I had a coworker approach me on break and start telling me about a book he was reading and how much he was enjoying it. Towards the end, he mentioned struggling with it and that he wished someone had told him how great reading was earlier. We were both damn near 30, and it was a YA novel. I resisted the asshole urge to roast him because, shit, at least he's trying?
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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Not only is he trying, he laments not learning better when he was younger. Great self-awareness, and taking ownership today.
Very true. Hopefully, he still enjoys reading today.
And now you get to recommend him all the good stuff he missed!
He is an obese man in the gym. Literally nothing more admirable than someone improving themselves.
Exactly! And not just doing it, but sticking to it AND vulnerably admitting to struggling.
If only more people could do it.
My spouse always says, you don't mock a sick person in hospital, why mock someone who is working to improve other aspects of themselves.
When I was in the US Air Force, I was deployed to a US Marine camp once, and listening to those guys chat among themselves was always a treat. You never knew what dumbass comments were going to come out of their mouths.
One day, one of the young corporals mentioned that, while traveling to another base, he got stuck waiting for a connecting flight between bases for about a week and he was so bored, he read A BOOK. He stressed the fact that he's never read an entire book from cover to cover before, but he did on this layover because he was so extremely bored.
To my surprise, the other Marines just nodded along, like this made perfect sense to them. Not a single person harassed him for never reading a book before (and they harass each other all the time for the simplest things).
I mean, we poke fun at Marines for being dumb. They call themselves jarheads, which is an allusion to the fact that their heads are as empty as a jar. But it still blows my mind to hear the dumb things they say sometimes.
That's not why Marines are called jarheads. While we do love the occasional crayon, we're not all stupid.
Jarhead first originated somewhere during WW2 because the high collar on some of our uniforms making it look like our heads were popping out of jars. The term has meant a few other things since then, like referencing the high and tight haircut, or being so "uptight" on their training and discipline and described as having that hat screwed on tight like the lid of a jar.
For the record I read a lot! I love reading. My group of friends in there read a lot. We played tons of RPGs.
I had a friend tell me that she didn't learn to read until she was like eight. Ya never really know where people come from. All of our lives are so different.
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wtf is a "chapter book"?
It's a book with chapters. Basically a regular ass book. When kids are real little, their books are like 15 pages long. Then in like 1st or 2nd grade, they move onto reading big kid books - aka "chapter books" that have enough pages to warrant chapters.
You never hear someone over the age of 7 or 8 mention reading "chapter books" because they're just know as books.
Except anon, who is dumb as fuck.
Anon could be a kid. On the internet nobody knows you're a dog. Actually, a lot of content on 4chan looks like a giggling 8 year old posted it; especially the posts about poop.
There are regular books that don't have any chapters. Most of Terry Pratchett's Discworld Books are an example of this.
That threw me when I started Guards! Guards!. I generally only have time to read at night and stop at the first chapter break after 11:00. For several nights in a row I was reading until midnight, giving up, then forgetting by the next time. Eventually I checked ahead and realized there weren't any, but a lot of his 'sections' are chapter sized, so it works out.
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As you read these comments, remember that 56% of Americans read at a 6th-grade level or above; the rest read below that.
Please be gentle.
remember that 56% of Americans read at a 6th-grade level or above; the rest read below that.
I recall reading somewhere that adult literacy was at like 98% in the US. Though that was like 25 years ago, and I suppose a 6th grade level still counts as “literate”? Or did we slide backwards?
If we have to talk about this in terms of “grade levels”, at what point is someone actually considered illiterate?
Measuring two different things. Your number: can read the words, mostly understand the words they read.
6th graders are generally literate. However, they're not necessarily picking up on nuance, or subtleties. And they will often not take into account how the sentence they just read fits into the overall context of the piece, and they likely won't question the narrator, assuming they're reliable.
You can imagine how half of adults being that bad at these things has colored political discourse.
However, they’re not necessarily picking up on nuance, or subtleties. And they will often not take into account how the sentence they just read fits into the overall context of the piece
Which explains sooo many internet arguments.
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There's different levels of literacy as well. If we take things like math literacy and functional literacy into account (things like doing your taxes or filling out government forms), something like 60% of the adult population is functionally illiterate (below a third grade level) in at least one area.
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I've known several men that were proud that they didn't read books. (Not that they read manga or anything, either.)
