me have been and how I am coping with it: - trying to read as much books as possible. Many times, when I see youtubers reading 20 books a month and that I can only read 2 books feels like a failure. I am a slow reader and prefer a more paused and deeper reding experience. I have accepted that and not gonna obsses over the number. This whole month I will be reading "Woman in white" by Wilkie Collins and if necessary part of next month too. I am not ashamed. - trying to read only "intelligent" literature. You know classics are for "intellectuals" and chicklits, romance, murder mystries and other _inferior_ genres are for the "dumb". I am not obsessing over this anymore. I read what I want. If I want to read mystries back-to-back, I will read it and no, it doesn't make me less smart than others. - accepting that you don't need to read all the time. I don't force myself into reading if I am not feeling like it. I accept that and get myself busy in another hobby... or just relax and not doing anything 😌 - having few days pause between two books and mixing genres (a "light" reading after a "tough" book, for instance) help me too to prevent the exhaustion

Hello, I just discovered ur channel after I was trying to look for reviews on 'Every Man's Library: Crime & Punishment'. And I'm HOOKED! I just love how original u r. So authentic, and that's really hard to find. Every minute of ur videos counts. Simply put, there's zero noise; real 4K content. Thank u very much!

@a.m.s.4928

2 жыл бұрын

I used to read A LOT when I followed my heart. AKA YA books and Manga when I needed an escape. It however began with poorly translated abridged classics (into Arabic) back when I was in 6th grade. Short after, I found what I liked (Sherlock Holmes, Arsene Lupin..) It has changed now of course. I can no longer read half a sentence of YA books. And when I threw it all out, I found my library compromised of only non-fiction books (that I REALLY love). And ever since, I've only been able to truly enjoy very little fiction. (Could it be that fiction is just not for me? But I really want to lose myself in a story, to marvel at it)

@a.m.s.4928

2 жыл бұрын

I also found that some of the classics I enjoyed studying (I'm an English language and literature + linguistics + translation + teaching graduate 😅) I actually enjoyed analyzing them, not reading them (Great Expectations, Julius Caesar, Things Fall Apart...) Among the fictional books I really enjoyed (not really, these r the ONLY ones): Pygmalion Glass Menagerie Fantomas Alienist Gentleman in Moscow🌟 The Queen's Gambit William Blake's Poetry 🌟 For somebody who liked these books, and thinks Crime and Punishment is......lame......What can u recommend, if u can do so? I believe I'm looking for a writer that is not trying to impress, not affected by his peers/trends, not writing for money, didn't have a eureka moment.. but someone who has something they want to share that they r genuinely interested in. Something original and authentic to who they r, their experiences and beliefs. (Preferably good with arguments if they use it in their writing; because I think Crime & Punishment had weak ones 😅)

@lennoncampbell3105

Жыл бұрын

@@a.m.s.4928 Hello, I know this is a late reply, but I would suggest 'Berlin Stories' by Robert Walser

@a.m.s.4928

Жыл бұрын

@@lennoncampbell3105 Thanks Lennon! I'll definitely check it.

Excellent video. I've been on a 1-year reading slump, couldn't focus etc. I have found starting small, being consistent and being selective with what I read helped.

@BenjaminMcEvoy

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you, Dean. You'll bust through that slump, I'm sure of it! 💪 Small consistent steps are definitely the key!

@deanhill9370

2 жыл бұрын

@@BenjaminMcEvoy I think society can be so focused on reading for a practical purpose such as non fiction that I fell out of love with the arts for a bit

@deanhill9370

2 жыл бұрын

I also like what you say about reading lists... We had countless books each term and we would always read criticism alongside the works... I remember a debate on why an author had introduced a red vase and we were picking away at symbolism... When in fact there was nothing symbolic to debate in the first place... Overly critical and reading at an extreme pace put me off reading for a year or more.

Thank you for making such an informative and inspirational video. I just want to say that your videos inspire me a lot when I first started to read classic literature. I have a question tho. I'm not a native English speaker, but I don't think my English comprehension is that bad (I'm taking my ALs so basically I have to use the language everyday). I can read and understand most of the classics that were translated into English and modern English literature, but I found myself struggling to read classics written in English like Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre. I can understand the bare minimum to know what happened in those books, but I cannot understand a lot of conversations and discussions that were written in those books. I'm a decent student in Vietnamese literature, which is my native language, and I know that words and the way they are used can express the internal struggles and emotions of characters, so I feel really bad for not understanding the discussions that characters gave in those books as well as their descriptions of emotions. I wonder if it's because of my limited ability or it's because the language that the authors used are not the same as modern language, but I really want to be able to fully understand the language. Should I just try my best to read them all over again or there are tips to read those classics? Thank you for reading

@BenjaminMcEvoy

3 жыл бұрын

Aw, thank you :) Even natives struggle with Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. They are really difficult because the language is quite old. Austen was writing two hundred years ago, so there's quite a difference in our language now and then. I would recommend finding a good audiobook, slowing down, looking things up as you go along. Or you could read as part of a group. If you like Jane Austen, we're reading her masterpiece Persuasion in the Book Club next month, and I'll be guiding everyone through so they can understand and enjoy it :) You could also try a classic that's written a little closer to our current time. Charles Dickens, for example, is easier to read than Jane Austen. And perhaps Hemingway is easier to read than Dickens :) Also - don't be afraid to watch adaptations - there are some great movie and tv show versions of Pride and Prejudice out there!

@triducvu1588

3 жыл бұрын

@@BenjaminMcEvoy Thanks for your reply. When I'm able to wrap my head around Jane Austen's books I really enjoy them 😂

great advice

500 words per minute?? For newspaper articles and some nonfiction, yes. But I can’t imagine reading great literature at that pace. Updike said his rate was roughly a page a minute, which I suppose would about the average speed. But I know I spend more than a minute most of the time. Because good fiction is so resonate and evocative.

A few pages each day.

What if you can’t find a tribe?