I want to learn to read programming books, but it is utterly boring for me... I like programming. But reading books about it is, meh. May be a sign of ADHD, dont know...
Programming books are generally technical documentation, or close enough - of course they're boring to read. There's so much detail to programming you could spend the rest of your life reading documentation and feel like you barely scratched the surface.
The article suggests identifying the reason you want to read it. In your case, you should identify what kind of problem you're trying to solve (even if not in an actual project and just in your head, something like "how DOES a cloud server work?") and then get that specific knowledge out of the book, as deep as you want to go.
Programming books can be expensive though, so you should generally google overviews of what you're looking for before committing to a whole book.
If you're having to read the thing for work, I guess identify what the problem at work/school you're trying to solve (or what project you'd be applying it to) and regularly relate back what you're reading to what you would do with it practically.
I usually consider programming books as a reference and don't "read" them. My way of getting value out of these books is remembering the high-level contents and diving deeper when there is the need (e.g, a coding problem that I need to take care of)
Funny. I was listening to the back catalog of Django Talk podcast. The hosts are well informed and yet one commented to the same effect that programming books are difficult.
I’ve heard researchers speak about how they read papers—read the abstract and jump to the conclusion.
For my part when I read a non-fiction book that doesn’t capture my attention (and excitement) with the first pages, I jump to the index and scan for keywords which are of interest. Then I read those chapters first. This can sometimes jumpstart my interest in the author’s other chapters and their perspective.
I work programming books similarly. I know I have to work through some of the examples while I read. If the book is not specific to a particular language, say an algorithm book, I have tried to rewrite in my language of choice.
If all of this sounds very slow and non-linear…well, maybe it is and should be. Many books take months to write or years. I don’t expect to read them as quickly or to enjoy then the same as the Murderbot Diaries.
I can whole-heartedly recommend "The Ray Tracer Challenge" by Jamis Buck. It's a fun project-based book without all the computer graphics theory, where you focus on building a ray tracer in small increments while Jamis holds your hand until you can walk on your own. As a small bonus, you get to generate some awesome images pretty quickly.
An ACM membership ($99/year, discounted to $75 for the first year) gets you access to ~40,000 books via O’Reilly.
It’s a very good option if you think you might want to dip your toes into a variety of programming books, and don’t want to commit to buying individual ones.
the thing is literature, philosophy, history are trying to tell you something about reality - most programming books are trying to tell you something not much different from a washing machine instruction manual, the machine is just much more complicated.
Have you tried reading the more classical computer science books like Structure And Interpretation Of Computer Programs, I find I can handle getting through those (because at that level they are also trying to say something interesting about reality) but Web Developer Pro or Expert React Design Patterns (presumed fictitious titles that still sound pretty plausible) would probably bore me and make me put the instruction manual aside in favor of some experimentation.
Yes same, the kids have grown up now but I don't read as much. Part is not being able to find books that interest me, the other is I just have other things to do.
It's nice to have a goal, especially if you want to build a habit, which allows you get a reward-stimulus for hitting a magic number, but don't let that arbitrary digit dictate things too much.
Even in fiction there are vast differences. I tore through Murakami's 1Q84 in about 2/3 the time as Gibson's The Peripheral, despite the former being 1157 pages compared to 471 for The Peripheral.
What's the point? If you enjoy reading and reading for fun then you'll just read as much as is fun for you.
If you're reading professional books, then the quantity doesn't matter. I would rather spend a year with a single book like "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" revisiting chapters and reiterating same things to really absorb that knowledge than rush 1 book per week/month/whatever.
I don’t think the specific number is important and the theme of the post seems to be about reading more.
50 is just arbitrary and I still like it better than “how to read a lot of books each year.”
I don’t think the goal should be high quantity. But the goal should be developing a habit of reading and getting good information and/or pleasure from books.
True, but I see a trend where everybody is trying to "hack" reading by listening to audio books on 3x or other tricks which is a complete nonsense for professional books and absorbing the information.
The question is whether why you would ever want to read 50 books a year; as if reading as many was an indication of... of what, exactly?
My take is that it is more worth to read 10 books year you learn / get something for you from rather than 50 just for the sake of ticking a checkbox off the list.
I don’t think it’s useful for sorting people or friends, but it tells something of someone’s preferences.
Of course people can fudge the numbers or read tiny books or whatever but that’s like cheating at video games.
I don’t think the goal should be broadcast or talked about, but having some goal is useful for prioritizing time.
