I only listen to content for both short and long form. If it’s short form I archive the content if I don’t plan to return to it and put it in a folder if I would like to revisit. For books I bookmark, highlight and add comments. For most reading I listen around 450 words/min, but if it’s reading for pleasure I slow it down to 325ish. I’m dyslexic and find that I retain content far better and enjoy reading much more if I listen instead of sight read.
Ask HN: How Do You Read?
31–40 of 258 posts
Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?
#32Great 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…
That book also totally changed how I read for the better.
I tend to have two books going at a time. One I read seriously, usually in the morning and take notes etc. The other is purely entertainment band is usually an evening or weekend mornings book.
Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?
#33In my opinion, reading is more for shaping your thoughts over time. I generally don't read for recall value except for technical things, and even there, it's better to build a good mental model of the subject through a combination of reading and exercises, then use a book as a reference. For non-technical books, I've very rarely seen any value in taking comprehensive notes (except highlights). I read those on a Kindl…
> In my opinion, reading is more for shaping your thoughts over time.
Absolutely agree. I often liken reading (at least reading fiction) to the leaking basket fable [0]. I'm not sure of it's origin but the linked description is in the context of reading Buddhist spritual texts. This mindset has also made reading much more enjoyable for me, because I've stopped caring whether or not I can instantly recall details of books that I've read.
[0] https://www.itstimetomeditate.org/leaking-basket-indian-fabl...
Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?
#34As others have mentioned, How To Read a Book does a great job educating on the skill of reading.
Most books I just read once fairly rapidly: skipping over parts I don’t get or find uninteresting. Just a few books ever get an ‘analytical’ reread.
I don’t keep a notebook generally to keep reads portable, I instead talk about what I’m reading pretty aggressively as a strategy to memorize and absorb knowledge.
Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?
#35For technical books, I often try to build something as it goes along, usually not exactly following their examples, but making something slightly different, which seems to require exactly understanding things and not just grabbing the code examples.
For math and computer science books, I definitely like to write code to do things. Particularly in math I have the hardest time remembering which greek letter means what thing in which context, and well formed programming language variable names make things much clearer.
For other stuff, I try to build an outline of the theory of the book and come up with some actions I can take to see how the ideas would work in the contexts I have available to me. It's a little difficult to take notes depending on the context, particularly with audiobooks. Sometimes I will read other people's summaries to see if I missed something.
For fiction and poetry I don't really do anything special except copy down particular quotes I enjoy.
Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?
#36Here is a guide to reading articles in the modern world:
https://link.medium.com/30JQJa3KBZ
Synopsis: 1. Use a reading list 2. Pay attention to reading environment (what app/device, lighting, noise-level) 3. Use a dictionary 4. Talk about it 5. Follow journalists 6. Increase quality, read less
Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?
#37Great 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…
> 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"?
Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?
#38The retention problem is one that bothered me as well. So much so that at some point I really cut down my nonfiction reading. I figured if I would retain only 10% or less 6 months later, then in reality I'm reading for entertainment, not to enlighten myself.[0] If that's the case, why not just read fiction?
So I decided to take notes. But then I thought of all the notebooks I filled in school (and still have some), and never looked at after the semester was over. Notes in a notebook are not much better.
So I made a blog, and for every book I read, I make blog posts with the highlights. The idea is that it will be on the Internet, and I can review them whenever and wherever I want to. I did this for a while, but noticed I never went back to review my notes. Still, I considered this an improvement.
Taking serious notes, BTW, slowed down my reading probably 3-5x.
Along the way I realized I can't always be near a computer while reading. So I started taking notes in a notebook and transcribing later. Fountain pens for the win!
Anyway, since I still wasn't reviewing my notes often, I decided to take it one step further. I used org-drill[1] to make flashcards of things I would like to retain. I started using flashcard software for other reasons in November, and I can say it's been wildly successful when it comes to retention. I've not done it for much of my nonfiction reading, as life has been busy and I've not read much. But I do plan to make flashcards. I still make more refined notes and put them in my blog, though.
Making flashcards is not a significant effort. Mostly it's copy pasting material from my usual notes blog.
Now this all may seem overkill, and perhaps literally killing the joy of reading books. But as I said, if I'm not remembering 80-90% of a book I enjoyed, then the only reason I'm reading it is entertainment. And fiction provides for better entertainment.
[0] Here's an extreme example: In 2014, I was reading Willpower. It was amazing. I recall several times saying to myself "Wow!". After reading it, I decided to reread Thinking, Fast and Slow and take notes. I had read it less than a year prior, but had not taken notes. Still, I did feel I hadn't forgotten much. What did I find out? Over half of my "Wow!" moments for Willpower were in Thinking, Fast and Slow. So not only had I forgotten so much within a year, I did not even recognize it when reading it again!
(Let's ignore the question of whether most of Willpower is junk science).
[1] Most people use Anki if you don't want to use Emacs. Org drill has the benefit that I type up my notes in Org Mode anyway.
Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?
#39I'm always reading about 5 books in parallel, depending of my mood, the context and my focus.
Usually:
- biography or fiction book that I listen to while driving
- hard science book when I know I can focus for a few hours. (I.e. Quantum mechanics or advanced algorithms)
- 1-2 business or technical book that I read on kindle (Either from PC, ipad or my iphone)
- various blog or pdfs open on my pc / iphone
The hard science are the ones that take the most time.. sometimes it can take me weeks to read a few pages, and I often need to do side research to understand what I'm reading.
I think the fact that I have different choices help me read more because if I'm not in the mood for one thing there's usually something else interesting. If I don't have interesting books then I'm more likely to waste time on reddit / HN / twitter. (I still browse HN from time to time when things are compiling though :D)
Re: Ask HN: How Do You Read?
#40When I read fiction I used to read like you, one after another, always had to have a book on the go. I ended up feeling like you did so I haven't really read a fiction book in a few years now.