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Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#11

Post by mathieuh »

thismodernlife wrote: post #4

120+ books a year! I’m astonished. How do you achieve this? I struggle to read one a month. I should probably turn off WiFi. I browse indie bookshops, talk to colleagues and friends, read reviews and I’m on GoodReads. People know I like books so they buy or loan me books sometimes. I keep a list of loads of books that sound good, then chip away at it. The list is always growing so things fall off it, unread, eventual…

I read in bed with a Kindle with all the room lights turned off and just read until I can't keep my eyes open anymore. According to Kindle insights I've read 95 books this year.

I've always been a reader though; my mother would buy me a video game on my birthday or Christmas, but anytime I asked for a book she'd buy it for me.

Your reading speed will increase over time. When I read, I don't read word-by-word, line-by-line; I kind of dart back and forth through the page scanning for what I deem important and excluding things like detailed descriptions etc.. Usually the first line of a paragraph will tell you if it's worth reading carefully. If it's something like

> "Character A walked into the detritus of the ancient castle left by the shelling. They were struck by the total destruction of the place, a place that had stood stoically for centuries against endless tides of invaders, all undone..." etc.

I read "ok, character A walked into a destroyed castle" and move on.

I imagine I'm not getting the "full experience" by doing this, but even when reading big series like Malazan or the Wheel of Time I don't find I'm suddenly encountering things for the first time: the salient details seem to stick in my head.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#13

Post by badrchoubai »

reactchain wrote: post #9

I find the more important question to be "how do you remember what you read?". I think (at least in my case) remembering more of what I've read would be a better investment in time than reading more, or better directing my reading. I would love to hear tips people have.

The best way I’ve found to remember what I read is to read books in a way that they connect, recently that was Antifragile and The Plague (which is talked about in the conclusion of the latter). I did the same with Digital Minimalism and Atomic Habits.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#14

Post by Pamar »

mathieuh wrote: post #11
thismodernlife wrote: post #4

120+ books a year! I’m astonished. How do you achieve this? I struggle to read one a month. I should probably turn off WiFi. I browse indie bookshops, talk to colleagues and friends, read reviews and I’m on GoodReads. People know I like books so they buy or loan me books sometimes. I keep a list of loads of books that sound good, then chip away at it. The list is always growing so things fall off it, unread, eventual…

I read in bed with a Kindle with all the room lights turned off and just read until I can't keep my eyes open anymore. According to Kindle insights I've read 95 books this year. I've always been a reader though; my mother would buy me a video game on my birthday or Christmas, but anytime I asked for a book she'd buy it for me. Your reading speed will increase over time. When I read, I don't read word-by-word, line-by…

Just out of curiosity... ever read anything by Gene Wolfe?

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#16

Post by mathieuh »

Pamar wrote: post #14
mathieuh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read in bed with a Kindle with all the room lights turned off and just read until I can't keep my eyes open anymore. According to Kindle insights I've read 95 books this year. I've always been a reader though; my mother would buy me a video game on my birthday or Christmas, but anytime I asked for a book she'd buy it for me. Your reading speed will increase over time. When I read, I don't read word-by-word, line-by…

Just out of curiosity... ever read anything by Gene Wolfe?

No, do you have a recommendation? Currently hooked on the 40k Horus Heresy series, on book 34 and hope to have it finished early next year.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#17

Post by loughnane »

First off, counting books you’ve read is a bit like counting lines of code. Sure it measure output in some fashion, but is a pretty fallible proxy for the real thing we’re after: knowledge.

But the question remains. There’s so many books and only so much time. For myself after years of taking a haphazard approach (bill gates list, stuff recommended on blogs, economist books/arts,etc) I’ve been working on a new strategy for the past few years and it feels like it’s working out well.

There is a 10-year reading plan for the “Great Books of the Western World. Within each year the books progress chronologically, and each year supposedly gets a bit more difficult.

Using that as a baseline does a few useful things for me.

- I never need to figure out what book is next.

- I can be reasonably confident that reading the books won’t be a waste; even if I don’t dig a particular book it provides context since, it being an important book, it likely influenced others.

- related to the above, I feel like reading the classic books gives me a better understanding new books; either because of a direct reference by the author or because the author is trying to dress up a not-so-original idea.

Of course the Great Books are not the be-all and end-all of human knowledge, so I make space for modern books, eastern books, etc. for that it’s as haphazard as before, the only difference is I’m more comfortable about skimming a book in(preface, conclusion, index, ToC, random chapter) and tossing it away if it doesn’t jump out at me.

I’ve actively worked on getting better at this. Excited to see other comments in this thread.

Also I recommend underlining and making notes in a book. This way when you go back to it you can engage with the ideas more efficiently.

EDIT: I also want to plug “how to read a book” which I feel like I do a lot on here. Really really good

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#18

Post by smogcutter »

Pamar wrote: post #14
mathieuh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read in bed with a Kindle with all the room lights turned off and just read until I can't keep my eyes open anymore. According to Kindle insights I've read 95 books this year. I've always been a reader though; my mother would buy me a video game on my birthday or Christmas, but anytime I asked for a book she'd buy it for me. Your reading speed will increase over time. When I read, I don't read word-by-word, line-by…

Just out of curiosity... ever read anything by Gene Wolfe?

Hah recommending Gene Wolfe is definitely one way to teach someone to read closely...

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#19

Post by redelbee »

leet_thow wrote: post #15

I watch a lot of courses at thegreatcoursesplus.com. Each course comes with a PDF outline that has recommended reading to accompany each lecture. If that lecture interests me I use Overdrive / Libby to search for the titles in either ebook or audiobook form.

Oh this is great, reading lists are super helpful. How do you decide which courses to watch though? I feel like I might have the same problem there.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#20

Post by redelbee »

thehealthycoder wrote: post #10

I'm a big fan of rereading the same books that I found super helpful/useful, vs reading a lot Used to do the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge for multiple years, until I felt I was just padding my stats with books that weren't useful Then I saw a Naval tweet that was: "I would rather read the best 100 books over and over again until I absorb them rather than read all the books.” And I adopted that strategy, which has b…

This is a good insight, and I sometimes worry I am just optimizing for quantity instead of quality.

That said, how would you pick the “best 100 books” to reread?I also tend to reread things that I enjoyed in the past but it seems like there might be a better way to go about this. I do read from a lot of the “Best books of all time” type of lists and I don’t find a markedly higher success rate with that strategy.

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