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The joy of reading books you don't understand

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Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#141

Post by voisin »

egl2021 wrote: post #41
voisin wrote: post #30

I’ve recently started reading The Iliad. I find it challenging because characters can be referred to by a variety of different things, even within the same paragraph or two, so it is challenging to follow the conversation or who is being discussed. I’ve taken to asking ChatGPT to summarize chapters and key characters within the chapter after I’ve finished each chapter and it helps give me feedback as to whether what…

I found Malcolm Wilcock, A companion to the Iliad, and Ralph Hexter, A guide to the Odyssey, helpful when I read Homer recently.

Thank you. Putting my thoughts into my comment made me wonder a bit more about the translation I am reading which is Butler’s translation included in the Great Books of Western Culture. It apparently is a somewhat weak translation when compared to modern ones and so I might switch to something modern to see if that helps.

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#142

Post by [deleted] »

bowsamic wrote: post #109
jjmarr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this comment before the post, and now I feel bad. I watched a spy movie from the 1960s recently with someone. We got 20 minutes in before she was confused about why the movie is just about a depressed drunk who lost his job in a spy agency, before my movie-watching accomplice looked up the plot of the movie on Wikipedia. Spoiler alert, there's a twist, and the movie didn't tell the viewer that. It's interestin…

Well the issue is that people panic, since honestly I think we are very insecure about our media literacy

[deleted]

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#143

Post by skydhash »

2143 wrote: post #51
jyunwai wrote: post #10

A useful habit that I've begun to follow with more complicated books—especially when reading them out of personal interest—is to actively avoid taking notes or worrying about background material on a first read. I've recently read and greatly enjoyed a historical fiction novel called "Augustus" written by John Edward Williams and published in 1972. On the surface level, it's about the events of the life of Augustus C…

I see so many comments about taking notes while reading. I didn't even know that was a thing. I'm not even sure if I would want to do it, because it would interrupt the reading. My own personal belief (which I came up with just now) is that reading novels should be a smooth relatively easy affair. Because I read simply for the fun of it. This may not be the case with academic books however. I just, start reading. I h…

First read, I don’t take notes unless I’m familiar with the material. At most, I’ll mark interesting passages. But I usually pause after each or every two chapters, reflecting on the concepts.

I don’t take notes with fiction books, but I pause whenever I can’t give it my full attention (interruptions, some other tasks, tired).

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#144

Post by electrodank »

sfink wrote: post #53

This reminds me of something that I heard once from a Chinese teacher. I can't vouch for the accuracy of it, but he was definitely on to something : In the West, it is assumed that it is the speaker's job to make himself understood to his listeners. In the East, it is the other way around. In recent times, it seems like we've gotten even more extreme. The speaker or writer must not only spoon-feed the understanding,…

>In paintings, it is known that the viewer can get out more than the painter put in.

There’s something very much “Dabblers and Blowhards” about this statement that I can’t quite put my finger on it. [0]

Try painting, I mean really painting, before spouting nonsense. It wreaks havoc on the rest of your comment.

[0] https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#145

Post by strken »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #100
spacephysics wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find a similar trend with education in general. Some states have phased out programs for gifted students. Instead, many of them aren’t stimulated enough and end up going down a troubling path (worst case) or they don’t really reach their full potential during those formidable years. Teachers are expected to make the content match the lowest denominator, outside of the occasional exceptional teacher

And so many of those programs were absolutely horrible. I had a lot more homework than my peers and was expected to act more mature. Sorry, but we were all the same age as other kids - we didn't deserve a higher workload (as kids and teens) and we should have been expected to act our age. It was pretty common to make fun of others for not keeping up well enough (struggling not allowed) or for appearing too smart (Not…

Mine was great. It had a normal amount of homework, a smaller class size (which was a happy but unintentional accident), and accelerated four years into three. We shared electives with the rest of the school and socialised widely. I was bullied pretty badly through my pre-teen childhood and the program provided a way out of that, which in turn taught me how to interact with a group of people who didn't physically and emotionally abuse me for social gain - something a lot of people take for granted.

Which is to say that anecdotes are of course going to be mixed.

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#146

Post by Sebb767 »

jjmarr wrote: post #55
sfink wrote: post #53

This reminds me of something that I heard once from a Chinese teacher. I can't vouch for the accuracy of it, but he was definitely on to something : In the West, it is assumed that it is the speaker's job to make himself understood to his listeners. In the East, it is the other way around. In recent times, it seems like we've gotten even more extreme. The speaker or writer must not only spoon-feed the understanding,…

I read this comment before the post, and now I feel bad. I watched a spy movie from the 1960s recently with someone. We got 20 minutes in before she was confused about why the movie is just about a depressed drunk who lost his job in a spy agency, before my movie-watching accomplice looked up the plot of the movie on Wikipedia. Spoiler alert, there's a twist, and the movie didn't tell the viewer that. It's interestin…

> It's interesting that modern movies have to make you think you understand something, before they pull the curtain back and reveal there's a twist. Otherwise people will get disengaged and stop watching before the twist occurs.