I also think that there’s no absolute number that good and I’d rather read 1 Brothers Karamazov than 10 pulp sci-fi. But a book a week is an easy to understand target that means you need a habit. Some books will be long and some will be short, but averaging a book a week means you probably spend a lot of time reading.
I read 86 books last year, completely missing my goal of 100. I used to be a voracious reader as a kid and stopped completely when I had kids and was in grad school. My kids are of the age where I want to instill in them a love of reading and the best way to lead is by example, in my opinion. It was an added benefit that I was doing it mainly before bed as a part of my attempt at better sleep habits (i.e., not using electronic devices before bed).
We make a big adventure out of going to the local bookstore and buying a bunch of books to read. We go in with some idea in mind of what we're looking for but we want to be able to explore and open ourselves to new ideas and experiences too.
My goal of 100 last year was lofty but not impossible by any stretch. I decided to try and read 1 book that was recommended, 1 book that was on a banned list, and 1 that was something I chose myself. As someone who generally reads police procedurals, it was amazing to widen my horizons and I really enjoyed being exposed to the books others have loved themselves; I feel it brought us closer together as humans.
Another favorite for this year was Hench: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hench_(novel) a comic book in novel form taken from the perspective of a background person working for a supervillain. This would NOT have been something I normally would have read and I would have ignored it completely. As something I randomly picked up at the bookstore, I was super pleased and have recommended it to others several times now.
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By all means, do you. I'm not forcing anyone to have a number goal or a process similar to mine when it comes to reading; however, everyone should dedicate regular time to reading, particularly outside of their comfort zone.
Choosing a good book, which is deep and requires focus, and taking the time to fully appreciate it, is much better than reading 10 other books. If you go by the numbers you'll never set aside the time for reading Dostoevski or Proust or Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. It's not about the numbers.
In the same way, it's much nicer to have a good dish from a good chef than chucking down 10 burgers.
Oscar Wilde is apparently meant to be the master of quips, but the diary of dorian grey is not the greatest.
Dostoevski might be "good" but he goes on, and its a relentless torrent of misery.
I get what your trying to say, but for me personally I am not overly taken by "Good literature" books. They tend to be thick, obtuse or just plain difficult.
"Good" doesn't necessarily mean classic. I think what GP said was that a book that resonates with you, for any reason, requires focus to be really understood; not just mindlessly trying to read as much text as you can, just so you can check a box in your todo list.
I think it helps to understand that classic literature is not always the same as a book that is just fun. There can be overlap, and many people would say that those are their favourite books and often the best books, but often classic literature is "classic" because it has been very influential and has been talked about a lot. In other words, it helps to understand that reading the classics is taking part in a long conversation that often goes back hundreds of years, and in some cases thousands of years. They are good because they are important to a collective idea of human culture. They tell us who we are and were.
> They tend to be thick, obtuse or just plain difficult.
This is where taking literature courses, or knowing history, can be very important. Courses like these fit the classics into a timeline, act like cartographers of human culture, and, most of all, provide context, so that you can understand the humanity (the forms of life in the world often so different from our own) tied up in these books. It helps when reading The Picture of Dorian Grey to know about Wilde's life and trial, aesthetics and popular culture at the time, and especially the ideas of late 19th century dandyism in England that were so prominent at the time of its writing precisely because the book is a brilliantly witty encapsulation of all those ideas. They are what make it mean. The same goes for Dostoevsky who was writing in a time when Russia was in the midst of an incredibly fertile period for literature, the arts, and philosophy and general intellectualism for a relatively small minority.
Interesting point.. but it also brings to mind that story about the pottery class with two student groups - one tasked with making multiple pots, and the other with a single most perfect pot.
It could be argued that finishing (and enjoying and extracting value from) books is a skill that can be honed by doing the quantity approach, at least initially.
Why should findings from pottery generalize to reading? It's not like reading is an activity with a clearly defined goal for each attempt, where one gets clear feedback based on which to "improve".
If we were discussing a textbook where "reading" equates to solving exercises, I might agree with you. However, attempting to apply a metric-driven approach in a field where metrics are vague/implicit (which books are "high-quality", and what value does one get for the time spent reading them?) sounds like a fool's errand.
I think there's significant value in being exposed to the different ideas/concepts/stories/whatever in 10 books than only being exposed to a single viewpoint.
of course, that means reading broadly, rather than deeply, but I think more folks should try to read more broadly in general too.
Many people are not in a position to enjoy those works, just as many are not prepared to appreciate the amazing subtleties found in a world-class meal.
