Is binge-reading of any value?

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Cavesa
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Re: Is binge-reading of any value?

Postby Cavesa » Thu May 11, 2017 7:59 pm

s_allard wrote:I wonder if there are any language learning advantages in doing like this. One thing that comes to mind is a kind of immersion effect that comes from a massive dose of input. This does not of course replace regular daily or periodic work but could it be a way of giving oneself a big boost with some long-term effects? It may be the sort of thing one can do once a month.

I've decided to give this a whirl. Tomorrow I'm going to spend 6-8 hours reading that Spanish novel that I've been nursing for over a month. I wonder if other people have any experience with this.


Indeed, that is the point. Immersion. Forcing the brain to switch to the other language and think in it. I wish you a lot of fun and good results.

It does give a huge boost, from my experience, especially during the first book or two in the langauge. Later on, it is a matter of preference. But A few long reading session, during which the learner can get through the introductory focusing moments and really improve in the meantime, have much better effect than trying to get get the same "momentum" two pages per day.

reineke wrote:No, Binge-Reading Isn’t The New Binge-Watching
HuffPost (excerpts)

"For a long time, the word binge generally meant one thing in American conversation: eating way too much in one sitting. The word connotes overindulgence, unhealthy excess;...

Thus, this word did seem appropriate to attach to the new trend of watching many episodes of a TV show in a row....

Proud binge-watchers were quick, however, to recast the term as a hip new activity. Where’s the shame, they asked, in devoting several consecutive hours to a finely crafted drama like Orange Is the New Black?

Soon, well-meaning booklovers decided TV shouldn’t get all the binging. It was time for reading to become a binge activity as well.

Sorry guys, that’s where I draw the line. Here’s why: Reading is not a binge activity. Reading for long hours at a time is mentally engaging, surrounds the reader with an aura of productivity, and does not leave one with a sense of remorse and embarrassment...

Besides, the idea that spending several hours with a book needs a new term is an absurd concept. It’s called reading. The activity of sitting down with a novel for the afternoon is not a trend; it’s just how reading has almost always worked.

The push to make “binge-reading” a thing arises from a wonderful impulse. In the age of prestige TV dramas, book lovers want to reaffirm the value of reading. Awkwardly tying books into the binge-watching trend is a valiant attempt to make reading just as hip as watching the first two seasons of Game of Thrones in less than a week.

The joy of reading has always been its ability to transport us, to not only occupy a quiet Saturday but to stimulate our minds and hearts. A day spent reading is never a day wasted. And it’s also not a day spent binging."

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5050240


I totally don't agree with this author. Except the fact the term is perhaps not necessary, but it is definitely useful in the context of long reading sessions vs. short ones. The point is not to show that reading is a cool activity, the point is giving a name to certain characteristics that are common to binge series and to huge amounts of reading over a small period of time. Contrary to the author's probable beliefs, people don't do everything just to seem cool. Certainly readers don't. If our priority was being considered cool, we would have stopped reading long ago and started a socially more praised activity.

The author of this article clearly got stuck decades ago, while the situation has changed, as Neofight78 describes it. These days, normal reading is either reading something other than books (whether it is a paper magazine, newspaper, or websites),or reading something a cruel tearcher forced upon us. It is not considered normal, that someone would willingly spend whole evening with a book.

" Reading for long hours at a time is mentally engaging, surrounds the reader with an aura of productivity, and does not leave one with a sense of remorse and embarrassment... "

This is absolutely not true.
These days, spending a lot of time reading books, other than obligatory reading for school, is often seen as waste of time. Back when I was a teenager, I had been criticised many times by both other teenagers and adults for wasting so much time reading, instead of doing something. Like sports, the usual example of an activity worthy of spending time on. (Or more house chores, my mother's favourite example).

Mentally engaging: the author has probably forgotten, that books are not just the huge works by Tolstoi or Joyce. There are as well tons of authors, whose only purpose is to amuse the reader, let the reader relax with a story. And large part of those writes "crap" that is definitely not mentally engaging. Most people read various stuff, from high literature, threw their favourite lower genres, down to the stuff we don't know even our friends to know about :-D I certainly wouldn't be so arrogant or snobish to claim that everything I read and every hour I spend on it is a mentally engaging intellectual analogy of heavy lifting.

