Can you really call yourself a literate person if you read the same book

[WCGreen]

over and over and over again?

Hear me out.

Most of the books by fox pundits and right wing commentators write the same thing with just slight deviations to "personalize" them. (I personally believe they have one person tied to a rock in the bowels of Fox HQ who just types and types the same stuff infinitum.)

So if you just read to reinforce your own opinions, then can you consider yourself literate.

I gave up reading pop liberal books because they tended to become redundant after awhile. Not that they didn't offer some different insight into a situation or another way to look at the world, it's just that I have read enough of this genre so that I can now develop a personal liberal view of the world around me.

In fact, this broadening out of my world view has enabled me to digest information and set my bullshit detector on high no matter who is yakking. Plus I have rediscovered the wealth of history, literature and spiritual matters that I left behind when I graduated college and entered the "real world", whatever that means.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I think if you read the same book over and over again...

and you're unaware that you're doing that, that you think you're expanding your mind while you read...

Then you are literate, but only in the strictest meaning of that word.

There's no awareness of how you're being manipulated. And for sure the books of right wing commentators are manipulative.

The same is true for left-wing commentators and their books.

Literacy at that shallow level is just that: shallow.

More folks should do what you have done.

We would all benefit.

And the right-wingers would be the losers.

[Rex]

2. Sure, but it won't make you open-minded.

[teknomanzer]

3. I thought you were going to talk about bible beaters...

You know the type -- "the good book is the only book I need."

But you ended up going someplace else with that -- oh well.

[Journeyman]

4. Sure you can, if it's the dictionary . . .

'cause you know, all the other books are in there, you just have to sort out the order of the words.

[pinto]

5. I realize you're alluding to political commentary, yet I read a bunch of books

over again at times. (Or take a number of reads to get through a book).

Political opinion stuff I try to read in context of the time, the writer's point of view, the prevailing social view, if I'm familiar with it, etc.

[Luminous Animal]

6. I think you owe us your reading list...

What's "pop" in your opinion? I suspect you are reading crap.

[WCGreen]

10. Right now i am reading Sam Sheppards new short story collection and

adn Moral Clarity by Susan Neiman

[Luminous Animal]

15. Well that is precious. What I meant was...

your reading list that would support the premise of your OP.

[Speck Tater]

7. From the title I thought you meant people who read nothing but the Bible over and over again. nt

[WCGreen]

12. More like the people who read Bill O'Reilly's every word...

And think they are expanding their horizons.

[Ken Burch]

8. Yes....if it's really good literature....

Some of that that(and some great poetry)takes repeated readings to understand all the levels involved.

Reading "My Pet Goat" over and over again...? well, not so much.

[Morning Dew]

9. Does it count

that I read East Of Eden every three years?

[WCGreen]

11. If that was all you ever read then...

I have read the Grapes of Wraith twice.

I also read the Bible two different times in my life.

[Mojeoux]

13. you can have you own opinion, but don't try and say that rain don't fall and the sun don't set

Or that the cow jumped over the moon. Opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one.

[RoyGBiv]

14. This will probably get me flamed ...

Personally, I don't put much stock into what anyone says who can only cite one of the ubiquitous political books written by journalists (loosely defined). There's no academic rigor involved in any of them. They are generally a person or a group working through a person offering a worldview for which a market exists. This describes people like Anne Coulter perfectly. She exists because there is a market for her bullshit. Her writing however has the imprimatur of a third grader writing on the influence of the First Great Awakening on Revolutionary ideology.

Most of that stuff is fluff entertainment. Some of it is righteous outrage, but the people that publish it consider it entertainment and market it as such. The people that buy it tend to want to be entertained or read only that with which they agree.

I prefer academic books and articles. Even people with whom I disagree, if they show me they understand the professional literature on a subject, I will give them far more leeway than someone who simply quotes some individual who is merely preaching to the choir. I may never agree with them, and I may find their argument on a given subject idiotic, but I will at least respect the fact they are basing their opinions on something other than a modern-day version of Father Coughlin and his Ranting Elves.

[WCGreen]

16. that is spot on basically what I was talkng about...