I would argue the first step is getting non-readers to read… anything. Just read consistently.
Why this overarching need to read a certain number of books? I have read a book in a couple hrs and some have taken me months , although I was reading couple hrs each day, they were dense and hard to digest and needed reflection.
If someone has to read a blog post to tell them how to read more books then I'm not entirely sure that person is of the correct mindset to read many books a year.
If one were feeling particularly philosophical, one might also ask "what is a book worth in the 21st century ?". In an era where one can follow many high-quality blogs and Twitter feeds, in an era where one can watch in-depth YouTube videos on an unimaginably vast range of topics, it begs the question... is it really still right and proper to rank someone's supposed intellectual superiority based solely on the number of dead trees they have on their shelves ?
The answer to your second question is yes IMO - I read HN comments for hours but don’t have the patience to read a book and digest it’s contents - a skill that is tested on the SATs and many times in college which I sucked at.
FWIW I started reading Artemis last week by Andy weir after watching the Martian
Before I start - by "what is a book worth in the 21st century ?" do you mean non-fiction? Because then we agree on that point. However...
There is no such thing as "intellectual superiority". All life (I will grudgingly accept limiting it to humans for this discussion) has equal value regardless of perceived intellect. I may be good at growing plants, you may be good at researching nuclear fusion. This does not make either intellectually superior (ego and god complexes notwithstanding).
Second, books in bookshelves have value beyond the $ value or content of the books in them. At minimum it's an interior design tool that brings life and warmth to an otherwise soul- and lifeless house (look at houses on YT with a value > $10m. - virtuall all of them clinically and lifelessly designed by "x" who is "amazing darling").
Books do what a drawing of your child does when framed and hung on a wall - they make a house look lived in. The people in it automatically gain depth that a framed photo by some famous photographer of a landscape or half-naked person can never deliver.
Books can give insight not found on the Internet. King Rat, by James Clavell (himself a former prisoner of Changi) gives insights that are rare as hens' teeth on the Internet, if they exist there at all. Another stand-out is The Ugly American which surfaces some uncomfortable truths that can alter lives. And they start conversations, excercising intellects.
Finally, worth. A book in the 21st century is worth at least as much as a movie. I say at least because it has secondary benefits like improving grammar, spelling and sometimes writing style. I don't believe a Twitter feed or blog can match a good book for unadulterated storytelling.
Do you have 1 hour per day for reading? Can you cover 100 pages in that hour with good comprehension and enjoyment? For me the answer to both of these questions is no, unfortunately.
Lack of time never prevented anyone from doing anything.
If you want to do something, you need to make time for it. It's fine to prioritize something else first, it's fine if you don't want to, but then you need to stop hiding behind excuses and own up to that decision.
It is absolutely a possibility to prioritize otherwise. You absolutely could neglect your job, your family, your future and read 12 hours a day. Saying this is not possible is bad faith.
The perfectly valid reason you are prioritizing these things is that you value them over reading.
> Magazines, scripts, newspapers, digital newsletters, poetry, letters... The list is endless.
Well, sure, if your main goal is to reach a number.
But if your goal is to become edified or entertained, maybe don’t stress so much over the number of books or pages. Scheduling is a good advice, as is not fussing over medium.
For me, reading is about acquiring knowledge for change. The “for change” part is critical. I worry that by spending so many hours acquiring knowledge, I would have not nearly enough time to put it into practice.
this is my new year resolution. to read a book a week. i got loads of time-life science/nature and other culture/civilization/art books 2nd hand for cheap and then i had my own collection of unread books taking up a huge shelf. books i read since the new year:
ancient egypt: as it says on the tin :)
in search of the holy land
about jesus and the place(s) he lived/traveled/preached and crucified. i finished it around christmas and had a moving experience though i'm not christian.
storm: a time-life book about hurricanes and tornadoes.
coming to life: how genes drive development (reading but almost gonna finish)
coming up:
reactions by paul atkins
this blog post was good for me. thanks OP for the pointer.
For the last couple years, I’ve set my reading goal on Goodreads to 1 book per year.
Trying to read a certain number of books is meaningless. Reading Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is nothing like reading the latest 250-page blogpost-turned-popsci-selfhelp book.
Don’t worry about how many books you read. Just read good books you like.
Crap! Failed at step one! (I say this with all the love in the world for my kid.) Since having a kid, my personal time has reached near zero (kid + pandemic + chronically I'll wife with unknown systemic problems + startup life). When my kid is older and more self sustaining, I hope I can set aside time to read more.