Remorse: of course my conscience is not clean, when I spend majority of the night with a book I simply couldn't close, instead of studying. No difference between spending the "study" night with a tv series and with a book.

Overindulgence: It depends on who judges it. If we assume, like the author, that reading is always a great mental exercise, and that spending a whole afternoon reading is totally normal, than only zenmonkey's example fits the term. But if we use the optics of most today's people, than reading more than we are forced to by school, reading other stuff than obligatory books or textbooks, or reading for longer than during a commute, all that can be confidence overindulgence in an unproductive pleasure.

If we say that watching the whole season of Game of Thrones in a week is binge watching, as it is disrupting the "normal life" (whatever that is) and usually interfering with our obligations during the week, that what else is reading 4 volumes of the Song of Ice and Fire in a week? :-D

The author means well, but is completely torn from reality.
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Re: Is binge-reading of any value?

Postby reineke » Thu May 11, 2017 9:27 pm

Anyone can binge on ice cream and TV shows. This "binge reading" as discussed here and in that other thread, is pretty disconcerting. Prior to Olga's binge-reading post all the references to "binging" in the general forum were in relation to TV watching.

"To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel, really.

So I think that kind of concentration and focus and attentiveness is hard to come by – it’s hard to find huge numbers of people, large numbers of people, significant numbers of people, who have those qualities..

The book can’t compete with the screen. It couldn’t compete [in the] beginning with the movie screen. It couldn’t compete with the television screen, and it can’t compete with the computer screen. Now we have all those screens, so against all those screens a book couldn’t measure up."

Philip Roth


https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/ ... ority-cult
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Re: Is binge-reading of any value?

Postby rdearman » Thu May 11, 2017 10:00 pm

Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943 wrote:I think there is a world market for maybe five computers


Darryl Zanuck, executive at 20th Century Fox, 1946 wrote:Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.

Philip Roth wrote:The book can’t compete with the screen. It couldn’t compete [in the] beginning with the movie screen. It couldn’t compete with the television screen, and it can’t compete with the computer screen. Now we have all those screens, so against all those screens a book couldn’t measure up."


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Re: Is binge-reading of any value?

Postby reineke » Fri May 12, 2017 12:57 am

Cavesa wrote:
reineke wrote:No, Binge-Reading Isn’t The New Binge-Watching

"....Besides, the idea that spending several hours with a book needs a new term is an absurd concept. It’s called reading. The activity of sitting down with a novel for the afternoon is not a trend; it’s just how reading has almost always worked.

The push to make “binge-reading” a thing arises from a wonderful impulse. In the age of prestige TV dramas, book lovers want to reaffirm the value of reading. Awkwardly tying books into the binge-watching trend is a valiant attempt to make reading just as hip as watching the first two seasons of Game of Thrones in less than a week.

The joy of reading has always been its ability to transport us, to not only occupy a quiet Saturday but to stimulate our minds and hearts. A day spent reading is never a day wasted. And it’s also not a day spent binging."

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5050240


I totally don't agree with this author. Except the fact the term is perhaps not necessary, but it is definitely useful in the context of long reading sessions vs. short ones. The point is not to show that reading is a cool activity, the point is giving a name to certain characteristics that are common to binge series and to huge amounts of reading over a small period of time...

The author of this article clearly got stuck decades ago, while the situation has changed, as Neofight78 describes it. These days, normal reading is either reading something other than books (whether it is a paper magazine, newspaper, or websites),or reading something a cruel tearcher forced upon us. It is not considered normal, that someone would willingly spend whole evening with a book.

" Reading for long hours at a time is mentally engaging, surrounds the reader with an aura of productivity, and does not leave one with a sense of remorse and embarrassment... "

This is absolutely not true.
These days, spending a lot of time reading books, other than obligatory reading for school, is often seen as waste of time. Back when I was a teenager, I had been criticised many times by both other teenagers and adults for wasting so much time reading, instead of doing something...

Mentally engaging: the author has probably forgotten, that books are not just the huge works by Tolstoi or Joyce. There are as well tons of authors, whose only purpose is to amuse the reader, let the reader relax with a story. And large part of those writes "crap" that is definitely not mentally engaging. Most people read various stuff, from high literature, threw their favourite lower genres, down to the stuff we don't know even our friends to know about :-D I certainly wouldn't be so arrogant or snobish to claim that everything I read and every hour I spend on it is a mentally engaging intellectual analogy of heavy lifting.

