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Ask HN: How Do You Read?

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Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?

#161

Post by disabled »

ch3ckmat3 wrote: post #155

When I read a book, in the middle of a paragraph, I start getting new ideas related to the topic, and my mind shifts focus to the news ideas, while my eyes keep tracing the text on the book, and obviously I'm not "reading" now, I'm just wandering in my thoughts. And when I realize that I have drifted from the book, I just go back to the text from which my mind drifted. Some times this happens a lot, and I take so muc…

This is one of the reasons I use a screen reader, but I have a print-related disability. I gave details about my setup on this thread.

Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?

#162

Post by Dumblydorr »

ch3ckmat3 wrote: post #155

When I read a book, in the middle of a paragraph, I start getting new ideas related to the topic, and my mind shifts focus to the news ideas, while my eyes keep tracing the text on the book, and obviously I'm not "reading" now, I'm just wandering in my thoughts. And when I realize that I have drifted from the book, I just go back to the text from which my mind drifted. Some times this happens a lot, and I take so muc…

This described my mental processes as I read the comment, trippy! It's just natural distractibility, it goes away with practice, rest, and interest in subject.

Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?

#163

Post by DoreenMichele »

Part of what you are asking is "How do you study in earnest?"

Head First books have a lot of good practical tips for how to learn new material, such as "read in bed just before sleeping." I did that a lot in high school and college.

Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?

#164

Post by jcims »

mattlondon wrote: post #49

Interesting... Lots of people seem to read a lot of books - I get lots of recommendations from people at work and stuff. People talk about reading a book a week or whatever. I've never enjoyed reading books - right from childhood up to now. I try to avoid it. I have gifts from birthdays and christmases from years ago where the book sits entirely unread on the shelf for a year or two until I give it away once the guil…

I clicked on this link hoping to share my conundrum with reading books, and you so perfectly captured my own perspective there's nothing more for me to add. I'm glad I'm at least not alone.

Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?

#165

Post by sailfast »

philwelch wrote: post #100
guidoism wrote: post #16

Great question! In my fourth decade of life I’m finally figuring out the optimal way to do this myself. I’ve forgotten so so many books over the years that I supposedly read. Read How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer Adler. ( https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Classic-Intelligent/dp/... ) I’ve given this book to a bunch of people on my teams as it also helps with communicating id…

I feel like there's a bootstrapping issue here, though. What do I read in order to learn to read How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler? Or do I merely read that book once, in order to learn the technique, before re-reading it?

Pick a section of a book you like and do an “Adler read” on that section. Identify the main question, supporting points, and conclusion of each of those sections in the margins.

Short passages or a couple chapters can be really rewarding. “What is the author actually connecting this to?” “Are these questions being addressed one at a time, or too many at once” etc.

We used Adler as a starting point for a bunch of school books and did these as assignments - while it was painful it upped my game and brought so much more out of the book.

Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?

#166

Post by disabled »

mattlondon wrote: post #49

Interesting... Lots of people seem to read a lot of books - I get lots of recommendations from people at work and stuff. People talk about reading a book a week or whatever. I've never enjoyed reading books - right from childhood up to now. I try to avoid it. I have gifts from birthdays and christmases from years ago where the book sits entirely unread on the shelf for a year or two until I give it away once the guil…

Reading more than 3-4 paragraphs in more than one stretch is usually too hard for me. When I was a kid (plus in university), I just thought I was lazy (also I did not think my eyes had a problem, either).

Anyways, I have to get my eyes checked out every year because I have type 1 diabetes, and my print-related disability was missed by ophthalmologists, year after year, until I was diagnosed with a medical problem that affects my peripheral nervous system, that is unrelated to the diabetes.

This article may help you with making the reading less of a daunting task. I know it is not easy: https://untappedbrilliance.com/how-to-read-books-when-you-ha...