The points outlined can be applied to any skill no? "How to get better at guitar/piano/running/drawing/painting/sculpting?" There's only so many hours in the day!
Author is a content marketer, I assume this article is more part of his content strategy than being something which I'm a target audience.
The "why" of reading the book is maybe the only thing I care about here. Depending on the why, maybe I wouldn't read a book for a certain thing which interests me. If it is something which interests me, then I want to understand the message of the author. And then I may want to build on that message and work to connect it to the web of my other interests. The pace of the reading becomes irrelevant. Or you could become faster as you get more skilled with this process.
I just just assume that people growing their social profile read bestseller books as something to talk about to become part of that culture. It's like a bookshelf rolodex or something. Read the book, Tweet about it, maybe get the author's attention. Write a post about how to grow your book rolodex at 50 contacts a year.
I set a goal of reading 20 books last year, having read maybe 1 the following year. I ended up reading 11. #1 definitely resonates with me. I spent 3 months drudging through The Plague by Camus in particular.
Boy, it’s really clear from the comments section no one is actually reading the article. There are some good tips and ways of thinking differently here.
I have read 50 books in a year, but once I took on a fair time-intensive exercise hobby (cycling), that number dropped by about half.
I'm content with that, at least until I retire.
I track it because I want to encourage myself to read things that matter more than just garbage online. I DO try to AVOID picking books to, as Prez said on the Wire, "juke the stats".
I see a lot of comments with "it is not about numbers but quality." Well, this is akin to a rich person advising the poor, "It is not about money."
Getting someone to start reading or read more, let them start with the easy target -- numbers. It is in-fact the best way to start off, "I will read 10 books this year" is way better than "I will read high quality books on life philosophies." It is difficult to quantify the second and will never make it easier for a non-reader to start off.
Start with the numbers, then the quality will eventually follow.
I'm an avid reader, and many have asked me, including quite a few from HackerNews on the topic of reading. I have been giving out this link from my Digital Notebook -- https://oinam.fyi/books/
During the 2020 Pandemic, too many things blew up for me at once and I ended up reading over 100+ books. I slowed down to less than 50 in 2021.
So we’re not talking about reading books, we’re talking about “how to be exposed to 50 high-level perspectives a year”. At which point you may as well read one of those “executive summary of this year’s 100 business books” and claim you read 100 books a year.
This isn’t to say this isn’t necessarily valuable but claiming this is “reading a book” degrades the value of actually reading a book. Next tip will be “get your College degree by going to one class per course”
I read 111 books last year (completely). However, while I'm somehow proud of that number, who cares? Read whatever makes you happy. If that means reading one book a year? Fine! If it's 50? Well done! Just enjoy reading.
62 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadThe article suggests identifying the reason you want to read it. In your case, you should identify what kind of problem you're trying to solve (even if not in an actual project and just in your head, something like "how DOES a cloud server work?") and then get that specific knowledge out of the book, as deep as you want to go.
Programming books can be expensive though, so you should generally google overviews of what you're looking for before committing to a whole book.
If you're having to read the thing for work, I guess identify what the problem at work/school you're trying to solve (or what project you'd be applying it to) and regularly relate back what you're reading to what you would do with it practically.
I’ve heard researchers speak about how they read papers—read the abstract and jump to the conclusion.
For my part when I read a non-fiction book that doesn’t capture my attention (and excitement) with the first pages, I jump to the index and scan for keywords which are of interest. Then I read those chapters first. This can sometimes jumpstart my interest in the author’s other chapters and their perspective.
I work programming books similarly. I know I have to work through some of the examples while I read. If the book is not specific to a particular language, say an algorithm book, I have tried to rewrite in my language of choice.
If all of this sounds very slow and non-linear…well, maybe it is and should be. Many books take months to write or years. I don’t expect to read them as quickly or to enjoy then the same as the Murderbot Diaries.
It’s a very good option if you think you might want to dip your toes into a variety of programming books, and don’t want to commit to buying individual ones.
Have you tried reading the more classical computer science books like Structure And Interpretation Of Computer Programs, I find I can handle getting through those (because at that level they are also trying to say something interesting about reality) but Web Developer Pro or Expert React Design Patterns (presumed fictitious titles that still sound pretty plausible) would probably bore me and make me put the instruction manual aside in favor of some experimentation.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest
Meanwhile The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession, at 560 pages, took me two weeks:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3624887-the-medieval-ori...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Brundage
It depends on what you want out of the book(s).
