I have never understood this attitude, honestly. Some of the most worthwhile things in life are difficult, literature included. Discarding things because they don't immediately grab your attention seems like a side effect of our low-attention span age.
It's perfectly reasonable to read a quarter/fifth of a book and decide that you don't like the style, premise or whatever. Sometimes I persevere and enjoy the book after all but perhaps that's just acclimatisation.
I have no problem with difficult things but in my free time I don’t want to force myself to do things I don’t enjoy. I have to do this already way too much at work.
Rather than "difficulty", consider ROI and opportunity cost.
If it's difficult, but you're learning a new skill, expanding your perspective or capacity, or enjoying the challenge, by all means, keep going.
If you're not enjoying it, and the payoff is just having completed it, and you could do a lot more valuable/enjoyable stuff with that time, then stop reading Finnegan's Wake, for goodness sake.
It's specially liberating in fiction works. You don't have to soldier through a big book you don't like, allow yourself to drop it in favor of a better one.
There's always the option of resuming it if you feel like it.
In the book "The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction", by Alan Jacobs, he advocates reading "at Whim". It was a welcome antidote to the notion that one ought read a lot and read "great" books. It's a good, quick read that will give some thought-provoking ideas about the reading life.
In my opinion, Stephen King might be the best English language novelist since the mid 1950s or so. I think people mostly look down on him because he's generally identified with horror, which is of course his typical genre -- but his work transcends the genre and is deeply literary.
Carrie should be on the bookshelf next to other somewhat recent masterpieces like the Grapes of Wrath, Invisible Man (Ellison's), Lord of the Flies, the Great Gatsby, and Ulysses.
I really don't get the goal of reading X books a year. The impact of reading comes from DOING THE THINGS that the books recommend to do. Often I'll speak to folks who call themselves "prolific readers", and it'll be obvious that they've retained a bit here or there-- but few are actually practicing those things!
Warren Buffet is cited as an example in this article. Sure he reads a lot, but most it consists of SEC filings and balance sheets. If you examine his quotes, you'll find he cites ONE book (the Intelligent Investor) over and over again. He read that one book, and LIVED it for decades. In my opinion, that's a much better goal than reading a book a week.
I care to disagree. I read for getting different perspective on life, having fun with ideas presented in a book. So I don't retain much and I don't care about "doing those things" because I am not going to be next Warren Buffet after reading his biography.
What reading does to my mind is that it shapes "personality". I am not going to live by the "How to win friends..." but what I got from it is to be more friendly and open to other people and to be more empathic. I think it kind of stayed with me even thou I read that book once and did not follow recommendations to live by it and challenge myself to do all stuff there is in that book.
Then if you read multiple books and see common ideas presented by many authors you kind of get really great insights that stay for longer than when you read one book. Because then you see that more than one person thinks that way.
I second this. Between fiction and non-fiction I read (or mostly listened to) 76 books last year and am currently in my 14th book this year.
I get contact to a lot of ideas from a lot of different points of view. I am literally bathing my brain in ideas from many different people. Especially when I am listening to fiction these ideas tend to mingle.
This year, as an additional step, I am playing with the ideas behind the so called 'Zettelkasten' to better structure the ideas I extract from the books. And to reach a higher level of retention.
Non the less I mostly listen to books to relax while commuting. So every idea I gain as additional knowledge is an extra win in my book.
This is the value I look for too, being able to see references to ideas in other fields. But I don’t know what it will be until I read and make the connection
See: Frequency illusion or Baader–Meinhof phenomenon
I think your advice is definitely sound for self-help books: unless you act on them they have no value, and given that most are bunk anyway reading a lot of them isn't going to help you.
If you are going to read a lot of books, then reading for pleasure (e.g. fiction) or books that are intended merely to convey information, is probably a better way to go.
It really depends on the kind of books you read. If you are reading a self-help book of some sort and you think its ideas are sound, sure, you should at least try to practice what it says. On the other hand, I don't think I am expected to jump under a train after reading Anna Karenina.
A book a month would be a more achievable goal, if still unreasonable if they're all technical books. You can't speed read technical books, specially if they're about new topics that require practical exercises.
Reading x books doesn't count as learning x topics.
I don't know if there are people who can learn complex topics by reading a book, but I certainly can't. Without any context, I can't keep enough of it in my head for long enough to build a mental model of the whole system. At best I'll come away with a vague familiarity with some of terminology. I have to actually implement parts of it to retain it.
Agree with this sentiment. With the exception of very specific topics that I've encountered in the wild but have no theoretical context on (e.g. Async JS), I have never been able to learn from a book. Tutorials/blog posts are great for this because you can stop and implement.
With technical books I find it very important to actually apply them. So one technical book per year may be enough. I made good money doing C++ for more than decade and had maybe 3 books that I understood more and more over the years.
Another thing with technical books is that you can read portions of them and interleave several books (or books + papers). I have 4 or 5 books going on at a time, and I make progress in each most weeks. Usually not all on one topic, either.
And then you can mix in other readings. A chapter in a technical book may only survey its particular material, but you may want to explore the ideas further. So you go out and get some papers to read or another book.
I may not finish many books in a year, but I do get a lot of reading in.
That's what I like about reading technical books. I have 3 books (textbooks, really) that I'm reading right now, and I don't feel like I have to finish one before picking up the other. I can read whatever I feel like reading.
