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Read Fewer Books

theschooloflife.com

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Re: Read Fewer Books

#61

Post by 082349872349872 »

jonstaab wrote: post #58

I thought this was going to be a typical HN "build things instead" thing, but I actually love their take. Looking at the world around us lately I've been realizing more and more that "it's all in Plato"; his Republic is a book I read once in high school, but it's high time to re-read it. What are some books you find your self going back to repeatedly (or want to)? My list: - Domain Driven Design - Ray Bradbury's shor…

When you're done rereading The Republic (at least the governing a city-state part), please consider critiquing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572

Re: Read Fewer Books

#62

Post by watwut »

I find the first paragraph to be a strawman of reality. Most people these days dont read books and I cant really recall competitive approach to reading among my social circles. Maybe author lives in different bubble, I dont know.

Also, I read Homer’s Odyssey and while it was fun and interesting, I dont think I found that to be "perfect repository" of pretty much anything. It is story, made up story with surprisingly good characters, but I dont think it taught me everything I want to know.

Anyway, lately I enjoyed history and memoirs or biographies of lesser players. The primary thing they are giving me is awareness that real world history has great variety in and and real world people are not as simple as Odyssey make it to be. For example, the point of view of non warrior Jew dying or surviving WWII makes you look at warrior honor code much differently. And so does Hitlers biography and so does Rosa Park biography or so does description of expansion or details of how civil war came to be.

I am not saying that everyone must read the same books as me. But claim that few of them are all there is to know is just wrong. When you read just one resource, you know everything and everything looks uncomplicated and simple. When you start to draw on multiple resources, that is when things start to get interesting and complex. And that is also when things start to be easier to remember.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#63

Post by the-dude »

pjmorris wrote: post #59
the-dude wrote: post #6

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_einstein_133807

Thanks for this. I've begun a collection of quotes on not reading, to balance out my much larger collection of books. A couple quotes: "Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works....Everywhere means nowhere. " - Seneca "How many hasty, immature, superficia…

My pleasure. The last sentence from the Solzhenitsyn quote seems awfully relevant today.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#64

Post by Barrin92 »

Saint_Genet wrote: post #36

Aside from being unbearably pretentious, this fella doesn't seem to have heard about reading for pleasure.

There's been a few comments in the thread like this but I think this is a deeply unhealthy understanding of pleasure. Pleasure does not mean simple, or effortlessly or easy.

Genuine or deeper pleasure means acquiring understanding and develop better senses. Masturbation is pleasure, but it's no replacement for an intimate relationship.

Warming up a pizza is pleasurable, but you would lose out on a lot of experiences if you never developed any taste beyond that. Exercising is a drag, but once you actually learn what your body can do, it's much more genuinely rewarding than sitting on the sofa.

Reading critically, reading deeply, despite maybe being hard, is not the opposite of pleasurable once you develop the faculties for it. Which everyone can I believe.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#65

Post by cthalupa »

Timpy wrote: post #48

> Similarly, in the Ancient Greek world, one was meant to focus in on a close knowledge of just two books: Homer’s Odyssey and his Iliad Can anybody on HN verify if this is true? I thought the Iliad and Odyssey were only two of Homer's works, the rest of them lost. Why would the Ancient Greek focus on those two and not any of Homer's not-yet-lost works? Did the Ancient Greek person really read these as fervently as a…

No. Aristotle, Herodotus, Plato, Sappho, etc. were considered important reading in their time, among others. Copying manuscripts was an extremely costly endeavor, so things that had many surviving copies could be inferred as having been regarded as important, even if we did not have any other indicators.

I have no idea where the author gets this idea.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#66

Post by watwut »

Timpy wrote: post #48

> Similarly, in the Ancient Greek world, one was meant to focus in on a close knowledge of just two books: Homer’s Odyssey and his Iliad Can anybody on HN verify if this is true? I thought the Iliad and Odyssey were only two of Homer's works, the rest of them lost. Why would the Ancient Greek focus on those two and not any of Homer's not-yet-lost works? Did the Ancient Greek person really read these as fervently as a…

Afaik, they did not even read them. They were poems to be memorized and remembered. So one person would learn it and recite it to others. That is why it is a poem and that is why it contains repetitive parts - so that it remembers easily.

Also, Homer likely was not one person. The origin of the poem is not entirely clear, but speculations are that the poem is result of oral tradition written down at some point.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#67

Post by watwut »

OnWriting wrote: post #2

> ...answer to the question of why we read, there is only one response that will ever be encompassing and ambitious enough: we read in order to know everything Anecdotally, there's a large amount of people who will read a book wholly for the purpose of being able to say they've read it. Whether it's a sense of elitism, vanity or bits of both -- it's strikingly obvious when you ask deeper questions about a book and th…

They might just not remember. I used to read the same book many times and still have fun, because when I fully immersed myself and enjoyed it, I often ended up not remember a lot. I still enjoyed the experience of reading.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#68

Post by watwut »

leokennis wrote: post #46

Although the article is pretty pretentious, it does resonate with a though I've had for a long time and also commented about earlier (it's not an original thought at all): Why is everything a contest these days? Who cares that I read 40 books last year, you read 120 and my neighbour read 2? Does that make us better or worse people? You can do 1000's of things in life or you can do nothing. No one asked to be brought…

> Who cares that I read 40 books last year, you read 120 and my neighbour read 2?

Most likely, no one, which is why opening of that character is nonsense.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#69

Post by Zippogriff »

commandlinefan wrote: post #56
TheUndead96 wrote: post #7

The School of Life infuriates me for many reasons, but I will restrain myself and talk just about this specific post. Perhaps the small libraries of historic figures has more to do with the availability of books than it does their minimalism. I agree that people should not be reading every new self-help or business book that gets published. The majority of new books are bad. History acts as a great filter, which is w…

> I agree that people should not be reading every new self-help or business book that gets published You could spend the remainder of your life trying to read every worthwhile book that has already been written and still not finish them all.

Whatever its faults, most of the works in Bloom's list at the end of The Western Canon are probably very much worthwhile, yet appreciating them could occupy more than a lifetime for anyone whose job is not reading literature, even if other pastimes be largely avoided.

And it's mostly limited to fiction, drama, and poetry! It omits almost all math, science (including social science and history), and philosophy that's not of literary significance. Even within those restrictions, it's by no means a comprehensive list of every worthwhile work or author ever (if nothing else, the "Western" qualifier makes that plain).

We're even there for film, and we've only meaningfully had that medium for ~130 years. One may watch thousands of movies without ever leaving the realm of "widely regarded as excellent, meaningful, and/or important". I'd imagine there's far more than enough very, very good recorded music that it's in the same situation. Many lifetimes of top-notch media exist. Reading/hearing/watching anything that's not very good is entirely a choice.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#70

Post by dominotw »

paganel wrote: post #10
TheUndead96 wrote: post #7

The School of Life infuriates me for many reasons, but I will restrain myself and talk just about this specific post. Perhaps the small libraries of historic figures has more to do with the availability of books than it does their minimalism. I agree that people should not be reading every new self-help or business book that gets published. The majority of new books are bad. History acts as a great filter, which is w…

> I am not a religion apologists, but his videos and lectures are structured exactly the same way as sermons. He even feigns a false pastor modesty I highly recommend Jacques Ellul's "Les nouveaux possédés." (translated in English as "The New Demons" [1]) an analysis written back in 1973 describing this exact process you're describing, i.e. modern stuff (rock stars among others) trying to fill the hole of the disappe…

> Jacques Ellul

doesn't seem to fit gp's "people who have done something" crietia.

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