Is a Day Spent Reading Wasted?

[BookAndPiano]

I have spent the day reading Jane Eyre. I have done nothing else except get washed, dressed, make cups of tea and heat up soup.

I should go out for a walk, take down decorations and sort out some laundry.

I am now feeling guilty which has taken away some of my enjoyment.

How long is too long to ball up and read?

What's that @Fulmine ?

I try to carve out reading time but rarely get a full day.

A day spent reading a great work of literature like Jane Eyre certainly isn't wasted. Carl Sagan once said that the book is proof humans can work magic. Imagine trying to explain a book to an alien. Someone can record their thoughts, and if another human knows how to decipher the code, i.e 'read' the strange symbols, then she has access to the mind of someone dead for 500 years!! It's incredible.

But it's even better than that, because the classics aren't just any old thoughts expressed in any old language. They are the most profound thoughts expressed in the most beautiful language the human race is capable of. I often read out loud. When I read the words of Dickens or Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf, I have the uncanny feeling they are in the room. And in a sense they are. I am literally chanelling their minds. And the effect can be amazing. If I read a joyful, life-affirming writer like Patrick Fermor or P. G. Wodehouse or William Blake out loud for half an hour, I feel different. My mind has been altered, and my way of perceiving the world has been changed. That's magic.

If everyone in the country spent one day a week at home just reading the world would be a better place. There would be less traffic, less air pollution and fewer people in A&E for starters.

And people's stress levels would probably reduce, their attention spans would improve if they were reading books rather than scrolling and surfing, and their vocabularies and general knowledge would expand. (Even fiction can teach you things you didn't know.)

i sometimes spend time generating stories on grok, now i need to read them, as usually i skim when they are being generated