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Lessons learned after 300 books in 4 years

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Re: Lessons learned after 300 books in 4 years

#81

Post by TeMPOraL »

aestetix wrote: post #31

It sounds to me like the author of this post is going for quantity over quality. In the realm of book-reading, that's almost always a losing proposition. Here's an approach that has worked better for me: pick a complex question and try to answer it. For example, "Why did the Great Depression happen?" It turns out there isn't actually a simple answer (that everyone can agree on).

Quantity can actually help you here - for complex questions, you want to get a feel of the answer-space first, instead of picking a single point on it and exploring it thoroughly.

Re: Lessons learned after 300 books in 4 years

#82

Post by TeMPOraL »

mimimimi wrote: post #73
quinndupont wrote: post #15

This person is either reading the lightest self-help type of books, or not really "reading" these books. I'm an academic, and my only job is to read books (and articles, etc), and I do my job at least 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I don't even read this many books. My advice for getting genuinely intelligent about a topic: read hard books, intensively, and leave the buffet-stats-counter stuff to those who just w…

My advice would be that if you really want to learn something then you have to do it. The book is a reference but there is no substitute for on hands training. Unless all you want to learn is facts like an encyclopedia, which I guess is ok but I find it hard to see as a good method to learn something deeply.

True - doing is an important part. But good (and hard) books are not like encyclopedias - they're not a collection of facts, they're also a way to discover and internalize author's mental model. You get to learn the connection between the facts and their relative importance. I feel it's something that later greatly aids you in the "doing" phase.

Re: Lessons learned after 300 books in 4 years

#84

Post by pas »

Paul_S wrote: post #70
dxhdr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best 3 books out of the lot that you can recommend? Thanks!

I'm happy to share. - "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books I-II" - "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, books III-IV" - "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, books V-VII" Even though these are genuinely the best books I've read this year and genuinely world-view altering that might be not what you…

Have you read Pinker: The Blank Slate, and Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty?

And "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" by Samuel P. Huntington?

Also, Gleick: Chaos?

Oh, and for fiction the James S. A. Corey: The Expanse series, veeeery easy to read, normally funny, and quite clever.

Re: Lessons learned after 300 books in 4 years

#86

Post by jdswain »

I'm actually trying to read less and do more. So instead of reading about compilers I'm building some. It feels like a slower way of learning sometimes, but it's exposed lots of places where I thought I knew how things work but I actually didn't. It has also taught me more than reading alone would.

The downside is that I find it harder to get time for building. It's easy enough to read at night in bed, but harder to concentrate on writing code.

Re: Lessons learned after 300 books in 4 years

#87

Post by Paul_S »

pas wrote: post #84
Paul_S wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to share. - "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books I-II" - "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, books III-IV" - "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, books V-VII" Even though these are genuinely the best books I've read this year and genuinely world-view altering that might be not what you…

Have you read Pinker: The Blank Slate, and Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty? And "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" by Samuel P. Huntington? Also, Gleick: Chaos? Oh, and for fiction the James S. A. Corey: The Expanse series, veeeery easy to read, normally funny, and quite clever.

Thanks, no. I'll start with "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" as it's the most controversial one (spread of reviews) and if I like it I'll keep going.

Re: Lessons learned after 300 books in 4 years

#88

Post by jzwinck »

pjc50 wrote: post #53
jzwinck wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhere around age 27 I wanted the same thing. I think the answer is no, for two reasons. First, we already have blogs and newspapers. More importantly, the same material is interpretable in many ways. For example if you ask someone what is the main point of Orwell's 1984, you will usually hear something about surveillance. But to me, reading it as an adult, far more important is the idea that we need war as an out…

The war isn't primarily an outlet for economic surplus in 1984, it serves as a justification for repression, labelling dissent as sabotage, rationing (in a way that preserves the best for loyal party members), and the normalisation of violence. See also the "two minute hate". There are a lot of takeaways from Orwell's book, basically on how "Stalinism with English characteristics" might look, extrapolating from Orwel…

I think you have reinforced my point. Whether my takeaways from 1984 are orthodox or not doesn't matter...not everyone sees the same thing in it. This reminds me how in software they say most users only use a fraction of an application's features...but every user takes a different slice. So in reply to my original parent: this is why we can't have concise things.

Re: Lessons learned after 300 books in 4 years

#89

Post by pmoriarty »

mimimimi wrote: post #73
quinndupont wrote: post #15

This person is either reading the lightest self-help type of books, or not really "reading" these books. I'm an academic, and my only job is to read books (and articles, etc), and I do my job at least 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I don't even read this many books. My advice for getting genuinely intelligent about a topic: read hard books, intensively, and leave the buffet-stats-counter stuff to those who just w…

My advice would be that if you really want to learn something then you have to do it. The book is a reference but there is no substitute for on hands training. Unless all you want to learn is facts like an encyclopedia, which I guess is ok but I find it hard to see as a good method to learn something deeply.

What would you have to do in order to learn what was in Crime and Punishment if you didn't read it?

Re: Lessons learned after 300 books in 4 years

#90

Post by pmoriarty » 

  We ought to only read the kind of books that wound and stab us. If
  the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head,
  what are we reading it for? We need the books that affect us like a
  disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved
  more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from
  everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea
  inside us. That is my belief.

            Franz Kafka
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