If we say that watching the whole season of Game of Thrones in a week is binge watching, as it is disrupting the "normal life" (whatever that is) and usually interfering with our obligations during the week, that what else is reading 4 volumes of the Song of Ice and Fire in a week? :-D

The author means well, but is completely torn from reality.


"There are relatively few serious studies about the effect of television on the gray matter, but there have been a few, including these:

A Japanese study published in Oxford Journals showed that excessive TV-watching can change the structure of a child's brain and cause lower verbal intelligence.
An Iowa State University study found that students who watched TV for two hours or more per day were twice as likely suffer from attention deficits.
Do you dream in black and white? Apparently, this may be a result of watching television."

"Watching too much television is not good for your health. Studies have shown that there is a correlation between watching television and obesity. Excessive TV watching (more than 3 hours a day) can also contribute to sleep difficulties, behavior problems, lower grades, and other health issues"

https://reelrundown.com/tv/Advantages-a ... Television

Short- and Long-Term Effects of a Novel on Connectivity in the Brain

"College students were asked to read Pompeii by Robert Harriss, a thriller based on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy. The book was chosen due to its strong narration and a dramatic plot based on true events."

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/10928340

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10 ... .2013.0166

Pompeii is hardly Tolstoy material. I also don't see how those who have time for television are somehow suddenly time poor when it comes to reading. There you have it. I see a lot of parallels between scarfing pizza and binge watching TV but not so much with reading.

PS I like both but I prefer to watch TV in my weaker languages. I can eat pizza in any language.
Last edited by reineke on Fri May 12, 2017 8:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Is binge-reading of any value?

Postby BalancingAct » Fri May 12, 2017 1:21 am

"I see a lot of parallels between scarfing pizza and binge watching TV but not so much with reading."

I bet that excludes warm-up.
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Re: Is binge-reading of any value?

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Fri May 12, 2017 2:06 am

reineke wrote:No, Binge-Reading Isn’t The New Binge-Watching
Awkwardly tying books into the binge-watching trend is a valiant attempt to make reading just as hip as watching the first two seasons of Game of Thrones in less than a week.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5050240


I'm sorry but... this writer clearly doesn't know what they are talking about. "Less than a week" to watch 2 seasons of game of thrones counts as binge watching? Are they mad?

For example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/media/nielsen-survey-media-viewing.html
Those are some of the findings of a study released this week by Nielsen that measured how we are consuming media these days (increasingly on devices we hold in our hands), and how much live TV we still watch (an average of more than five hours a day).


So let's continue with our Game of Thrones example. Season 1 is 10 episodes, and Season 2 is 10 episodes. So 2 seasons is 20 episodes. Each episode is an hour long.

Watching at an "average" consumption of 5 hours per day, we could watch 2 seasons in 4 days. Which is apparently "binge-watching"... but it's really not.

As a dedicated binge-watcher of many things, I laugh at taking 4 days to finish 20 hours of material. A day and a half maybe. Two days even. That would be binge-watching.

For example, I watched all of Gundam SEED (50 20-minute episodes) and Gundam SEED Destiny (50 more 20-minute episodes) in 2 days and change. I watched them "leisurely" over the weekend, consuming ~33 hours of programming in ~50 hours. Now THAT is binge watching. And honestly, I could have watched them faster if I just hadn't gone to bed on Saturday night.

So sure, I believe people can binge-read. Especially trashy books. I mean, let's say you read 15 dime-store romances or 20 hard-boiled detective pulp novels. Sure, yeah, that's binge-reading. If you read 10,000 pages of pornographic fan-fiction in just a few days, sure, that's binge reading. If you were to read something more respectable, say Terry Prachett, who wrote ~65 books in his life, if you were to read all those books in one month while working full time, I think we can consider that binge reading.

But no, reading two or three books back to back would not be binge reading.
But if someone read War & Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime & Punishment, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Rose Red, and The Shining all in one week, I'd be inclined to call that binge reading.

And of course, reading thousands upon thousands upon thousands of words in a foreign language would definitely help your language skills. But if I know anything about binge-activities, it'll give you weird dreams, where Jane Austin is surrounded by Fog in St. Petersburg while the castle keeps changing and she has to flee from a killer who is obsessed with napoleon.
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Re: Is binge-reading of any value?

