Reading train - Improve your reading skills - Do you think that reading books is actually quite an anarchic thing to do?

Do you think that reading books is actually quite an anarchic thing to do?

I often encounter people who boast 'I've never read a book in my life' (I include my brother in this!) as they seem to believe books are things invented by 'them' to oppress 'us'. But I have always believed that reading is a rebellious thing to do - no one (except in extreme dictatorships) can stop us getting information in this way and stop us getting knowledge from the universe of published works - knowledge is power - 'they' don't want us to have power, and so we, as readers, win! Do you agree that bookworms are powerful people?

Public Comments

Yes myself my husband and my children are all avid readers
Books feed the imagination and no dictatorship can control your imagination. I love reading and I feel sorry for people who don't enjoy it. But then again, I don't like sport. So I'm pretty sure lots of my friends feel sorry for me too.
I believe bookworms are probably more intelligent, informed and articulate, and so yes maybe that can be defined as being more powerful.
The one thing that books can do that other forms of media cannot as easly do is allow us to know what characters are thinking. It's harder for radio, TV, movies, and music to allow us to know what the characters are thinking.
It is only rebellious to read what you want in an oppressed society. In an enlightened society, it is common. Fahrenheit 451 is a good novel along those lines. Yes, knowledge is power. Unfortunately, power does not mean knowledge.
As a writer, and a Library Worker, I say -- Right On!
I wouldn't use the word powerful because today it is so hard to define. Books are a great source of knowledge, even fiction because we are given a very in depth look at the authors point of view. So I find "bookworms" to often be very smart people.
Everything you would ever what to know is in books... they contain more info than tv and movies and the stories are soooooo much better in books...way more interesting and full of juicy details that never translate fully to screen. I love to read...alot.
yes i agree it is also a pleasure to sit in silence and readat the moment i am reading about people who have been awarded the victoria cross
Umm..I don't really know about any of that. I love to read, and the library is my bffl. I have never heard anything about books oppressing people or otherwise, but I heart books, and even if I was told that I was being oppressed by reading, I'm not about to stop. :)
I wish bookworms were powerful people; I would at least have a small principality. I would take riches too. But no. reading books per se is not anarchic. I do think that it is a mark of a free society that we can read a wide variety of materials--even offensive materials. I am also not convinced that being anarchic is per se a good thing. Reading also takes discipline and education. Your brother is not all wrong: Ecclesiastes 12:12, "And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh."
I agree with you, but I'm biased because I'm one of those so-called "radical militant librarians". Ideas (as expressed in books and other media like the WWW) are powerful and dangerous (depending on who you are) when spread. Practically all of the major world revolutions (Russian, French, and the frequent South American ones) were fueled by the spread of ideas. Without a good system of sharing and collaborating, like printed media, such things usually fail. So, absolutely, reading is a rebellious activity if you're reading the right kind of stuff...
Hi, no i don't think reading books is anarchic in the slightest. i have always been a big reader and my children are now following in my footsteps. In school my childrens reading ages are quite a lot higher than their actual ages, and quite higher than some friends that don't really read that much. reading books must be better for you than reading some gossip magazines,as long as you understand what you are reading.
People that boast of never having read a book are ****holes.
I totally agree with you, if the bookworm knows how to utilise what he/she has learned from the book. However there are people who hardly ever open the cover of a book, yet get all the information they require from the internet( like my husband who only opens a manual to see how things operate ). They too can be as powerful, if not more so. I used to be an avid reader, but with less time to spare, now I hardly ever read. Reflecting on my experience though I do feel that one could be considered selfish to a point when reading, as I used to shut off from reality, and be totally engrossed so as not to see and hear people come into a room. I still do believe stongly though that reading is knowledge, and knowledge is power, of course dependant on what the reader reads.
reading in a form of entertainment, reading is really no different from seeing a film, except you gain a lot more from them.
YES....remember the pen is mightier than the sword , and the reader even more so.
he word for "The Da Vinci Code" is a rare invertible palindrome. Rotated 180 degrees on a horizontal axis so that it is upside down, it denotes the maternal essence that is sometimes linked to the sport of soccer. Read right side up, it concisely conveys the kind of extreme enthusiasm with which this riddle-filled, code-breaking, exhilaratingly brainy thriller can be recommended. That word is wow. The author is Dan Brown (a name you will want to remember). In this gleefully erudite suspense novel, Mr. Brown takes the format he has been developing through three earlier novels and fine-tunes it to blockbuster perfection. Not since the advent of Harry Potter has an author so flagrantly delighted in leading readers on a breathless chase and coaxing them through hoops. The first book by this onetime teacher, the 1998 "Digital Fortress," had a foxy heroine named Susan Fletcher who was the National Security Agency's head cryptographer. The second, "Deception Point," involved NASA, a scientific ruse in the Arctic and Rachel Sexton, an intelligence analyst with a hairdo "long enough to be sexy, but short enough to remind you she was probably smarter than you." With "Angels and Demons," Mr. Brown introduced Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of art history and religious symbology who is loaded with "what his female colleagues referred to as an `erudite' appeal." No wonder: the new book finds the enormously likable Langdon pondering antimatter, the