Just Read the Book Already • Hacker News Board

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#101

Post by bitwize » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #62

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #48

Wow, do I feel this pain. As both an author[1] and a book-lover, I've been on both sides of this divide. People just don't consume books the same way they used to. As a reader, I find I have to slowly re-introduce deep reading -- even if I've just been away for a week or two. I usually do this by getting a physical book and a physical distraction device, usually my phone. I go to a place where there's nothing else in…

> Then I read as much as I can until I feel "bothered" (beats me what the correct adjective is here. "Bored"?) At that point I pick up the distraction device and poke around: Twitter, Facebook, HN, and so on. I make an effort to put it down. Eventually I succeed, then back to reading. I noticed myself doing this while watching a movie. Even at suspenseful moments, I press "pause" and pick up my phone to browse around…

Video games do this for me. I don't know how kids these days spend hours playing Fortnite. A few rounds of that and I need a break.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#102

Post by kuwze » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 4:10 PM UTC

I think there is a huge difference between reading fiction and nonfiction. One is tied to reality, the other is a socially accepted temporary delusion. I say this as someone who loves fiction in all forms. I wish I had only read nonfiction growing up.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#103

Post by pharrington » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #3

For fiction I read e-books. However for all technical books, things like O’Reilly, No Starch, etc, I always buy physical. The decision to do that has very much 10x my learning. Even when it comes to long documentation (MySQL is an astounding 5,000+ pages) I’ll usually print out portions to cover if it’s reasonable. I don’t know why this has increased my learning so much. The best I can come up with is that memory is…

Yeah, the spatial aspect of books is definitely a factor in why its easier for you (and just about everyone probably) to learn from physical texts than current electronic texts.

For myself, though, it's just not resource efficient to use physical copies of all the technical documentation I read. For example, I'm learning Vulkan right now, and there's just 0% chance I'm going to print out 1300+ pages of documentation that's liable to change a few times a year in subtle ways.

Then again, just thinking about it now, maybe specifically printing out just the diffs when the spec changes could make it easier to stay up to date?

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#104

Post by hrktb » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #45

hrktb wrote: post #13

> The narrative action struck her as intolerably slow. > She had, she concluded, “changed in ways I would never have predicted. I now read on the surface and very quickly; in fact, I read too fast to comprehend deeper levels Here she lays the blame solely on her, but I would think that it's also a writer's skill to hook the reader. It takes two to tango, and if she felt the narrative was so slow she started to skim t…

I don't think the world needs to consist solely of page-turning books that "hook the reader."

Anything written needs to be interesting though. There is no way to escape the time spent / return on investment balance.

The return can be entertainment, practical info on a legal subject, or thought provoking opinions on a message board.

But the worst the text is written, the higher the return needs to be for the reader to continue reading.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#105

Post by itaintreddit » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

I blame math. In mathematical prose (proofs in particular) every word down to the articles (a/the) matters. Non-technical prose is usually (necessarily?) bloated with extraneous info and many irrelevant words/sentences (and often paragraphs). I don't have patience for that anymore. I skim an article to find the main point the author trying to make and if I can't find it by the mid point of the page, I simply leave the page/article/site.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#106

Post by dantheman0207 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

ksdale wrote: post #84

ryandrake wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m kind of in your camp. Back when I had a lot of time, I used to read a lot. But it’s such a low bandwidth communication, and books seem to have so much useless filler material. I tried e-books but failed. If I listen to them while I’m doing something else like commuting, I don’t pay attention (since I’m trying to not get killed on I-680), and if I listen while I’m not doing anything else, I fall asleep. Still wait…

A year or so ago, I decided I wanted to read all of the "best" books so I found a few lists of the best literature in English from the past few hundred years and read a few dozen of the books that showed up on most lists, and I realized that really well written books aren't nearly as low-bandwidth as a lot of more pulpy type books are. Obviously I didn't enjoy all of the books on the list, but even the ones I kind of…

N. N. Taleb always says you shouldn’t read any books that are less than 200 years old. If a book survives for 200 years it must have something genuinely valuable to say.

I think this is good advice. I try to follow it for the most part, but obviously I don’t apply that to technical material. Still, I bet if you read Euclid instead of O’Reilly you’d end up a pretty good programmer.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#107

Post by dash2 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

It's small point, and doesn't invalidate her overall argument, but Hermann Hesse probably just isn't a very good writer, and as an adult, Ms Wolf realised this.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#108

Post by darioush » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #99

Raidion wrote: post #23

Problem I have with books is that it's much harder to justify the "time" to get lost in books. When I was a kid, I was near the top of the school's reading program and devoured books. But now, when I do have time on vacation or sick, I'd almost much rather read something that's educational-ish. It's hard to justify the X hours falling into a fantasy world, though it's still almost as fun as it used to be. Practically…

If you have to justify it, you're doing it wrong. Your free time is your playground. Take half an hour -- or ten minutes -- each day and enjoy those fantasy worlds. They might refresh you.

A problem with fantasy worlds is the escapism is mild, and I develop something like tolerance to it. The tolerance effect makes finishing very long fantasy books / trilogies slow, since it causes me to put them down in the middle if the story slows down at any point. Once I've put it down for a few days, the mild escapism isn't enough to pull me back and I start losing touch with the characters and plot. I experience something like that with video games as well.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#109

Post by Pimpus » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

When you are a digital addict, it is no surprise that you cannot sustain focus and attention. "Deep reading" is going to seem like a chore when your brain is craving the dopamine hits it's used to. I've had a lot of success using apps to limit my computer usage, like Cold Turkey (no affiliation). I can block specific sites, apps, or freeze my whole computer on a schedule. Would recommend it, let me know if anyone knows of a libre alternative though.

Re: Just Read the Book Already

#110

Post by bitwize » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #21

jihadjihad wrote: post #7

Nothing too revelatory here, but I can certainly agree with the ideas presented. So many of us are used to a constant, reliable dopamine drip while reading things on the internet that larger texts bore us. The conclusion at the end of the piece is right, though--it just takes willpower. Choosing delayed gratification in the form of good, rich, long-form writing is a lot like choosing a balanced diet. The benefits of…

I find the new trend of long form articles infuriating. Just get to the point, without all the rigamarole! Is there an actual benefit? Or is it just something people say?

Long articles are fine but -- remember five-paragraph essays from grade/primary school? Good, because many online journalists seem to have forgotten them.

The thing about the five-paragraph essay is its structure scales well to longer articles. You state your main idea up front, then spend a bit of time elaborating on that main idea, then you wrap up. Online articles are like -- they pick a source, say, a college professor or someone with a new book out. Then they spend half the article or more talking about their source's early childhood, failed marriage and/or relationship with their dog, anything that might have a loose tenuous relationship with the main idea. THEN they hit you with the main idea, then they pad out their essay with quotes from the source, whom by now you have "gotten to know". It's infuriating, but I guess the idea is to tease a main idea with the headline, then keep you slogging through barely relevant detail long enough to show you quite a few ads before wrapping up with stuff that relates what was teased to you, even if the body doesn't justify the headline. Clickbait, in other words.