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Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles

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Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles

#41

Post by _huayra_ »

gumby wrote: post #27
pontus wrote: post #15

My experience is that books come in two forms: ones that can be summarized by a blog post (e.g. any Malcolm Gladwell book) and those that contain content of irreducible complexity (e.g. history books or textbooks). I usually get bored with the first type of book because it just rehashes the same thing over and over again. So, when you choose book vs article, I think this distinction should be part of the thought proc…

Business books — even the insightful ones — are typically only 2-3 pages long (there a few, very few, exceptions). But that can’t sell at the airport so they are padded out like washing powder.

Some of these can be worth the squeeze / time (e.g. stuff from Mark Manson imo), but the litmus test I use is whether the author trying to do any one (or more of the following):

* "inspire" me with useless stories from other people, i.e. stuff that isn't anything beyond "wow amazing feat!" with no practical utility. These are most of the trash pop-biz or pop-psych books that talk about the marshmallow experiment for the Nth time... * use their book to get speaking engagements (e.g. by checking their website) * does the book contain a goofy diagram to abstractly illustrate their point in a bass-ackwards way? (The Conjoined Triangles of Six-Sigma Success!)

Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles

#42

Post by PartiallyTyped »

omosubi wrote: post #40
pontus wrote: post #15

My experience is that books come in two forms: ones that can be summarized by a blog post (e.g. any Malcolm Gladwell book) and those that contain content of irreducible complexity (e.g. history books or textbooks). I usually get bored with the first type of book because it just rehashes the same thing over and over again. So, when you choose book vs article, I think this distinction should be part of the thought proc…

I'm a big fan of the adage to not read anything younger than 10/20/30 years old. by definition most books are mediocre, especially new ones, and only reading stuff older than a certain age helps filter out the crap. same goes with blog posts to a certain extent - there are a number of shorter works that are constantly posted on HN ( http://jsomers.net/hn/ ) and many of them are worth reading. though tbh I read a lot…

Hah, this is exploiting the old, 'back in my day music was good, unlike whatever you are listening to now'.

In other words, you let everyone else filter for you.

Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles

#43

Post by mathnmusic »

doc_gunthrop wrote: post #26
pontus wrote: post #15

My experience is that books come in two forms: ones that can be summarized by a blog post (e.g. any Malcolm Gladwell book) and those that contain content of irreducible complexity (e.g. history books or textbooks). I usually get bored with the first type of book because it just rehashes the same thing over and over again. So, when you choose book vs article, I think this distinction should be part of the thought proc…

It's not uncommon for those types of books (as you mentioned, for example, Malcolm Gladwell) to come into being as a result of a series of blog posts. A couple examples are Cal Newport and Mark Manson. Their books aren't bad, but they could be reduced to probably 1/3 of their actual length without much loss of insight.

Blinkist and similar tools are a good enough solution for this. But those are locked up behind a paywall. I've been importing links to book summaries (along with authors' TED talks, podcasts etc) in LearnAwesome.org (my open-source project) so that when looking up a book, user can easily discover summaries,interviews,talks covering the same ideas in a more preferable format.

Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles

#44

Post by mackrevinack »

do you have a tablet or an e-reader? maybe having a separate device and only allowing yourself to read articles on it might stop you from reading as many random articles online.

when i used pocket a few years ago i found that it was too easy add an article if I had the browser extension installed so i removed that and only added articles by going to the website, which meant i would usually think a bit more about whether I really wanted to read it or not.

ive just bought an android eink tablet and im going to start saving articles using a browser extension to save the article as epub or text, and then use syncthing to sync it to the tablet and read them there.

another thing that might help is to use an rss reader since you won't see a sidebar of other articles like you would on a website that might distract you

Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles

#45

Post by edjrage »

gregmac wrote: post #28
pontus wrote: post #15

My experience is that books come in two forms: ones that can be summarized by a blog post (e.g. any Malcolm Gladwell book) and those that contain content of irreducible complexity (e.g. history books or textbooks). I usually get bored with the first type of book because it just rehashes the same thing over and over again. So, when you choose book vs article, I think this distinction should be part of the thought proc…

I've read too many of the first that lately it has killed most of my motivation to read any non-fiction books (the last couple I started, I just never finished because essentially I got bored). I enjoy reading (and still read fiction), and I want to have that motivation, but I just can't seem to muster it. This includes books that have good reviews, because apparently a lot of people don't seem to mind. It just seems…

Honestly, you've already identified the problem (reading books of the "first kind"), so you know what to do. Stop picking up books just because they're best sellers. That would be a great start.

Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles

#46

Post by ajot »

mackrevinack wrote: post #44

do you have a tablet or an e-reader? maybe having a separate device and only allowing yourself to read articles on it might stop you from reading as many random articles online. when i used pocket a few years ago i found that it was too easy add an article if I had the browser extension installed so i removed that and only added articles by going to the website, which meant i would usually think a bit more about whet…

> im going to start saving articles using a browser extension to save the article as epub or text

Do you have any recommendation on such an extension? I've been using EpubPress[0], but it doesn't always make a great job (e.g. missing important images and still weighing many MBs)

[0] https://epub.press/

Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles

#47

Post by bordercases »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #42
omosubi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of the adage to not read anything younger than 10/20/30 years old. by definition most books are mediocre, especially new ones, and only reading stuff older than a certain age helps filter out the crap. same goes with blog posts to a certain extent - there are a number of shorter works that are constantly posted on HN ( http://jsomers.net/hn/ ) and many of them are worth reading. though tbh I read a lot…

Hah, this is exploiting the old, 'back in my day music was good, unlike whatever you are listening to now'. In other words, you let everyone else filter for you.

Or: Lindy Effect, survivorship bias, some kind of incentive that selects for quality over time, etc.

Music is almost purely for entertainment and not for information so tastes can afford to be variable. And books are published on all sorts of topics so even despite this, among old books you can find weird things that disagree with each other.

Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles

#48

Post by bordercases »

edjrage wrote: post #45
gregmac wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read too many of the first that lately it has killed most of my motivation to read any non-fiction books (the last couple I started, I just never finished because essentially I got bored). I enjoy reading (and still read fiction), and I want to have that motivation, but I just can't seem to muster it. This includes books that have good reviews, because apparently a lot of people don't seem to mind. It just seems…

Honestly, you've already identified the problem (reading books of the "first kind"), so you know what to do. Stop picking up books just because they're best sellers. That would be a great start.

You could take it a step further and read academic reviews, which are about the size of a book chapter but are otherwise meant to be self-contained pieces of writing on a topic.

Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles

#49

Post by nicbou »

Books are not inherently more valuable than articles, but they certainly seem to be valued more. Honestly, I just read what I like at a given time. It's not that important.

In practice, I read more articles day to day, but I read more book when I travel, because I dedicate more time to reading. I love to sip a beer and read a book in distant places.

Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles

#50

Post by juancn »

I like books for fiction, and articles for keeping up to date. I usually read books for fun before sleeping, and articles to keep informed during the day. But really, I just do whatever I feel like doing.

I might cut Netflix time for reading, but articles are kind of a necessity to keep up to date.

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