Booking Through Thursday

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What is reading, anyway? Novels, comics, graphic novels, manga, e-books, audiobooks — which of these is reading these days? Are they all reading? Only some of them? What are your personal qualifications for something to be “reading” — why? If something isn’t reading, why not? Does it matter? Does it impact your desire to sample a source if you find out a premise you liked the sound of is in a format you don’t consider to be reading? Share your personal definition of reading, and how you came to have that stance.

Great question! I think reading is anything you set your eyes on that has words or is in book form. I read a lot of comics and graphic novels and i certainly consider them reading, even the one's without words! Just because you can read them a lot faster doesn't mean they aren't still reading! It's all about using your eyes!

I guess the only thing I wouldn't consider reading to be would be listening to audio books because that's listening, but there's nothing wrong with listening to a book! It's just a different way to take in information. When reading I need to pay full attention so that makes it hard for me to listen to books on cd. I know a lot of people use audio books while multitasking, I've tried it but I can't concentrate enough, I think the only time it worked was when I was on a plane but then it was an abridged book of short stories with some other stories from another book on it... so i gave up and figured I'd just read the book instead!

This question also brings up another question for me. I keep a list of the books I read, but there are some things I don't include on this list. I don't include magazines (you know the ones that are almost book like) zines or comics that are stapled. I only include what I determine to be a true book which I've determined to mean something that is bound professionally (that isn't a magazine). I don't include those things I've pointed out because they are things that aren't meant to be read cover to cover or take only a matter or minutes or seconds to read. That probably makes no sense to anyone but it works in my head haha! I want my list to reflect things that take a significant amount of time to read (usually). Please don't try to understand this, it's almost making no sense to me either!