“After 8,280 hours’ reading, I’ve realised books are a waste of time”.

15th December 2024

“After 8,280 hours’ reading, I’ve realised books are a waste of time”.

That’s an eye-catching bit of click-bait, isn’t it!

In the Sunday Times (15 December 2024), Will Lloyd is standing in for Jeremy Clarkson (draw your own conclusions) and a full third of a page is devoted to this man’s article.

His inspiration for penning his piece was from an AI chatbot and, “with horror”, he learned that it takes ten hours to read a 300 page novel. I think, that if you are a regular reader – which he seems to have been – you probably know roughly how long it takes to read a novel of that size, but perhaps I am just more aware of what I usefully do with my time .

Much of his discontent seems to come from ploughing on with Robert Musil’s 1000 page “The Man Without Qualities” (it seems the writer of this column didn’t notice the irony of his choice) but anyway, it took him 7 months to wade through it (why would you do that?), and having recuperated from that experience, he consequently seems to have lost his reading mojo (understandable), and is now earning a few quid penning some nonsense for The Sunday Times.

He mentions the notion that reading fosters empathy but then goes down the rabbit hole of repeating the suggestion that wayward male youngsters should read Sally Rooney (whilst doing a glib hatchet job on her work). What a daft idea. He chooses not to engage with the widely held notion that  “Yes, research suggests that reading, particularly fiction, can significantly increase a person’s empathy” (just like him, I got that from an AI chatbot). In all seriousness, the cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley suggests that people who read fiction may improve their social skills each time they open a novel; further, as we begin to identify with the characters, we start to consider characters’ goals and desires instead of our own. How is that for modelling an empathic response, a transferable skill that can be used in everyday life!

He also randomly takes a pop at audiobooks. A single sentence apropos of nothing: “Audiobooks do not count as reading” – he clearly has chosen to ignore the innumerable debates on Social Media that state the contrary (catch our blogpost Is Listening to an Audiobook The Same as Reading a Book. Is it Cheating?) Reading and listening, in fact, stimulate the same part of the brain.

One essential factor Will Lloyd has overlooked, is the learning that can so often be had from reading. I love to find out new things and facts and views, and so many books – including novels – inform and educate in a non-didactic way. Not, of course, forgetting to mention that you can so easily travel through the pages of a book and explore distant and familiar lands through the eyes of an author.

Why have I bothered responding to this article? Deep reading might end in our lifetime, he states, but that feels like the old disproven adage that Kindles would signify the end of print copies. It’s a fluid industry that adapts well as society moves on and evolves. And people will always want to read, some more than others, and some just like to dip their toe in the water every now and then. It’s all ok.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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