My counterargument would be about why you need to lift weights in the first place ?
Some people like lifting weight, sure. But if your goal is to carry injured big dogs in your medical center, you won't be lifting random weights, nor doing generic workout. And you might not even do that in a gym, you could as well train with healthy dogs and get an actual feel of their weight distribution.
For books it goes the same. Reading stuff that will actually help you and bring you closer to your goals will help a lot more than reading for reading. On the other side you'll be able to go through thousands of page if the subject matters to you, where reading dumb prose will kill your attention in matters of minutes.
Learning to plow through uninteresting books for the sake of it doesn't sound like a worthwhile use of someone's time. But yes, just like workout, some people enjoy the effort in itself and like to feel the pain.
> Learning to plow through uninteresting books for the sake of it doesn't sound like a worthwhile use of someone's time.
Of course not, but that's just a very specific edge case of "go read books".
When I recommend for someone to go read a book, I consider it implied that they should find good, interesting and constructive books to read, not the opposite.
I personally think reading is as objectively good for the mind as walking is for the body.
Walking is objectively good and healthy for everybody and anybody, bar physical conditions and edge cases.
However, you could go walk in weird ways in boring or dangerous and unhealthy places and that's not ideal, but who would purposefully do that?
Some people like lifting weight, sure. But if your goal is to carry injured big dogs in your medical center, you won't be lifting random weights, nor doing generic workout. And you might not even do that in a gym, you could as well train with healthy dogs and get an actual feel of their weight distribution.
For books it goes the same. Reading stuff that will actually help you and bring you closer to your goals will help a lot more than reading for reading. On the other side you'll be able to go through thousands of page if the subject matters to you, where reading dumb prose will kill your attention in matters of minutes.
Learning to plow through uninteresting books for the sake of it doesn't sound like a worthwhile use of someone's time. But yes, just like workout, some people enjoy the effort in itself and like to feel the pain.