Do you enjoy reading?

This is my first survey - so any comments on both what you liked and didn't like about it would be appreciated.

I used to read several books a week when I travelled on public transport, unfortunately since I stopped taking it I don't get as much reading done as I'd like. I am very much a book addict though.

Love love love love love love reading.

I have plenty of time for reading, I just wish I used more of my time that way.

I love to read :)

I read everything.

It is my second favorite thing in the universe.

I'm always reading books & magazines I would be very board if I could not read I read every day

patty- bored :)

Reading is my #1 activity.

I read fairly compulsively, and it would be interesting to cut back and see what that does to my life... I often say that books are my sole remaining vice.

love to read, wish i could do more than i do!!!!

I love to read! Even in college, I managed to set aside two hours a day to engross myself in a book.

I would read a lot more if I didn't have to do so much reading for my college classes. :)

I love to read, but once I am done with one book I have a real hard time to get 'into' an other book. I do not enjoy reading magazines and articles to the same extent as books.

I like writing too.

What a weird question...

it annoys me when people find reading distasteful. how are you supposed to learn things if you don't read?

I love to read, simply relaxing and loosing myself in a well written book.

Loosing yourself? That sounds like it could be pretty gross.

I have so many unread books on my shelves...i want to read them all, but what do I do instead? I sit in front of the computer and answer these surveys!!!

Hey, it's mags! Welcome mags!

Reading is one of the most satisfying leisure activities around. I tend to read non-fiction style so I improve my knowledge as well as my vocabulary. In fact reading improves your general intelligence dramatically. Kill your television! :)

I love it...adore it...can't get enough words...gimme gimme words...sentences phrases paragraphs...more
more...faster...harder...*screams and falls down on top of a pile of books*

I cain't read.

I love to read, wish I had time to read more.
taking public transit to work gives me more time to read, but also presents more distractions.

EEK! another laylah! Doppleganger!

I love to read. It's like taking a mini-vacation!

I got a Nancy Drew from a friend. Her poem inside the cover went -
Cranes 'n' Chrysanthe m
Short complaint: wom b man who shoes. She walked and she walked Toulouse. She MOURNING. She PINKS 'n' blues, forever and News.
Flowers and Crows.
I'm still trying to figure it out, she left me a message on my phone to stay away from SC and tell my 'Celeste' personality she was beautiful.
Anyhow, the Nancy Drew wasn't nearly as good as i remember. I think i used to read the 1930 editions, not the 1961 or 1989 versions, cause i really doubt she was wearing 'slacks' in the ones i read, and there was a different mood. I'll have to try one of the old ones to compare, or just find something adult to read. i know i like funny stuff like the hitchhikers guide.

Speaking of Nancy Drew, Mabel Maney has a series of books about Nancy Clue, the Hardly Boys, and Cherry Aimless. Very queer, *very* funny.

I verified they exist, (ya never know what people are trying to say around here.) I'll look for them.

Just recently have realized how much I love reading and miss reading novels.

I LIVE to READ. In fact, when I finish a book, I feel I can`t function until I start another.

I read sporadically...sometimes i forget to come up for air for days...or i can go for weeks without reading anything I don't have to..

Reading is kinda boring when you have the option of StarCraft over battle.net...

I have noticed an ever growing concentration on ideas,
not on the way they were exposed. So that I have
found, sometimes, not enough strength to read even
some very good literature until its end, but have
been chasing - ideas, in order to catch their
"vibration" and how it could touch me.

I enjoy reading the Bible, the best Book in the world, I also like to read about Chinese Medicine. I like history. I like to read primarily non-fiction books. I, at times, will read a historical romance book, but rarely.

Reading is a good escape for me. I read any and everything. If there is a magazine or newspaper lying near me, I have to pick it up and start flipping through it.

I'm of a mind with the late Frank Zappa on this one: I'm glad that books exist, but personally they make me sleepy. I can rarely get through ten pages without becoming irresistibly drowsy, so as a result I rarely read books. When I do read, it's typically short-attention-span stuff like periodicals.

