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I haven’t read anything in almost a year. I’m functionally illiterate.
I’m a functionally illiterate software developer
In 2020 I bought a new tablet just so I could get back to reading books.
99% of time I’ve used it for YouTube.
I’m getting back to reading more ebooks just now, OK?
(A local ebook store said it’s quitting this month. As I was transferring my EPUB purchases to Google Play Books, I realised I hadn’t actually used this app for ages. Despite, you know, it being one of the few ebook readers I like.)
You might try out FBReader. It has lots of options to customize it, and you can store your books in Calibre where it can access them via OPDS instead of getting locked into some online BS like Google.
Oh wow, FBReader was literally the first Android EPUB reader I used… In 2013 or so. I guess I need to see how it has improved since then.
Also, Calibre and I have a strong frenemies relationship. Once upon a time I wanted to meticulously download, de-DRM, catalog and locally archive all of my ebooks. But while Calibre has the technological chops to do it, usability is a bit quirky. I actually just installed Calibre at my current system and will bring over my old ebook library as soon as I dig up my old laptop. And also bring over about a decade of Kindle purchases (most unread, yeah).
Edit: Wikipedia on FBReader:
In 2015 the software for all platforms became closed-source: the old open-source code hasn’t been updated since. The Android app was split into Free and Premium versions,
Awwwww crap. Hope there’s an actually maintained open source fork.
I really love calibre, but agree it can be a bit quirky. Like many ADHD people, I’m my own worst enemy sometimes, when I attempt to do a big import of books and then it’s too much work and my library gets messy. Something I did that helped was I had different tags for different levels of processed. Newly imported books would be auto-tagged “new”. Then I’d batch process them and remove the tag if I fully completed it. Often I’d burn out when I’d discover a book that still had DRM, or was missing OCR (ability to select text within pdf), so I’d add “DRM” or “NoOCR” tags. My workflow works pretty well for me now, because I’ve made it easier to do half a job
True! One of the big things that really put me off from reading ebooks was that I used to buy book bundles (e.g. from HumbleBundle) and then just dumped them in my library. I really should have been cataloging each new book bundle, but I didn’t, somehow. I just saw a giant big mess of my own doing in the ebook library and went “nope” and that just became another Big Pile of Stuff I Need To Deal With Later.
Was about to say “that’s just ADHD” but then I saw the community
also fits depression
Well, not the sit still or focus issues, but the same result, an interest with no ability to act on it
ah, reading comprehension is not happening today apparently lol
yep, can confirm
It’s also not just ADHD. That happens to me a lot.
Wait
It’s not even reading the book, it’s getting ready to read the book. Very frustrating
Don’t forget getting ready to get ready to read the book.
I have this WHILE reading. I’ll just start reading a page, and after the first words my mind wanders, but my eyes keep reading the words. Then when I reach the end of the page I realize that I have no idea what I just read.
For me, I can usually get out of this by taking a walk. No headphones, just listening to my surroundings. Helps me to clear my head. Or a workout.
Then you have to go back and reread…it was a big reason why when I took tests back in the day I would do horribly on them. Math, science, and anything that was non literate I would do great on.
I enjoy doing this. I’m usually thinking about the book I’m reading, so, while it might take me twice as long to finish a book, I also got to experience much more of the book, even if it was just my imagination.
Of course, it’s an absolute bitch when it’s something I have to read within a certain time frame, like for school or something.
Audiobooks with video games that don’t have dialogue are what got me into books
I have a handful of “low focus” games for podcasts, audiobooks, youtube video essays, etc.
Vampire Survivors, or almost any “bullet heaven” type game works well. Old School Runescape also has a ton of ways to skill grind with minimal attention needed. Turn based RPGs with minimal story are great too.
Played through a handful of Pokemon randomizers and romhacks while binging King of the Hill.
But the king for me for a while was Elite: Dangerous. Hop in my cargo ship, use spansh road to riches to generate a trading route, and binge stuff while flying fron planet to planet in supercruise.
OSRS player here with 20 years under my belt for RuneScape as a whole and the amount of books I’ve read throughout those years is astronomical.
Interesting idea. Which games did you like?
Binding of isaac and many rougelikes fit pretty well, a lot have vert good music but I like taking on a book more(also book recommendations would be the golgatha series for magical wild west, johannes cabal series that’s the adventures of a decent but unfriendly necromancer, john dies at the end is a cosmic horror comedy series, space team is stupid fun scifi, oh and the black company follows a fantasy mercenary group who are sine of the very best but also too threatening to not be betrayed by the employers that’s mostly told from the perspective of their medic
Sounds like some good book recommendations. I like black comedy and scifi. John Dies at the End is one that I’ve heard of before. Thanks!