big-bang theory, the cult of the Illuminati and a threat to the Vatican, among other things. Yet this is merely a warm-up for the mind-boggling trickery that "The Da Vinci Code" has in store. Consider the new book's prologue, set in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre. (This is the kind of book that notices that this one gallery's length is three times that of the Washington Monument.) It embroils a Caravaggio, an albino monk and a curator in a fight to the death. That's a scene leaving little doubt that the author knows how to pique interest, as the curator, Jacques Saunière, fights for his life. Desperately seizing the painting in order to activate the museum's alarm system, Saunière succeeds in buying some time. And he uses these stolen moments — which are his last — to take off his clothes, draw a circle and arrange himself like the figure in Leonardo's most famous drawing, "The Vitruvian Man." And to leave behind an anagram and Fibonacci's famous numerical series as clues. Whatever this is about, it is enough to summon Langdon, who by now, he blushes to recall, has been described in an adoring magazine article as "Harrison Ford in Harris tweed." Langdon's latest manuscript, which "proposed some very unconventional interpretations of established religious iconography which would certainly be controversial," is definitely germane. Also soon on the scene is the cryptologist Sophie Neveu, a chip off the author's earlier prototypes: "Unlike the waifish, cookie-cutter blondes that adorned Harvard dorm room walls, this woman was healthy with an unembellished beauty and genuineness that radiated a striking personal confidence." Even if he had not contrived this entire story as a hunt for the Lost Sacred Feminine essence, women in particular would love Mr. Brown. With Leonardo as co-conspirator, since his life and work were so fraught with symbols and secrets, Mr. Brown is off to the races. Google away: you may want to investigate the same matters that Langdon and Agent Neveu pursue as they tap into a mother lode of religious conspiracy theory. The Priory of Sion, the Knights Templar and the controversial Vatican prelature called Opus Dei are all invoked, as is the pentacle, the Divine Proportion, the strange sex rites glimpsed in the film "Eyes Wide Shut" and the Holy Grail. If you think the Grail is a cup, then Mr. Brown — drawing upon earlier controversial Grail theories involving 19th-century discoveries by a real Saunière — would like you to think again. As in his "Angels and Demons," this author is drawn to the place where empirical evidence and religious faith collide. And he creates a bracing exploration of this realm, one that is by no means sacrilegious, though it sharply challenges Vatican policy. As Langdon and Sophie follow clues planted by Leonardo, they arrive at some jaw-dropping suppositions, some of which bring "The Da Vinci Code" to the brink of overkill. But in the end Mr. Brown gracefully lays to rest all the questions he has raised. The book moves at a breakneck pace, with the author seeming thoroughly to enjoy his contrivances. Virtually every chapter ends with a cliffhanger: not easy, considering the amount of plain old talking that gets done. And Sophie and Langdon are sent on the run, the better to churn up a thriller atmosphere. To their credit, they evade their pursuers as ingeniously as they do most everything else. When being followed via a global positioning system, for instance, it is smart to send the sensor flying out a 40-foot window and lead pursuers to think you have done the same. Somehow the book manages to reconcile such derring-do with remarks like, "And did you know that if you divide the number of female bees by the number of male bees in any beehive in the world, you always get the same number?" "The Da Vinci Code" is breezy enough even to make fun of its characters' own cleverness. At one point Langdon is asked by his host whether he has hidden a sought-after treasure carefully enough. "Actually," Langdon says, unable to hide his grin, "that depends on how often you dust under your couch."
It depends on the books -- but in general, the drive to learn and become informed is a pretty empowering thing
that is true but some people belive book worms such as myself, don't experience life enough, & so it's important to get the balance right... but having said that, we are all unique, & where as some people love reading, some people love hanging out with their friends & go travelling etc & I guess they learn in other ways.. I think it's important to educate oursleves & read.
Sort of. Books are not used as much as computers these days, but if you are looking at an extended amount of text then books are much much better. Sadly, no one wants to look at text much these days. There is a new device out that will IMHO replace books. It is a flat piece of paper with small magnetically charged beads in it. The beads can spin and produce images, giving you a sheet of paper that can change what is printed on it.
I agree, I think people who refuse to read are pretty sad. They are missing out big time. There's a saying I often quote "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them", Mark Twain was a very clever man when he said that. Some people don't think it's cool to read but that's such a stupid attitude. Stretching your imagination, gaining new ideas and learning new things is what life's all about. Anyone who wants to stifle that obviously has no idea how enriching reading can be. I read an interview with Brad Pitt once where he claimed to never read because he was too busy and, although I didn't respect him much anyway, I lost all respect for him. I read an interview with his missus Angelina Jolie the other day and she said he was incredibly intelligent and it just made me laugh. People who don't read (and I'm not talking about people who can't read or don't like a particualr kind of book cos that's different) just make me form opinions of them that they probably wouldn't be too happy about (i.e. that they're kind of dumb and stubborn and have a huge, over-inflated vanity and self importance about the things they do).
It depends on both the book and the reader. There was a very good quote in one of Terry Pratchett's books about books being more dangerous than bombs. Bombs cause explosions to go off on the street, whereas a book can do the far more dangerous thing of making fireworks go off inside someone's brain. They encourage thought (or at least, the ones that aren't the latest Big Brother autohagiography do) and curiosity.