You need to get into books. It affects your income (accurate, but not the best visual representation of the data): https://www.statista.com/statistics/896534/number-of-books-c... [Sorry broken link...a screenshot is here: https://ibb.co/s5SJpHp ]

I posted on this thread how I manage to read several books per year, via screen readers. That takes time to get used to. I would recommend Voice Dream Reader, if you are interested.

You may want to try audio books via your local library, for just starting out. You can join some libraries in the US for a very nominal fee, if your local one does not have good media databases. That way, you get some of the best media databases of any public library imaginable.

Personally, I enjoy history books the most. On Tyranny and Black Earth are the books that got me in to reading. I also love seeing whatever book reviews FinancialTimes.com (subscription site) posted, and I usually will read at least 2 books per week.

Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?

#167

Post by christophergray »

elviejo wrote: post #131

When I read coding books I don't read, I work through them. I have 3 windows open side by side: 1 the ebook I'm reading 2 emacs for typing the examples (typing is mandatory no copy paste) 3 Anki to create flash cards of what I've learned. Since I don't want to forget the hard to acquire knowledge I just got. When I was younger maybe I had time to waste. But now I must make every minute spent reading count.

I find that I zone out if I put the windows side by side, so no better than copy paste. Instead I have the emacs frame cover the ebook while I'm typing. I do a _lot_ of Alt-Tabbing between the ebook and the editor, but the code is guaranteed to enter my head before it goes out my fingers.

Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?

#168

Post by frosted-flakes »

Stratoscope wrote: post #53
axiom92 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One big big big thing I learned from the book is to not read a non-fiction book like it was a novel. Do you mean to say: "is to read a non-fiction book like it was a novel"?

No, the comment was suggesting to not read a non-fiction book like a novel. When reading a novel, you wouldn't skim it and skip ahead to find out all the plot twists and surprise ending and spoil all the suspense and fun. With a nonfiction book, you're not worried about plot spoilers. You want to learn from the book. So skimming through it to pick up some of the gist before reading it in detail is a fine idea.

In general, I agree, but this is not always true. Some non-fiction books read very much like fiction. An example that I recently finished is Endurance by Alfred Lansing, which tells the story of Ernest Shackleton's failed mission to cross Antarctica on foot in 1914 (they got stuck in the ice only a few miles from land and spent the next year and a half stuck drifting on the ice before making an escape attempt when they finally reached open water).

Lansing spent years doing research for this book, including interviewing all the living crew members, and it is 100% true. But it has a proper plotline, fantastic character development, and a very climactic and happy ending. Reading ahead won't exactly ruin the story (the basic points of the mission are commonly known anyway), but there's no advantage to doing so.

In other words, some non-fiction books are novels too, and they should be read like novels.

Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?

#169

Post by dredmorbius »

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #157
guidoism wrote: post #16

Great question! In my fourth decade of life I’m finally figuring out the optimal way to do this myself. I’ve forgotten so so many books over the years that I supposedly read. Read How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer Adler. ( https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Classic-Intelligent/dp/... ) I’ve given this book to a bunch of people on my teams as it also helps with communicating id…

How to Read a Book is great, and so is the sarcastic response How to Read Two Books: http://scriptoriumdaily.com/how-to-read-two-books-erasmus-ad... :)

I'm considering writing How to Read Ten Thousand Books, as mentioned to a friend in a similar discussion earlier. Once I complete the preliminary research.

Adler's book is indeed highly recommended.

Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?

#170

Post by btrettel »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R

As recommended by the book "Your memory: how it works and how to improve it" by Ken Higbee. As I recall, Higbee says there are many reading comprehension methods, but the fundamentals are all the same. The book's dated, but Higbee argues that research backs up the fundamental ideas. I don't know what the latest research says, but I doubt the basic ideas here have been overturned. Maybe they've been refined.

One important thing I learned from the book was that speed is not always good. Your need to process and organize the information to best understand and remember it. SQ3R is basically a series of steps to do just that.

Note that I read almost exclusively non-fiction and SQ3R isn't meant for fiction.

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