Also, Gamer’s block. You want to play. You finally have the time to play. You have a pile of games that you’ve been wanting to get through, but you just can’t devote the time to it. It’s like a form of procrastination, except instead of procrastinating about chores/responsibilities, you’re procrastinating about your free time. In a way, some books/games kind of become a new “responsibility”, in that once you start them, you may feel obligated to continue. So then it becomes one more thing you “have” to do.
All first world problems, maybe not as high-stakes as Kanye’s problems, but problems nonetheless.
I feel this one hard.
In my mind, before I can play a game, I need to have lots of time, nothing else that I’m doing later, and the perfect amount of energy to really concentrate on it. Unfortunately, life has gotten busy, so I’m trying to get more comfortable playing for 20min here, 20min there instead of scrolling on my phone.
I partially solved this by getting a Steam Deck and playing on my commutes. I can’t say I’ve been plowing through my backlog, but I’m certainly making progress!
I’ve been reading House of Leaves and I’m struggling to get through it because the characters are just abrasive fuckheads tbh. Only halfway through after like two months.
Are you able to give a short summary what it’s about? I’ve had a few people saying it’s fantastic and very special to them but I didn’t really get much of an answer why. And trying to find anything on the internet hasn’t been successful to the point where I get what’s so appealing about it.
I could of course just try reading it for myself but it’s currently in a backlog along with quite a few other books :P
People like to gatekeep it because it’s unique in its formatting and style.
Basically it’s a story with a ton of nested framing devices. You have:
- A guy named Navidson whose house keeps changing its geometry, until one day an infinite, sprawling series of corridors opens up, which he then explores with a team of professionals. Navidson is a jealous asshole who constantly gets into ego battles with every man around him.
- A guy named Zampano, who is writing a pseudo-academic analysis of Navidson’s journey, stating that it all happened in a movie. Zampano is a paper-thin character who is only really incidentally connected to the story and doesn’t get a ton of development until you’re far into the novel.
- A guy named Johnny, who finds Zampano’s writings after he dies and reads them/adds footnotes. Johnny is our main perspective character and is, imo, an irredeemable womanizer who probably has schizophrenia. I swear half his scenes are him boning some random woman he just met, and the other half are word salad or incoherent stories that draw vague parallels to Zampano’s writings.
- “The editors”, who are compiling all of these notes and footnotes into a book with appendices, which is canonically what you’re reading as the end user.
The story unfolds in a way that invites you to read through footnotes, appendices, and sprawling side-narratives to a point where you can just get lost in random threads. Some people really like that, I find it annoying. It would be more involving if the characters were better. Even the side characters are mostly just assholes or set dressing, and every woman in the story is a loose slut to a point where it’s weird.
Thanks for the explanation :D I remember some of the things I found out before and now it finally makes more sense. I saw some of the names you mentioned but it never clicked for me that it’s (in-universe) multiple people’s writings that make up the book. It definitely sounds interesting, and I’m fearing and looking forward to how cringe-worthy the characters can get.
I just gave up on reading. It simply does not provide enough brain stimulation for the time it takes.
There are some books I want to read but I wont, and thats fine I guess.
Try audiobooks. It got me out of that kid of block. Can listen during showers, commutes, doing chores. It’s great!
can’t relate, my reader’s block is that i could follow 100 stories with daily chapter releases and i’d still read them all in 5 minutes and then sit there crying because i’m bored out of my mind
I’m both. Somehow. I apparently switch between them.
Are there any resources on how to potentially improve this? I know audiobooks, but I do really want to actually read. I did talk to my therapist in the past about it but they were no help.
I second the ereader suggestion. Since buying one I’ve been reading at the same insane rate I used to when I was a bored kid. It’s a lower barrier to reading when there isn’t a massive pile of books infront of you.
Yeah I do have one and the other commenter idea of having it in the bathroom is a good idea. Though I do have a lot of physical books I want to reach that are psychology and programming related. So trying to more figure out those.
Though on my e-reader I right now have 3 books 33% finished 😂 (though two are anthologies of multiple books or stories so at least there is that)
Personally, I used to be pressured to finish books I’m halfway through but I’ve since learnt that it’s so much better to quit books you just don’t like. Good books (subjective to you) are ones where it doesn’t feel like work to read. That being said I torrent most of mine, I can see how it’s different if you bought em.
As for textbooks, I’ve found no satisfactory way to read them except on a pc.
I don’t know if this only makes a difference for me, but in case others find it useful: I use an e-reader and set it to have very large font size, resulting in a small amount of content per page. For some reason, when I spend too much time on a page, my mind starts to wander, but if I’m moving on to the next page quickly, I feel more engaged and stay with it more easily.
That actually did help me a lot, I think the feeling of finishing a page even though you technically didn’t helps keep up the satisfaction as you don’t feel like there is this monumental amount of reading left to do. I know with books sometimes I’ll be reading, stop, look at the amount I have left, and it discourages me to continue.
less screen time.
train your brain to stop expecting the instant gratification that your phone brings you.