It's nice to have a goal, especially if you want to build a habit, which allows you get a reward-stimulus for hitting a magic number, but don't let that arbitrary digit dictate things too much.
50 is just arbitrary and I still like it better than “how to read a lot of books each year.”
I don’t think the goal should be high quantity. But the goal should be developing a habit of reading and getting good information and/or pleasure from books.
My take is that it is more worth to read 10 books year you learn / get something for you from rather than 50 just for the sake of ticking a checkbox off the list.
I don’t think it’s useful for sorting people or friends, but it tells something of someone’s preferences.
Of course people can fudge the numbers or read tiny books or whatever but that’s like cheating at video games.
I don’t think the goal should be broadcast or talked about, but having some goal is useful for prioritizing time.
I also think that there’s no absolute number that good and I’d rather read 1 Brothers Karamazov than 10 pulp sci-fi. But a book a week is an easy to understand target that means you need a habit. Some books will be long and some will be short, but averaging a book a week means you probably spend a lot of time reading.
We make a big adventure out of going to the local bookstore and buying a bunch of books to read. We go in with some idea in mind of what we're looking for but we want to be able to explore and open ourselves to new ideas and experiences too.
My goal of 100 last year was lofty but not impossible by any stretch. I decided to try and read 1 book that was recommended, 1 book that was on a banned list, and 1 that was something I chose myself. As someone who generally reads police procedurals, it was amazing to widen my horizons and I really enjoyed being exposed to the books others have loved themselves; I feel it brought us closer together as humans.
---
This year I'm already on Book #6 for 2022. The current was recommended either here or on Reddit in r/books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pillars_of_the_Earth. I'm absolutely loving the adventure aspect of it and it reminds me a lot of a recommendation from a friend to read Lonesome Dove: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonesome_Dove which became a favorite of all time for me.
Another favorite for this year was Hench: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hench_(novel) a comic book in novel form taken from the perspective of a background person working for a supervillain. This would NOT have been something I normally would have read and I would have ignored it completely. As something I randomly picked up at the bookstore, I was super pleased and have recommended it to others several times now.
---
By all means, do you. I'm not forcing anyone to have a number goal or a process similar to mine when it comes to reading; however, everyone should dedicate regular time to reading, particularly outside of their comfort zone.
In the same way, it's much nicer to have a good dish from a good chef than chucking down 10 burgers.
Oscar Wilde is apparently meant to be the master of quips, but the diary of dorian grey is not the greatest.
Dostoevski might be "good" but he goes on, and its a relentless torrent of misery.
I get what your trying to say, but for me personally I am not overly taken by "Good literature" books. They tend to be thick, obtuse or just plain difficult.
> They tend to be thick, obtuse or just plain difficult.
This is where taking literature courses, or knowing history, can be very important. Courses like these fit the classics into a timeline, act like cartographers of human culture, and, most of all, provide context, so that you can understand the humanity (the forms of life in the world often so different from our own) tied up in these books. It helps when reading The Picture of Dorian Grey to know about Wilde's life and trial, aesthetics and popular culture at the time, and especially the ideas of late 19th century dandyism in England that were so prominent at the time of its writing precisely because the book is a brilliantly witty encapsulation of all those ideas. They are what make it mean. The same goes for Dostoevsky who was writing in a time when Russia was in the midst of an incredibly fertile period for literature, the arts, and philosophy and general intellectualism for a relatively small minority.
(https://aliabdaal.com/pottery/
https://joshdance.medium.com/pottery-class-parable-or-real-e...)
It could be argued that finishing (and enjoying and extracting value from) books is a skill that can be honed by doing the quantity approach, at least initially.
If we were discussing a textbook where "reading" equates to solving exercises, I might agree with you. However, attempting to apply a metric-driven approach in a field where metrics are vague/implicit (which books are "high-quality", and what value does one get for the time spent reading them?) sounds like a fool's errand.
I think there's significant value in being exposed to the different ideas/concepts/stories/whatever in 10 books than only being exposed to a single viewpoint.
of course, that means reading broadly, rather than deeply, but I think more folks should try to read more broadly in general too.
I would argue the first step is getting non-readers to read… anything. Just read consistently.
If one were feeling particularly philosophical, one might also ask "what is a book worth in the 21st century ?". In an era where one can follow many high-quality blogs and Twitter feeds, in an era where one can watch in-depth YouTube videos on an unimaginably vast range of topics, it begs the question... is it really still right and proper to rank someone's supposed intellectual superiority based solely on the number of dead trees they have on their shelves ?