One of them, in particuular, was a grown up version of a stereotypical highschool bully. Willfully ignorant doesn't begin to describe him. I ever meet him in a dark alley, I'd fucking gut him.
Anyhow, this behaviour (pride in ignorance) among women is rare enough that I've never seen it. When I was doing online dating, I had great success asking what they're reading and using decent grammar and vocabulary.
Anti-intellectualism and willfull ignorance have a lot to do with the situation here in the US. I think it's mostly a male problem as well.
Have you ever done any sort of IT support? I was internal IT in my first job and we had those people. It was mostly women 50+ years old who were proud that they know nothing about computers and would actively avoid listening when I tried to tell them how to do something trivial. Even when it was part of their jobs to do it. Then they would ask for help with the same stupid shit a few weeks later.
Fucking hell, so much this. They're so goddamn proud of their ignorance. This is why I enforce a very strict "we're mechanics, not chauffeurs" policy in my team. We've got no duty - either literal or moral - to make up for incompetence.
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Highschool bullies are just a grown up version of middle school bullies. That shit was supposed to stop there.
And many of them never grow out of it and become President.
I read a lot of science fiction, and a younger friends at work frequently asked me for recommendations, and he liked talking about the books after reading them. At some point I found out that he exclusively consumes them as audiobooks, which is fine and I didn't think much about it. Some years down the line, when I was getting ready to retire, I had to pass on things to him. There was enough of it that, in addition to working elbow-to-elbow with him, I documented all the details in some long emails. When we meet, I'd say "The details are in the email," and focus on explaining the big picture.
It became obvious that he never read the emails. When I talked to him about it, he admitted that he really struggles with any long block of text. The guy is really smart, and he knows a lot about a lot of things, but he gets all his info from audio and video because struggles to consume text. There's clearly some kind of learning/mental issue going on there. It's going to make the job tough for him, but I hope he works it out.
That is so crazy for me on a personal level because I'm the exact opposite. My brain has a really hard time processing auditory instructions.
Seriously, written guide > > > > > > > video guide
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If only everyone recorded personal logs like in Star Trek you could have just bequeathed him those! On a serious note though, good on them for trying to learn and expand their knowledge even with some sort of learning disability. I was diagnosed with ADHD like 30 years ago and I understand how troubling it can be trying to read things while constantly having to re-read sentences because you spaced out, or having to keep 5 browser tabs open because each new section brings up some other topic that I now need. I describe my learning/throught process as a spider web for good reason.
I actually prefer text for the same reason. No need to pause and rewind, then once again forget what I wanted to hear and go back for the 4th time.
I by far prefer text for things that matter.
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Do note: The US public education system has raised a significant number of younger millennials, genZ, and gen-α (especially in impoverished areas) to be functionally illiterate due to both profiteering and desire to destroy education. Effectively, they switched to literacy programs meant to help people with cognitive disabilities somewhat function in a world that has writing everywhere. This does not teach people how to read or comprehend. It also robs them of capacity to self-learn from texts.
So, there's a massive cohort of people whose parents and/or caregivers were not able to be spend time teaching this extremely important skill who are likely below 6th grade reading level.
I heard schools have largely moved away from Phonics, which is wild to me. That's basically how reading was taught going back to at least medieval monks.
I hear they're using a "look and see" method or something? Word is that its how the Chinese teach their students to read....but they don't have an alphabet, so I don't know how that's supposed to work in English.
I have a relative who just retired from teaching and she says its a real mess in early education because of how badly this reading teaching method works, and its only worsening as students mature.
There was a "program" that had been gaining popularity for years, put out by what are effectively scammers that denounced phonics for "sight reading" where kids were basically asked to guess what words were when next to pictures. This has largely been rejected and phonics reimplemented as it was a disaster
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Fuck by chapter book I thought they're talking about Warhammer 40k novel about a specific Space Marine chapter and they're disappointed because they don't want to read 40k novels.
i thought "chapter book" meant a loooong novel being released in book sized chapters one by one like TV show episodes
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You're in too deep brother!
I had to search it to understand the post. Well, that's a weird name to describe a normal book for children.
The problem with comic books is that they're all about this big flashy pictures and they never have any words in them. Oh well, anyway, off to read some more Chainsaw Man and One Punch...
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No one’s talking about anon’s weird assumption that authors go from idea directly to manga, and not that most authors start by writing a novel to attract a sponsor.
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Chapter books belong in the Chapter House (Dune)
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