Even though I love fiction, I couldn't pick up a second book from Stephen King without fully finishing the first. I'd lose interest in the first one otherwise.
A general rule of thumb: if a nonfiction book has been published in the past ±30 years, is about some vague new concept like "outliers" or "a Black Swan event", and is written by someone that hasn't spent decades working in their field: read the Wikipedia page or a summary instead. You'll save yourself hours and hours of time.
A book a week...for my career...how many hours do you want me to freaking work? I already spend 40 at this desk, I’d like a life outside of work, please.
Bringing up people like Warren Buffet constantly as capitalist idols and role models is horrifically annoying, too. Nobody’s going to become Warren Buffet by reading the same quantity of books as him.
I think the point is that reading more will improve you in many ways both in and outside of work. Of course if you have young children or ageing parents to take care of that's a different story but for most people the time spent looking at social media or playing games could be better spent reading.
I think that depends on what you're looking for. Technical books are always evolving. There's always new fiction. Self-improvement and business books, especially the best ones I find, are quite old.
I remember reading Fravia's essay about evaluating sources [0] (e.g. books) about 20 years ago and it was pretty good advice for me as a teenager. In my experience, being very picky about the choice of books pays off. There is no need to read 50 bad books per year if there are two excellent books you can spend a year with.
I'm not sure I agree with the assertion that podcasts are a bad way to engage with ideas in the way that books allow you to. Of course many podcasts don't do this or even proclaim to, but my experience has been that certain interviewers/podcasters are really good at laying out ideas or worldviews that you can then evaluate yourself.
The one downside is that they generally take more time to go through and it's hard to know beforehand whether what you are going to listen to is worthwhile
Conversations with Tyler is quite good - I don't agree with him on many things politically but he has a very idiosyncratic way of looking at things that has informed my own worldview
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 88.1 ms ] threadThis can be quite liberating. On the one hand it’s tempting to work through a book you don’t like but in the end this is often very exhausting.
I also used to look down on a lot of books but now I have no problem reading Stephen King. He is a damn good writer and fun to read.
People who walk out of films, though...
If it's difficult, but you're learning a new skill, expanding your perspective or capacity, or enjoying the challenge, by all means, keep going.
If you're not enjoying it, and the payoff is just having completed it, and you could do a lot more valuable/enjoyable stuff with that time, then stop reading Finnegan's Wake, for goodness sake.
There's always the option of resuming it if you feel like it.
Exactly. Sometimes you just aren’t in the right mood/phase if life or simply not ready for the material.
Maybe I'll try again soon, i'm honestly not sure why I've never finished, i like the storey well enough.
Carrie should be on the bookshelf next to other somewhat recent masterpieces like the Grapes of Wrath, Invisible Man (Ellison's), Lord of the Flies, the Great Gatsby, and Ulysses.
Warren Buffet is cited as an example in this article. Sure he reads a lot, but most it consists of SEC filings and balance sheets. If you examine his quotes, you'll find he cites ONE book (the Intelligent Investor) over and over again. He read that one book, and LIVED it for decades. In my opinion, that's a much better goal than reading a book a week.
What reading does to my mind is that it shapes "personality". I am not going to live by the "How to win friends..." but what I got from it is to be more friendly and open to other people and to be more empathic. I think it kind of stayed with me even thou I read that book once and did not follow recommendations to live by it and challenge myself to do all stuff there is in that book.
Then if you read multiple books and see common ideas presented by many authors you kind of get really great insights that stay for longer than when you read one book. Because then you see that more than one person thinks that way.
I get contact to a lot of ideas from a lot of different points of view. I am literally bathing my brain in ideas from many different people. Especially when I am listening to fiction these ideas tend to mingle.
This year, as an additional step, I am playing with the ideas behind the so called 'Zettelkasten' to better structure the ideas I extract from the books. And to reach a higher level of retention.
Non the less I mostly listen to books to relax while commuting. So every idea I gain as additional knowledge is an extra win in my book.
This is the value I look for too, being able to see references to ideas in other fields. But I don’t know what it will be until I read and make the connection
See: Frequency illusion or Baader–Meinhof phenomenon
If you are going to read a lot of books, then reading for pleasure (e.g. fiction) or books that are intended merely to convey information, is probably a better way to go.
It really depends on the kind of books you read. If you are reading a self-help book of some sort and you think its ideas are sound, sure, you should at least try to practice what it says. On the other hand, I don't think I am expected to jump under a train after reading Anna Karenina.
Reading x books doesn't count as learning x topics.
And then you can mix in other readings. A chapter in a technical book may only survey its particular material, but you may want to explore the ideas further. So you go out and get some papers to read or another book.
I may not finish many books in a year, but I do get a lot of reading in.
Even though I love fiction, I couldn't pick up a second book from Stephen King without fully finishing the first. I'd lose interest in the first one otherwise.
Bringing up people like Warren Buffet constantly as capitalist idols and role models is horrifically annoying, too. Nobody’s going to become Warren Buffet by reading the same quantity of books as him.
[0] https://fravia.2113.ch/evaluate.htm
The one downside is that they generally take more time to go through and it's hard to know beforehand whether what you are going to listen to is worthwhile
Everyone wants to read but don’t enjoy reading as much.
I have a hard time finding people with similar habits.
Most of my friends work on tech industry and is aware of benefits.