I've celebrated the end of nearly every semester in grad school with a trip to the local bookstore to get lots of fiction and humor :)

I like to read, but don't have time.

I love books! I often find myself not doing homework because I am engrossed in my reading.

I do like reading but not all the time and I am very picky about the books I read.

I read all day long!

CHILTONS!!!!!!!

I'm mostly into mysticism like druidism, Jewish mysticism..so on, so forth. I really liked the "Conversations with God" books by Niele Donald Walsh. Those tied a lot of things together for me.

micah: what sorts of Jewish mysticism are you into?

micah - I enjoyed those books, too. I think I need to read them again.

*SueBee-It's required to read them all at least 10 times! It's good for you.
Enheduanna- I'm reading a book right now called 'Kabbalah:An introduction and illumination for the world today' by Charles Ponce. It sucks. It's like eating peanut butter with no milk, but it's good for my purpose because it's supercondensed with info. I really enjoy making connections between different systems, like the Golden Dawn has done with magical practices. I've felt like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit lately. More input!

micah: Have you read anything by Moshe Idel? He is one of the leading scholars on Kabbalah--I'd recommend anything by him. His work might be hard to follow, too--it will certainly be academic, but he's good and knows what he's talking about. Eliot Wolffson is another good one.

I'm just finishing "A Kind of Loving" by Stan Barstow... sheer and utter marvelocity!!!!!

Enhe...Is Moshe Idel a rabbi or something?

micah: nope, a scholar at Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis

Enhe: Have you read his stuff? Is it boring, or have yerky jerky starts and stops? 'Cause the one I'm reading now is not very entertaining. There's no creativity put into it. Usually books keep me awake at night but this one is having the opposite effect.

micah: y'know, I read some of his stuff a few years ago, and I don't remember tons about it. I think probably some parts of it are boring, but some parts are more interesting. Mysticism is not my specific focus, so I'm not that up on it, but I do know that Idel is an expert in the field.

Who is this Idel and where can I find (her?)? Bring me to your leader!

micah: He's a him, actually. I would imagine that a good university library would have at least some of his books--are you near UCSD? And/or can you use their library? (I would imagine so.) You could also do a search for some of his articles there. And I'll look to see if I have any references for articles when I get home in about a week.

you could also just go to amazon.com and search in books under author "idel, moshe," and it comes up with a whole bunch of stuff. A few things just by him, and some other volumes that he contributed to or helped edit.

Enhe-Thanks. UCSD is definitely an option. That's probably where I'm going after Palomar.

I can't say "I don't like reading", i just don't feel like finishing it.

micah: Palomar? As in the observatory or what?
Also, if you're at the library at UCSD, you could use FirstSearch or the ATLA religion index (if they have it) to look for articles by him.

I haven't read a book in ages, I use to love it, I would spend all of my spare time doing it. Not these days, I don't even have time to sleep, let alone read.

I love reading all kinds of different books, magazines, etc. I read science magazines and books, map books, encyclopedias, science fiction, fantasy, history, how-to, religious, language learning (because I want to, not because I have to). I love reading!

Enhe- Although Palomar Observatory would be nice, I meant Palomar Community College. Funny coincidence, I'm studying Astronomy right now.

micah: cool--my father's an astronomer, and we used to go to the observatory at Palomar when I was little. They had a guest house where we'd stay while Dad had an observing run.

Enhe: Impressive, most impressive. I was told that to get time on a telescope like that, you have to wait months after having your request accepted. You need a really good reason to use the telescope.

Well, he was a staff member at a place that I think basically "owned" some time on the telescope, so it might not have been exactly the same kind of waiting process (I could be wrong about this; it's also possible that he did have to wait to get time--I'm not familiar with the process).

Lucky ducky. I've visited the observatory several times but only got into the public rooms. Did you get to see any machinery? If so, what was it like?

