251–260 of 300 posts
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Incidentally, I was given a copy of Peltzold's "Code", second edition (2022), for Christmas. I'd read the first many, many years ago. I'm looking forward to reading it again.
It's a fantastic book. I'm surprised universities don't assign it in introduction courses.
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I started writing a real blog. My mindset is notes to myself. A place to collect my own writings and thoughts that I myself would like to refer back to that I also don’t mind sharing. It is almost entirely for myself, but I might as well make what I can public, maybe someone finds it interesting.
What blogging platform or writing tool do you use for this? It seems like an interesting idea I might adopt: write a blog for myself only.
They talk about the distinction between reading a book where you have no distractions and no "next" task to move on to and reading on a device - where you are a mere click away from other information & stimulation.
In order to spend actual time reading articles you need to get into a state where you aren't reading to be done with the article and don't care how much time you spend in this state which is pretty hard.
Apps like Pocket/Upnext/Matter/Readwise help, but I find that it takes more than this. People often send their articles to a kindle to facilitate this kind of reading.
I have been in a recent period of intense non-fiction book reading recently (6 / month for past 3 months) and I realized a couple of things: 1. High-quality writing relaxes me to the point that I can enjoy learning at a much deeper level 2. It’s extremely arduous to keep my BS filter constantly deployed, which it is 95% of the time I'm reading unfiltered content (blogs, Twitter, news etc) A well-written book is a lar…
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Same experience for me. Viewing screens, with their unnatural light and uncanny hyperrealism, rattle my nervous system, and I can feel a subtle internal fight in my brain about what I’m doing. Somehow it’s also easy to get trapped, like you get magnetized. I see this in everyone. It can sometimes cause arguments trying to get someone to break the spell and have them reengage with the world. It’s not just the normal a…
Agree with your second paragraph, but for some books, I've gotten too used to being able to look up words/topics directly from the ebook. I find myself annoyed I can't long press a word with a physical book. I then end up grabbing my phone and looking up the word/topic, and then it's back to the electronic device that I was trying to get away from with the paper book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book>
This applies mostly to nonfiction, though there are aspects which apply to fiction as well.
Adler also addresses the "what books do you recommend" with a list of 137 suggestions which are a good start (though of course, not an exhaustive list):
https://www.tosummarise.com/2022/11/26/mortimer-adlers-readi...>
> Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many? Also because they are so shallow...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shallows_(book)>
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An odd pleasure of mine that I've subconsciously developed a way to sniff out is "self-help books that are a genuine effort from the author, regardless of whether they're precise or intelligent or verifiable." You have to watch out for the ones who want to start a business or a cult, but it will be something like "Check out my new system of psycho-cyber-kinetics" and it's just "be kind to people." I imagine a lot of…
I was laughing my ass off when they started reading that self-help book like it was gospel. It does convey an interesting idea though -- that if you knew nothing of the real world, even something written by that benevolent doofus brother-in-law would be emotionally impactful. I think I get what you mean by genuine authors.