FWIW I started reading Artemis last week by Andy weir after watching the Martian
There is no such thing as "intellectual superiority". All life (I will grudgingly accept limiting it to humans for this discussion) has equal value regardless of perceived intellect. I may be good at growing plants, you may be good at researching nuclear fusion. This does not make either intellectually superior (ego and god complexes notwithstanding).
Second, books in bookshelves have value beyond the $ value or content of the books in them. At minimum it's an interior design tool that brings life and warmth to an otherwise soul- and lifeless house (look at houses on YT with a value > $10m. - virtuall all of them clinically and lifelessly designed by "x" who is "amazing darling").
Books do what a drawing of your child does when framed and hung on a wall - they make a house look lived in. The people in it automatically gain depth that a framed photo by some famous photographer of a landscape or half-naked person can never deliver.
Books can give insight not found on the Internet. King Rat, by James Clavell (himself a former prisoner of Changi) gives insights that are rare as hens' teeth on the Internet, if they exist there at all. Another stand-out is The Ugly American which surfaces some uncomfortable truths that can alter lives. And they start conversations, excercising intellects.
Finally, worth. A book in the 21st century is worth at least as much as a movie. I say at least because it has secondary benefits like improving grammar, spelling and sometimes writing style. I don't believe a Twitter feed or blog can match a good book for unadulterated storytelling.
If you want to do something, you need to make time for it. It's fine to prioritize something else first, it's fine if you don't want to, but then you need to stop hiding behind excuses and own up to that decision.
With all due respect, this assertion by itself seems absurd to me.
Yes, I'm prioritizing other things. Not necessarily because I want to.
The perfectly valid reason you are prioritizing these things is that you value them over reading.
> Magazines, scripts, newspapers, digital newsletters, poetry, letters... The list is endless.
Well, sure, if your main goal is to reach a number.
But if your goal is to become edified or entertained, maybe don’t stress so much over the number of books or pages. Scheduling is a good advice, as is not fussing over medium.
ancient egypt: as it says on the tin :)
in search of the holy land about jesus and the place(s) he lived/traveled/preached and crucified. i finished it around christmas and had a moving experience though i'm not christian.
storm: a time-life book about hurricanes and tornadoes.
coming to life: how genes drive development (reading but almost gonna finish)
coming up: reactions by paul atkins
this blog post was good for me. thanks OP for the pointer.
Trying to read a certain number of books is meaningless. Reading Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is nothing like reading the latest 250-page blogpost-turned-popsci-selfhelp book.
Don’t worry about how many books you read. Just read good books you like.
Crap! Failed at step one! (I say this with all the love in the world for my kid.) Since having a kid, my personal time has reached near zero (kid + pandemic + chronically I'll wife with unknown systemic problems + startup life). When my kid is older and more self sustaining, I hope I can set aside time to read more.
The "why" of reading the book is maybe the only thing I care about here. Depending on the why, maybe I wouldn't read a book for a certain thing which interests me. If it is something which interests me, then I want to understand the message of the author. And then I may want to build on that message and work to connect it to the web of my other interests. The pace of the reading becomes irrelevant. Or you could become faster as you get more skilled with this process.
I just just assume that people growing their social profile read bestseller books as something to talk about to become part of that culture. It's like a bookshelf rolodex or something. Read the book, Tweet about it, maybe get the author's attention. Write a post about how to grow your book rolodex at 50 contacts a year.
I'm content with that, at least until I retire.
I track it because I want to encourage myself to read things that matter more than just garbage online. I DO try to AVOID picking books to, as Prez said on the Wire, "juke the stats".
Getting someone to start reading or read more, let them start with the easy target -- numbers. It is in-fact the best way to start off, "I will read 10 books this year" is way better than "I will read high quality books on life philosophies." It is difficult to quantify the second and will never make it easier for a non-reader to start off.
Start with the numbers, then the quality will eventually follow.
I'm an avid reader, and many have asked me, including quite a few from HackerNews on the topic of reading. I have been giving out this link from my Digital Notebook -- https://oinam.fyi/books/
During the 2020 Pandemic, too many things blew up for me at once and I ended up reading over 100+ books. I slowed down to less than 50 in 2021.
So we’re not talking about reading books, we’re talking about “how to be exposed to 50 high-level perspectives a year”. At which point you may as well read one of those “executive summary of this year’s 100 business books” and claim you read 100 books a year.
This isn’t to say this isn’t necessarily valuable but claiming this is “reading a book” degrades the value of actually reading a book. Next tip will be “get your College degree by going to one class per course”