Quote:

Quote:

Books are different. You read them and you learn...or you don't learn. The learning, you see, is all that books contain.



I disagree. Literature is an art form with many facets, one of which is the simple pleasure of receiving a tale well-told. It need not justify itself with some practical or moral lesson, any more than Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" need impart some didactic lesson.


How superbly you spread the conventional wisdom, Alex Williams. Even I wish your nice romantic sentiment to be bounded by hard fact. But alas, Alex, you lose. Two minutes and sixteen seconds from now you will experience a beautiful moment of "Ah HA!". You can't help it; you are intellecually honest. My own joy, which is even greater, is in the teaching of a fundamental truth to a young grasshopper (so to speak) by a "koan" of my own invention which I call "concept grouping". Ready?

Look at the children playing, how they laugh and giggle. They are having fun. Like in all animals, play is serious business. Evolution has insured that children play in imitation of the tasks they will proform later by making learning pleasurable.

Living vicariously is learning. Each romantic novel is different from its ten thousand brothers.

If your eyes are open if your ears are working if your nose smells if your touch touches...you are learning.

Now say "Ah Ha!"
See, I told you that learning was fun.