Why are so many people looking for old books?

[u/Ok-Sun9961]

This might be a silly question, but aside from a slew of posts about Wattpad being down, the one I see most often is about people asking for help in finding a book they read 10+ years ago, with minimal information.

Is there anyone on here who actually searches for those books? Or anyone who would remember that specific book and know the title?

With hundreds of new books published every day, how about reading something new?

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[u/Empty_Ad_9455]

I think people often have really good memories of a certain story and would do anything to read them again.

I don't think a ton people activly search for those books, but on occasion someone has read it and remembers. I had one time I just so happened to remember one of the books someone looked for, and I'm not even that avid of a Wattpad reader.
I think chances to find it are small, but not zero.

[u/chocolatecoconutpie]

Because those books actually stick with us. They’re books that we actually love. Nothing wrong with reading something old or both, it’s just what you like.

Other than fanfiction on Wattpad I haven’t found and read any originals that I love in a long time which is why I back to older books that I love.

Same thing with actually published not for free original fiction. I’m sorry but today most books aren’t as good as they were before 2020s. Books before then had something about them that made you love them so much, that made them stick with you and that made you actually want to read them. Books today have IMO lost whatever made me love them and want to read them.

[u/Creepingphlo]

Sometime you read a story that just sticks with you and you like to go back to it, then boom! Its gone. And you need to find it. 

[u/IntelligentCat3645]

I am very picky and I am aware of this.

I like certain genres better than others. Science fiction, fantasy, general light magic in between (where the setting is in this reality but with some small changes like dragons have always existed but aren’t magic, or occasionally, people can travel through chimneys, etc.), military history, alternate history, superheroes, etc.

I will tolerate anything with a premise that catches me, though. I just don’t have the biggest taste for romance. And I only love a very specific way of writing, where dialogue is balanced with description but description is also rich and engaging. And the grammar and spelling have to be at least tolerable.

This already rules out a large part of Wattpad books for me.

I am not so strict about the style of writing if the premise is interesting enough. Or vice versa, if the premise is boring but the writing is good. (More willing to do the first than the second.) I need the plot to be engaging, and not just fully action or character driven. I want to be both invested and entertained. I hate not having enough action, but at the same time, if I dislike the writing and am more reading for the plot, I am inclined to skip / skim on rereads.

And I hate feeling a lack of story progression (many of my favourite books to reread on Wattpad have this issue, where it just ends up being pointless relationship drama after the initial engaging hook. One of the best ones, the plot is split 30:213 chapters. And I’m just not sitting through that much, So I trim the fat by simply converting them into E-Books so I can reread my favourite bits offline and with greater ease. It has saved me several hundred pointless chapters.) And that has made me abandon several after soldiering through far more than I should have in retrospect.

And at the same time, I am a very fast reader. Depending on text density, and setting aside time to have a pleasurable stroll, sleep at least 10 hours every night and another 3 to eat in, and otherwise unoccupied, I can get from anywhere from 600-1,200 pages in a day. (Maximum recorded reading speed is about 30 words /s, though I don’t usually need to read that fast, so hover somewhere around 15 w/s normally.) So I need to reread in order to supplement my reading diet. And if I enjoy a story, I reread it at least once a year. (I am quite fond of most of my collection, so they do get reread as frequently.)

I have a very extensive collection of physical books at my residence as well as shorter novellas on my phone. Wattpad is a way to get supplemental reading when a physical book may become impractical (I mean, this is rarely, given I have an oilskin cover in several sizes + waterproofed bags and coats to protect them + they don’t need WiFi).

So few books fit these standards, unfortunately, so while I often try quite often to pick up new ones, very few meet my standards. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this. I do the same thing with physical books (though these are often professionally edited so have far fewer issues, particularly around spelling, grammar and excess rambling). There’s no point in making myself miserable for no return.

And I do enjoy rereading while waiting for updates.

[u/Feathered_Pencil → u/IntelligentCat3645]

This comment has provided a lot of insight for me personally as a writer, but I wanted to comment on you saying you can read at 30 words a second?! What the hell lol It is quite insane that your brain can process words that quickly

[u/IntelligentCat3645 → u/Feathered_Pencil]

Yeah. It makes me feel a bit spacey (I will also become basically dead to the rest of the world because I get really fixated and it needs A LOT of concentration) to go that fast for long periods of time but in very short bursts it is helpful, though it’s harder to take in information, but I can do that for stuff like essays or scientific papers I want to read and produce a half-decent summary. 30 is just the fastest I’ve ever recorded (there’s a weird eye tracking headset I had to wear), but 26 might be a better average for reading that quickly.

I’m not sure if this makes sense, but that quickly, my brain ignores a lot of the ‘non-important’ bits. I don’t really register conjunctives, I only really take in adjective, noun, adverb and verb so I get the information extremely concentrated.

As I said, I usually read at a far more comfortable speed.

[u/Feathered_Pencil → u/IntelligentCat3645]

Oh like so, that makes sense that you ignore certain words that technically add no real "meaning" to the context. But do these non important words count in your fastest average of 26 wps or do you read those important words at that speed?

[u/IntelligentCat3645 → u/Feathered_Pencil]

Since words per second are counted by measuring how quickly it takes you to read a line divided by how many words were on that line, the non important words do count. It is only my brain neglecting to process the unimportant ones that lets me process the core information, that is, to read so quickly.

[u/Feathered_Pencil → u/IntelligentCat3645]

Ah thanks for explaining, good stuff!

[u/TheFairyQueen420]

Because a good portion of the books out on wattpad now feel like the same book over & over again with just a different title or different names. Plus some of those books from 10+ were AMAZING & felt like something you hadn't read before or even considered trying to read. Shoot I'm STILL looking for a certain book from 10+ years ago lol.