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The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why

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Re: The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why

#51

Post by chrisdhoover »

ggillas wrote: post #13

The best reading breakthrough I had was to eliminate my need to complete a book. If I've lost the plot, I throw the book away. If I've got the advice author's gist, I move on. It's allowed me to enjoy reading fiction again, get to the books I need in the moment, and move faster through my reading list.

Me too, it took me a long time to realize that not all books were good for me or to my liking. When I realized it was ok to put a book down and pick up another I was released from a weird guilt.

I also think we teach literature and history in the wrong direction. I’d start a literature course with contemporary works and work back in time. Same with history

Re: The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why

#52

Post by LearnerHerzog »

StrictDabbler wrote: post #2

As I read this piece I was able to predict the direction it would go and the evidence that would be presented for each opinion. By the end I had been neither surprised nor enlightened by anything presented in it. The author likes old books, dislikes digital reading devices and audiobooks, dislikes most things written since his own birth unless they were written about the western canon or by people trained entirely in…

Exactly my thoughts. The article is nothing but pretentious.

Re: The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why

#53

Post by komali2 »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #17
komali2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar thoughts here. Furthermore, the author's writing style is annoyingly old fashioned and unnecessarily long. >Like the man—the fellow with the name Solomon, writing under the pen name Ecclesiastes—said, “Of the making of many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh Why not just "Solomon, writing under the pen name 'Ecclesiastes', said..."? > I recall some years ago a politician whose n…

There always seems to be someone on HN willing to bemoan any prose style that aspires above the perfect perfunctoriness of API documentation.

Not quite. Many authors hot the mark for me. Neil gaiman, Stephenson, Peter Watts, doctorow, all write prose eloquently without getting obtuse.

Re: The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why

#54

Post by atypicaluser »

StrictDabbler wrote: post #2

As I read this piece I was able to predict the direction it would go and the evidence that would be presented for each opinion. By the end I had been neither surprised nor enlightened by anything presented in it. The author likes old books, dislikes digital reading devices and audiobooks, dislikes most things written since his own birth unless they were written about the western canon or by people trained entirely in…

You missed the point of the article entirely.

The Bookish Life--obviously this will discuss a life built around books. Yeah, yeah, anyone could guess how it would end, i.e. there's little fortune in it.

How to Read and Why--interest. Purely so. You read slow because of your interest, you read because of your interest. Just as a foodie eats a dessert slowly because of his interest, he eats because of his interest. That a book-ie and a foodie would prefer one set of books or foods over another or over all others doesn't make the person less of a lover of their books or foods. That a foodie might prefer chopsticks over silverware, fingers or tortillas doesn't make their palate any less exquisite.

Tell me--would you consider Isaac Newton and Fyoder Dostoevsky small-minded because they tended to keep their reading Euro-centric as well?

And would I be right to charge anyone who hasn't the faintest interest in the Dalit literature of India or Japan, or in Mariama Bâ's So Long a Letter, or in the depths of Borges' poetry, etc., to be merely provincial? Or am I just being smug regarding my reading habits?

I recommend you re-read the piece with a little less hostility.

Re: The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why

#55

Post by Emma_Goldman »

StrictDabbler wrote: post #2

As I read this piece I was able to predict the direction it would go and the evidence that would be presented for each opinion. By the end I had been neither surprised nor enlightened by anything presented in it. The author likes old books, dislikes digital reading devices and audiobooks, dislikes most things written since his own birth unless they were written about the western canon or by people trained entirely in…

1) There is plenty of evidence to suggest that people find it easier to navigate and remember from the printed page.

2) Yes we should all seek to learn about other cultures and expand our horizons. But that hardly makes all of Western thought 'small' and 'provincial'. You are simply aping the view you are complaining about, only in the diametrically opposite direction.

Seriously learning about how the great minds of the past understood their world is, often, just as good a way of expanding our horizons, as reading from other cultures in the present. We are stretched by space and time.

Finally, I don't think you're taking seriously the limits that language places on our breadth of reading. Very few professional intellectual historians - let alone everyone else - know enough of the European languages to engage with anything but a small part of 'Western' thought.

I agree that we should strive to read more in non-Western languages, but it's very tough going.

Re: The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why

#56

Post by Emma_Goldman »

jl6 wrote: post #32

Western education drills into us the mantra that reading books is virtuous. It certainly is something that children need to learn how to do, like eating and sleeping. But like eating and sleeping there are limits to the benefit you will get from reading books, and I don’t think this is widely recognised. The prevailing opinion still seems to be that reading is unreservedly Good For You. Why do I say that? Because rea…

There is a big difference between 'reading for pleasure and self-education', and 'reading for a specific purpose'. I agree that one can do too much of the former but I'm not so sure about the latter. There's plenty of academics and writers, of all stripes, who would not be able to do what they do if they did not spend most of their time reading.

Re: The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why

#57

Post by Emma_Goldman »

elboru wrote: post #16
ggillas wrote: post #13

The best reading breakthrough I had was to eliminate my need to complete a book. If I've lost the plot, I throw the book away. If I've got the advice author's gist, I move on. It's allowed me to enjoy reading fiction again, get to the books I need in the moment, and move faster through my reading list.

I learned to do that not too long ago, I started reading Asimov’s Fundation trilogy, but I struggled picking the book from my desk every single time, I was supposed to love it, everyone loves Asimov, so I had to love it too, but I just couldn’t, I felt guilty. Then I realized that the point of reading a novel was to enjoy it, if I was not enjoying it then I was just reading in a pretentious way. Since then I only kee…

Some of the ideas in Asimov are compelling. But he's not a great prose stylist.

Re: The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why

#58

Post by PaulOlteanu »

EliRivers wrote: post #48
komali2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar thoughts here. Furthermore, the author's writing style is annoyingly old fashioned and unnecessarily long. >Like the man—the fellow with the name Solomon, writing under the pen name Ecclesiastes—said, “Of the making of many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh Why not just "Solomon, writing under the pen name 'Ecclesiastes', said..."? > I recall some years ago a politician whose n…

Why not just "Solomon, writing under the pen name 'Ecclesiastes', said..."? Saying "the man" and then following up with "the fellow with the name" emphasies that who he was is less important than what he said; the fact that it's Solomon, writing Ecclesiastes (two names widely recognised in the Western canon) serve to emphasise this. EVEN THOUGH it's written by someone famous in a famous book, what he wrote is STILL m…

If the goal was to make the fact that the man who said those words is not important while the words are, why not just not mention Solomon or Ecclesiastes in the first place.

Re: The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why

#59

Post by gone35 »

person_of_color wrote: post #4

Is there a way to quantify the positive benefits of reading? I would like to track it just like any other variable (body fat, resting heart rate, etc.)

Crudely, I guess you could sort of track the "Bayesian surprise" you get by reading a book by measuring changes in skin conductance --essentially tracking how many "frissons" you get while reading maybe? (I really don't know tho...)
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