I just started reading The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, The First Complete Unexpurgated Text. I learned about them in school but we never got to the point of reading their actual speeches. I had to look up unexpurgated. It means containing the complete and original text uncensored. The practice was then as now for the newspapers to favor one candidate over the other which manifested itself in their reporting. In the absence of what we have now, these debates were a big deal and attracted a broad audience, since there was little in the way of other diversions.
Thanks for this very interesting discussion! I have to say that I still love to read, but my reading list is getting longer and longer. It's just that I'm too tired in the evenings. I've also noticed that many younger people just don't seem to read anymore...
When I was a teen, I read between 3-4 books a week. Now my eyes play tricks on me so it is not as easy.
That’s impressive! Reading 3–4 books a week as a teen is no small feat, though of course, those were different times. It’s unfortunate how our eyes can make it harder as we age. Have you tried audiobooks? They might be a great way to keep enjoying stories without straining your eyes.
I think that audiobooks can be a great way for people who have trouble reading because of bad eyesight ! Or, if they are just otherwise occupied but want to read a book as they drive somewhere or work around the house. My daughter used to have to drive a lot for her job, and she listened to audiobooks as she was driving to her new work area. She said she likes listening when she is just home doing housework, too. I now do all my reading with ebooks on the Kindle app, because I love how i can adjust the font size to fit my eyes, and it also changes color in the evenings, to help with not looking at that blue screen, which is bad for our eyes. I really like the dictionary that the kindle has and being able to easily look up words that i want more information about. Growing up, we did not have television, so reading in the evenings was what i did every day, and especially in the winter when it was too cold to be outside as much as in the summer. I have always been a reader, and enjoy it much more than watching television.
Yvonne the screen on my web is light and irritates my eyes. I tried adjusting it but can't, plus even more upsetting is the print is medium grey, I need black. Jake and I both tried to fix it. I don't even want to try anymore.
Never fixed. May never be fixed. Thats ok I can just wear my sunglasses, which at times I do at night. ' I Wear My Sunglasses At Night',
I believe that you said you use a laptop, and that is probably not a great device to be reading books on anyway. I definitely think that you would like a tablet a lot better for reading books, @Marie Mallery . Kindle tablets come in several sizes, styles, and prices, and they are great for reading books. You can set the print for as large as you want it, and even the style of font that you want, and the print is going to be a good black color, and not the grey color that is hard for you to see. You can adjust the lightness easily also. I have a small tablet that I use for reading books, and I really like it ! The screen brightness can be adjusted, plus it also corrects for the bad blue light after dark and turns into a warmer , more of a pale yellowish color instead of the blue-white that is bad for the eyes. There is a dictionary built in, so by just touching the word, I can find out all the meanings, and where the word originally came from. You can store hundreds of books on a tablet, as well as in the cloud and download when you want to read a book, and Kindle has books for free every day, so you can even build up a library and it does not cost you to do so. Right now, Amazon has some of their Kindle Fire tablets on sale, some for under $50, and they will make your online reading so much easier to do. https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Refurbished-Kindle-2022-release/dp/B09JRPMQ58/
I use a HDMI cable and use TV for computer screen. But brightness is still a little glaring after a while. It is ok since I look away often but reading books wouldn't be a good idea for me. Also Yvonne I don't have time to read much.
Okay, I missed that part, @Marie Mallery . The thread was about reading books, so I thought that was what you were referring to doing with your laptop, and I could see why that would be really hard. Ever since I got my first tablet, I hate having to do anything with a laptop, and having to use the TV as the screen would definitely make everything super hard to read anything. It is no wonder that you can’t adjust it properly to see to read. Having a tablet right in my hands and sitting in my comfy chair is just so perfect for me, and being able to adjust everything on it so that I can see what i am looking at; I sometimes think that this is what would be perfect for everyone else, too. I don’t have any suggestions for making the TV adjust any better either, sorry.
The print on a regular book, either a paperback or hardcover, is just too small and light-colored for me to read without doing a whole lot of squinting and literally “having my nose stuck in a book”; so having the tablet to read with works SO much better for me now, plus it is lightweight and easy to hold, unlike a large hardcover book. I prefer a hardcover book if I am going to be marking and highlighting pages, because it is a lot simpler to find than it is with the ebook, even when it is highlighted, at least for me. But just for everyday reading, having the ability to adjust the lighting and print size helps me a lot.
For the past few months I have been reading "real" books from the shelves in the den. Some I have read before but it was a long time ago so I've been enjoying them. The most annoying thing is that I read at the dinner table (while the husband has his TV earphones on watching a movie) and it's difficult to manage a book while eating. My Kindle has a little stand and I can turn a page with my knuckle.