Ask HN: Do you read math & hard science books? How?

If they don't take a good bit of time to read, then you're not doing it right. These are books full of tools for the mind. The best way to read them is a little at a time, taking the parts that click in your mind and trying them out on problems that seemed insurmountable before. The first time you open a big box of strange tools, it won't be immediately apparent to you what they are all for.

Finding a good math book is like stumbling into that room full of all of the weapons on your first time through Doom...

Basically, this is just a classic inventory control problem. If the inventory is piling up, you need to either decrease the rate of acquisition, increase the rate of consumption, or (preferably) both.

I can't say how typical the situation is, but it's definitely not just you. I have quite the stack of books on my "to read" list, but I keep working my way through them (and adding more to the pile.) So it goes.

I tend to collect lots of books, usually at times when I'm not really reading much. However, I eventually (usually a matter of weeks or sometimes months) get back to reading and will crunch through endless amounts of books. I've managed to get through 500 page books in a day, every day for over two weeks before.

As for specifically science books, I tend to read them slower so I usually read a chapter or section of one and then read a chapter of a fiction novel. If I keep switching I find I can get through both quite quickly as reading the fiction novel will usually give enough motivation to read the non-fiction hard science book quickly too.

In my student days, before I became a working programmer, I was desperately poor and couldn't afford all the books I wanted to buy. So I got into the habit of buying books when I had money in my account to avoid a future in which I have to look longingly at a book and not have money to buy it. So, yes your "buying a book and reading a few years later" situation is something i am familiar with.

So anyways, I ended up having a few hundred technical books (and a couple of thousand non technical books). The future of not having money to buy books never came (yet, touch wood) and the biggest advantage of having this huge collection of books is I can cross reference them to get better info on what I am looking for. On the other hand, moving is a huge pain :-)

EDIT:(example of buying a book and then using it years later) I am now (slowly) working through Cormen et al's "Introdcution to Algorithms" (second edition) book. The idea is to do all the exercises and proofs and so on. Should be done by the end of the year I think.I bought this book a few years ago and am using it(seriously) only now. (There's a third edition out now for anyone planning to buy. second ed is good enough for my purposes)

I had this same inventory control problem with cookbooks. I solved it by making a rule for myself: No new cookbooks until I cook 30% of the recipes in all the ones I already have.

I have this same inventory control problem with computer science books. Good textbooks are expensive. If you implement a utilization rule like this, you can save yourself a lot of money on books you never end up reading. B&N, Borders and their ilk have liberal return policies, as does Amazon. This will help save lots of money. Also, the utilization rule prevents you from disadvantageous conditioning. The retail pleasure of acquisition can drive you to buy books faster than your actual reading rate.

I have quite the stack of books on my "to read" list, but I keep working my way through them (and adding more to the pile.) So it goes.

I have the same phenomenon with Irish Trad tunes I want to learn. The list is ever growing. (There are at least 30,000 of those.) My solution? I only learn the tunes I fall in love with. Life is short, so why waste time with something that's just "nice?" I think I'm going to apply this to books and other contexts.