Yeah, I've been in the 200" there (and probably others, although I don't remember--we have a bunch of pictures from when phi and I were little, sitting on Dad's lap at one of the telescopes). It's basically a big metal telescope made out of what look like industrial-sized Erector Sets, inside a big metal dome. There are various machine and data rooms housed in the telescope building as well, most of which contain things I didn't understand and hence can't really describe. I haven't been there in a really long time, so the memories are a bit dim, although I do have a cool 8 x 10" black and white of the telescope itself hanging over my desk. The thing I remember most from Palomar, though, is getting dry ice out of the freezer and freezing cherries in it and eating them.
More recently, I've been to Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. My father's working on two new twin telescopes they're building there--6 or 6.5 meters (I can't remember--phi??). The telescope is a big blue mass, with no mirror in it when I saw it, although it's there now, and the dome is made of angled plates, rather than rounded. It also has lots of louvered panels in the walls (for ventilation, mostly) so a lot more light can get inside the dome during the day--it's much more open and airy than other domes. There are big holes near the mirror where instruments get attached, and huge hydraulic cables for moving it, and all in all it's pretty cool.

6.5 meters. The new generation of telescopes are to the 200" what a BMW is to a Model A -- lots of second- and third-order engineering. So there is all kinds of machinery for maintaining temperature stability in the telescope and the air around it, and for keeping the pointing system from eating itself, and so on.

I remember, around 1980 or so, steering the 200" with a joystick guided by an image from a Reticon (tube predecessor of a CCD) on a television monitor. I think this was part of one of the early galactic redshift surveys, perhaps the one that revealed the existence of the Bootes void. I remember riding up to the primary focus during the daytime in an incredibly rickety elevator -- I don't think anyone has actually observed from the primary focus since. I remember gobs and gobs of very "mad-scientist" computer equipment. Nowadays the instrumentation looks much more mundane.

Yeah, the data room at Magellan (the new 6.5" in Chile) has a bunch of normal-looking computers--no weird stuff at all.
I figured phi would have some more input on this!

CCD=charge-coupled doodad.

Ahhh... Done with A Kind of Loving... Really charmingly English book... I definately recommend it. Now I'm well into DH Lawrence's 'Sons and Lovers'~really good, but you've got to love English literature and reading...

More people should bother reading, forget about the ones you were forced to read and take time choosing ones you'd like,even that is fun because you can judge a book by its cover! There are books out there for almost everyone.

Wilbur Smith books - :):):):):)

I think reading is one of the best things to do, especially when you need some "time off" from life.

I hate reading!!!!! >

Reading is my first love for leisure time. My mother encouraged us to read and then regretted it because that's all I was ever doing!

I do most of my reading on the bus and subway, so now that I switched jobs and work further from home, I finish a book every 2-3 weeks. I'm so much happier!

I read articles and stuff on the net , but don't really enjoy or have time for novels .

These options suck.

Your opinion is obviously the minority. The survey has a very high rating. (68.9% at this time)

I believe this has been the highest rated survey overall on and off since it's creation. It is one of the best I've seen since I've been here.

It has, being the sad little egomaniac that I am I've noticed this

I enjoy reading books that interest me.

i read anything i see it seems

I find myself reading what the school forces me to read, but this reading is good.

I don't like reading books, but read plenty of magazines.

I just finished reading a book by Boris Starling called "Messiah". It's about a killer. I recommend this to everyone.

I LOVE reading, it's been one of my favorite things to do since I can remember. Some of my favorite books are Lord of the Flies, The Pact, and She's Come Undone. Please forgive me, I can't remember author's names.

William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies. According to amazon.com She's Come Undone was written by Wally Lamb. But at least three different authors have written novels called The Pact plus one writing one called simply Pact and another The Pact: A Love Story, so finding that author could be rather harder

Thank you. I am very forgetful.

I love to read true crime.

I absolutely LOVE to read. The biggest challenge I have is finding books. English language books are expensive here and there isn't a great selection. However, I buy quite a few books here and also have them shipped over from amazon.com. I also borrow books from the school where I used to teach.

Oh please....

"This Survey (6126) has been deleted."

What was it?

It was one in Qulaification

Juliep227 keep linking us to his surveys so we could qualify it!!

But we didn't because it sucked!

sure did.

I liked the way you said about 10 times

"Oh please....."