That’s definitely too basic. I work on a screen all day and use my phone for communication as much as anything. I could block apps but that hasn’t changed my behaviors. Also we have a neurodivegence which inherently can’t distinguish the importance of stimuli so I just replace one distraction with another.
ok, keep whining and making excuses for yourself i guess? jesus
if you are unhappy with yourself the only person who is going to fix it for you is you. but i guess you don’t really care.
If it really were as simple as you make it out to be, we wouldn’t be here now, would we? What an asshole.
This seems unnecessarily hostile. I think your original comment makes a good point, as does the person replying to you. If you don’t want to be a part of a discussion, then fair enough, but this is an oddly judgemental comment to be making.
reality is hostile and unforgiving… it doesn’t care about your sentiments and wishes. it cares about your results.
true that most folks dont’ want to acknowledge that and want to live in a hugbox of sentiment and positive intentions and be told they are great as they are. but that’s not how we effect change in our lives… we simply have to go out of our comfort box and do it.
Is that really what you want, to be a part of perpetuating hostility? I legitimately don’t understand why the tone escalated so much: You said use screens less, someone replied to you with a few reasons why that might not be possible for some people, and in your reply to that, you just sort of blew up?
The reality is that most people are less patient than I am and will just downvote and move along. Maybe I should have too, but I thought that your original comment had the potential to seed an interesting discussion. I could say more here, but it’s not my job to convince you of the merits of not being an asshole in a world where that niche is already more than fulfilled. And who am I to talk, maybe negating discussion and getting downvotes are the results you want
You are literally telling a psychologist that you know better about how this works. Also I’m not unhappy with myself, I love myself. I also know there are things I can do to improve and am seeking advice from my community to do so. Your advice basically boils down to “just stop lol” which would not be helpful at all to anyone for anything.
I also specifically asked for resources, not your opinions, so do keep them to yourself in the future.
I remember a few years back, after I finished my university exams (which were online), I was desperate for a break from a screen, but all of the things I would do to chill out from exams (namely, spending time with friends) was mediated by a screen.
I know it can be really difficult to listen to the advice to “turn off all distractions” when I need to interact with technology in order to do most things besides my martial arts and spending time with my partner. I also rarely keep to a habit or just reducing something, I need to replace it with something that pushes me to do something else which isn’t easy.
Something that I’ve found useful is finding ways of leveraging inertia[1]. A big part of this is using separate devices for different things. Some people find it useful to have a clear divide between work devices and personal, but that’s never worked for me, I tend to separate contexts. I’m getting too abstract, so I’ll bring it back with a few concrete examples:
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If I decide to take a break and do something fun on my laptop, I might sit somewhere out of reach of my charger, which limits me to around 2 hours of battery life. If I have to get up to put my laptop on charge, I find it easier to change task back to working if I’m already up.
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If I am gaming on my PC and want to wrap that up but am at risk of a “just 10 more minutes”, I might order takeout (if I remember to eat), because that’s another forced stop to my task and when I’m up, it’s much easier to honestly ask “is gaming what I want/need to be doing right now” than it is when I’m mid-game
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If a friend I want to reply to has messaged me when I need to work, I may make myself reply to them from my main computer at my desk, because I’m less likely to get stuck doomscrolling on my phone in bed in that world.
Inertia definition below, in case you or anyone else reading this are unfamiliar with it in this context: [1]: a term borrowed from physics, which means basically the same in the neurodivergent context as it does in physics: an object in rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion, UNLESS acted on by an outside force. In an ADHD sense, this captures some aspects of task switching; procrastination and task activation; hyper focusing and cycles where you do lots and then crash.
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I have an e-ink ereader (Kobo Libra Colour) that makes it way less intimidating. Just turn it on any time and read just as much as you can whenever you find a moment.
I’ve got a Kindle that rarely leaves the bathroom anymore, for this reason. Captive audience with a few minutes to kill? Sure, I can get through a chapter…
Aka ADD
It’s called Burnout.
Look at the sub you’re on
oops :)
Is there such a thing as ADHD burnout similar to Autistic burnout? Might be at least not as far of topic then :)
This is the same reason why watching a movie on TV with ads is easier than pulling it up on whatever service you use.
Once you choose the movie, you’re committed to it.
I get this with games too. And shows. And end up just scrolling Lemmy instead of doing anything better with my time…
I am exactly the same; why are we like this?
two reasons:
- because we’re so drained by life that we don’t even have the energy to put forward to doing an activity that we know will enjoy.
- we’re so used to having to scrounge together any free time we can get that we struggle to commit to something that takes any amount of time.
There is another reason: the guilty feeling that something more productive could be done within that time. Or in the wise words of Retro Bird on YouTube, “I don’t deserve to Donkey Kong”