So why should you keep on watching a movie where nothing happens just because, in the end, it _might_ be that there is a twist? I do see the more general point about ever shorter attention spans, but in general, it's probably a good thing that we have enough options to entertain ourselves in order to not having to take these gambles.

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#147

Post by 0xFEE1DEAD »

rvba wrote: post #118
sfink wrote: post #53

This reminds me of something that I heard once from a Chinese teacher. I can't vouch for the accuracy of it, but he was definitely on to something : In the West, it is assumed that it is the speaker's job to make himself understood to his listeners. In the East, it is the other way around. In recent times, it seems like we've gotten even more extreme. The speaker or writer must not only spoon-feed the understanding,…

Oversimplification is bad, but there is a reason why Western/US universities are so much better at teaching students. Imagine your professors and textbooks werent there to teach you, but they were there to show off their knowledge or to prove you that you know nothing. A very known problem in my country is that a professor is not making a lecture to teach you something or to explain you something, the professor wants…

Indeed, the truth often lies somewhere in between.

It sounds like you might not have been studying to become a mathematician but had to take a statistics course as a requirement for your degree. In such scenarios overcoming vague and complex teachings can indeed feel incredibly cumbersome, often resulting in a negative overall experience. However, when it comes to topics you’re passionate about the situation can be quite different. While exceptions exist in every field passion can make certain teaching styles more tolerable.

For instance, I taught myself programming at the age of 13 and I vividly remember struggling with OOP. It took me 2 months to grasp it, but I persevered. English is not my native language and I was quite poor at it in school. I began learning English on my own because there were far more programming resources available in English than in my native language. I was terrible at math and finished high school with an E in math. Fast forward a few years I developed an interest in algorithms and theoretical computer science because I wanted to understand how compilers work. I spent months learning to comprehend mathematical symbols and notation, reading numerous resources that assumed a solid mathematical foundation which I did not have. I persevered because I was genuinely interested.

Making learning too difficult isn’t helpful, but neither is making it too easy. Like most things, it really depends.

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#148

Post by joaorico »

Kafka [1] on which types of book to read:

"I believe one should only read those books which bite and sting. If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a blow to the head, then why read the book? To make us happy, as you write? My God, we would be just as happy if we had no books, and those books that make us happy, we could write ourselves if necessary. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that hurts us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like if we were being driven into forests, away from all people, like a suicide, a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." [2]

[1] Brief an Oskar Pollak, 27. Januar 1904. , https://homepage.univie.ac.at/werner.haas/1904/br04-003.htm

[2] Literal translation by ChatGPT. Original:

"Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder vorstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns."

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#149

Post by haswell »

Sebb767 wrote: post #146
jjmarr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this comment before the post, and now I feel bad. I watched a spy movie from the 1960s recently with someone. We got 20 minutes in before she was confused about why the movie is just about a depressed drunk who lost his job in a spy agency, before my movie-watching accomplice looked up the plot of the movie on Wikipedia. Spoiler alert, there's a twist, and the movie didn't tell the viewer that. It's interestin…

> It's interesting that modern movies have to make you think you understand something, before they pull the curtain back and reveal there's a twist. Otherwise people will get disengaged and stop watching before the twist occurs. So why should you keep on watching a movie where nothing happens just because, in the end, it _might_ be that there is a twist? I do see the more general point about ever shorter attention sp…

“Nothing happening” can be as impactful and meaningful as a scene full of action.

I personally like to know as little as possible about a movie before I watch it, aside from genre. I want to experience the story as the creators intended, and at times this includes being completely in the dark. The transition from “wtf is going on?” to understanding is where the payoff resides.

Every movie you watch is a gamble, even if you read the Wikipedia page first. And it is possible to get a general understanding of the reception of a movie without having to know anything about the plot itself.

> it's probably a good thing that we have enough options to entertain ourselves in order to not having to take these gambles

Different people watch for different reasons. I personally think it’d be incredibly boring to stop making gambles on potentially interesting movies.

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#150

Post by eigenhombre »

__rito__ wrote: post #116
eigenhombre wrote: post #19

I do like some "hard" fiction like the Stephenson mentioned in TFA, as well as Pynchon and David Foster Wallace, but my mind immediately went to some of the harder technical writing I've enjoyed - The Art of Computer Programming; SICP and other Lisp texts, math books, etc. I once spent a very pleasant short vacation on a beach on Lake Michigan reading Peter Gabriel Bergmann's "Introduction to the Theory of Relativity…

> "but my mind immediately went to some of the harder technical writing I've enjoyed [...] math books" What are your favorite Math books, and what texts did you enjoy the most? Could you please share the titles?

My very first was Naive Set Theory by Paul Halmos. Way over my head in 7th(?) grade but my first intro to math beyond pre-algebra stuff.

Lately I've enjoyed, but did not finish, the Joy of Abstraction by Eugenia Cheng, on category theory. And there was a differential geometry book whose name I have forgotten but whose exercises I really enjoyed, because I could do them in my head while riding the bus, just by thinking about them.

I'm not particularly well read on mathematics (had a lot of math in college, hardly any since) but I would like to circle back to reading more at some point.

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