Postby BalancingAct » Fri May 12, 2017 2:38 am

Waiting for someone to bring up binge speaking, hard-cord binge speaking, and binge speaking with warm-up.
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Re: Is binge-reading of any value?

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Fri May 12, 2017 2:44 am

BalancingAct wrote:Waiting for someone to bring up binge speaking, hard-cord binge speaking, and binge speaking with warm-up.


Even if someone can talk for 10 hours straight, I think most people would prefer they didn't :lol:
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Re: Is binge-reading of any value?

Postby Theodisce » Fri May 12, 2017 7:55 am

SophiaMerlin_II wrote:
reineke wrote:No, Binge-Reading Isn’t The New Binge-Watching
Awkwardly tying books into the binge-watching trend is a valiant attempt to make reading just as hip as watching the first two seasons of Game of Thrones in less than a week.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5050240


I'm sorry but... this writer clearly doesn't know what they are talking about. "Less than a week" to watch 2 seasons of game of thrones counts as binge watching? Are they mad?

For example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/media/nielsen-survey-media-viewing.html
Those are some of the findings of a study released this week by Nielsen that measured how we are consuming media these days (increasingly on devices we hold in our hands), and how much live TV we still watch (an average of more than five hours a day).


So let's continue with our Game of Thrones example. Season 1 is 10 episodes, and Season 2 is 10 episodes. So 2 seasons is 20 episodes. Each episode is an hour long.

Watching at an "average" consumption of 5 hours per day, we could watch 2 seasons in 4 days. Which is apparently "binge-watching"... but it's really not.

As a dedicated binge-watcher of many things, I laugh at taking 4 days to finish 20 hours of material. A day and a half maybe. Two days even. That would be binge-watching.

For example, I watched all of Gundam SEED (50 20-minute episodes) and Gundam SEED Destiny (50 more 20-minute episodes) in 2 days and change. I watched them "leisurely" over the weekend, consuming ~33 hours of programming in ~50 hours. Now THAT is binge watching. And honestly, I could have watched them faster if I just hadn't gone to bed on Saturday night.

So sure, I believe people can binge-read. Especially trashy books. I mean, let's say you read 15 dime-store romances or 20 hard-boiled detective pulp novels. Sure, yeah, that's binge-reading. If you read 10,000 pages of pornographic fan-fiction in just a few days, sure, that's binge reading. If you were to read something more respectable, say Terry Prachett, who wrote ~65 books in his life, if you were to read all those books in one month while working full time, I think we can consider that binge reading.

But no, reading two or three books back to back would not be binge reading.
But if someone read War & Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime & Punishment, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Rose Red, and The Shining all in one week, I'd be inclined to call that binge reading.

And of course, reading thousands upon thousands upon thousands of words in a foreign language would definitely help your language skills. But if I know anything about binge-activities, it'll give you weird dreams, where Jane Austin is surrounded by Fog in St. Petersburg while the castle keeps changing and she has to flee from a killer who is obsessed with napoleon.


It is not unusual for me to finish a 15 hours long audiobook over a weekend. Those audiobooks are never in my native language. As a matter of fact, I managed to add about 200 hours to my French over the past few months that way. Do I qualify as a binge listener? ;)
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Re: Is binge-reading of any value?

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Fri May 12, 2017 8:07 am

Theodisce wrote:
It is not unusual for me to finish a 15 hours long audiobook over a weekend. Those audiobooks are never in my native language. As a matter of fact, I managed to add about 200 hours to my French over the past few months that way. Do I qualify as a binge listener? ;)


Haha, perhaps. I can't listen to unaided audio for more than about 5 minutes at a time in any language without daydreaming. Or maybe it's the reading speed. They all read so very painfully slow...

How long would a person normally take to finish an audiobook of that length, do you know? Generally, I'd think you'd need to finish in less than half the time a person takes (on average), at the absolute slowest.

But I think pinpointing an exact number is a little silly. Sure, there are subjective binges, but in general, I think that onlookers should easily be able to look into the situation and say, "well... that was a bit much". And I confess I know nil about audiobooks as my experiences have made me absolutely dispise the things. Perhaps it's just bad luck with the voice talent I've heard. Perhaps it's because I'm not very developed auditorily, even in my L1. I regularly struggle with speech on TV, which is why I got into anime in the first place -- delicious subtitles!

But yeah, except on the weekend, how long would it normally take you to finish a 15 hour audio book?
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