All I had to do to read more was reserve time specifically for it. On week days that will be late evening, on the weekend I can sneak in extra time in the am. I haven't had to "block" anything, but I don't use my phone for much, just my laptop.
How to read more books
151–160 of 310 posts
Re: How to read more books
#152> First of all, you don’t have to make time to read. What you need to do is read every single time you are not doing something else. Mmh I’m not sure about that. I prefer to read for 1-2 hours rather than read 2 minutes here and 5 minutes there, especially for books that require some concentration to read, like dense stories and/or books not in my native language.
Author here. Yes, I agree that reading for two minutes here and there is not that effective, but in my opinion, as little as 10 minutes of reading helps me make progress. The story is already loaded in my recent memory, so it's quick to switch context and immerse myself back in the book, even if I only have a short amount of time.
Reading multiple books at the same time helps with this. The level of concentration required varies by book and personal experience. I can set aside a larger span of time for more complex books and read more lightweight stories for the rest of the day.
Re: How to read more books
#153I have gained so much by reading comments on Hacker News, articles, lurking in groups and forums, watching YouTube videos. Reading books is important because they have knowledge that is not accessible in another format. It is an efficient way to condense information and pass it around. At least it used to be, when paper was more scarce. Now books get fluffed up for padding. A lot of people should be writing articles…
Don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds like you've become addicted to instant gratification and you've rationalized it. Up is down, down is up, and low value social media comments are actually better than reading a book by an expert.
Of course, I'm just projecting. That's what's happened to me, and I'm miserable about it.
Re: How to read more books
#154Lots of good advice here. I also read one book a week and wanted to add my POV. I don't put any special effort into reading books during my downtime, as the OP describes here. I just read when I feel like it and before bed.
Re: How to read more books
#155The question is why? Why do you think reading books is a more valuable use of your time than reading posts or watching video essays. Anybody can look at an immature medium and write it off as a waste of time. In 100 years parents will tell children to scroll tiktok instead of playing on the Zorp, don't you want to be part of that rather than the footnote, 'Oh yeah people were still writing scrolls in the 1700s'. Book…
This comment is all the proof you need that people should read more books
Re: How to read more books
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I like to highlight certain passages (non-fiction) for future reference, and this only works on ebooks.
Works on print too, no?
In a limited fashion, yes. But ebooks mean you can search highlights, categorize them, see summaries of them, etc if using calibre, zotero, or similar.
Re: How to read more books
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Audiobooks are just a different medium. I don't think people should pretend that an audiobook is a book. You process the two in completely different ways. This doesn't imply one is better than the other either. For me I don't like audiobooks because its very slow and spoken stories should have a different cadence, velocity, set of dynamics, and diction than a book should (check out "the moth" to see what I'm talking…
>I don't think people should pretend that an audiobook is a book. You process the two in completely different ways. Is this attitude a holdover from encouraging small children to read for themselves? I don't know if this is quite the right framing but are you... hearing-illterate to some degree? Some voice actors definitely add a layer of interpretation, and some are distractingly bad, but otherwise it could not be a…
It's not a maybe. People's brains work differently.
For one thing, in the written version, it's way easier to scan backwards precisely to a point in the text to clarify missed details.
Sometimes I like to stop reading for a moment and take in the scenery. With an audiobook, the narrator has already decided to blurt out the next line. Or I'd have to quickly pause it and lose my train of thought. With reading I'm fully in control of when the next bit of information will be introduced.
Audiobooks are great for dialog-heavy stories, but sometimes I want to spend a little bit longer on a particular page when the author is building imagery... what's the equivalent of that in an audiobook, slowing the speech down? Except it's not about speed, it's about soaking in the particular meaning of a word (or string of words) before going onto the next.
I don't think this even scratches the surface of how different they are as mediums of storytelling.
Re: How to read more books
#158I'd split this question into a set of parts: - Why to read? - How to read (from a literary / skills perspective)? - What to read: authors, topics, books, etc? - How to read (practice / technology)? Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book addresses most of the first three questions, and ... would be a good book to read itself. For an overview of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book > (Wikipedia) https://ar…
> Past a point, finding material worth reading actually does become a challenge, despite the tremendous volume of published works (hundreds of thousands to a million or more books through much of the 20th century and beyond). Where does that point arrive? I'm right now at a point where my to read list is increasing faster than I can read, because I keep adding books mentioned in the other books I''m reading.
To an extent it depends on what your interests are, what your research skills are, and how well you can articulate what it is you're looking for. That last especially if you're dependent on others to find materials of interest.
For someone reading for distraction, with narrow interests and tastes, who's covered most of the obvious canon (Great Books, literary prizes/awards, etc.), coming up with useful recommendations gets challenging.
Mind: I'm describing others, not myself, for whom the situation is similar to what you describe. I am getting better at realising that many of the works I'm referred to by the means mentioned earlier (references and citations) aren't especially illuminating, though at least for now, many others are. More books than time is still my status.
The problem as stated derives largely from what I've heard of trying to keep a very literary visually-disabled person with refined and/or narrow tastes "in books". A few thousand titles in, and much of the low-hanging fruit is harvested, and recommendations (friends, book reviews, AI/LLM) tend to either replicate books already read or come up with inappropriate / unsatisfactory recommendations.
Re: How to read more books
#159I have an almost-four year old child and not a lot of downtime. I used to listen to podcasts when I was doing dishes, cleaning the house, walking the dog, etc. I've mostly abandoned podcasts in favor of audiobooks. It didn't feel like they were benefiting me in any meaningful way—almost like they were just empty calories for my ears. I finally made it all the way through The Power Broker recently, which I've wanted t…
I'll echo this too. I've liddles in the house and books are a no go right now. If they even let me the minutes to read, that would be great. But I know from repeated experience that books are too fragile for them to have around, let alone the stains and stickiness that young children affect on every surface.
Audiobooks have been a god send and then the Libby app manna from upon high. Free, high quality, adult-level infotainment?! I'll never go back.
One thing if do is up the reading speed. It takes time but I'm comfortable at 2.6x these days, even on the fragmented sleep a teething toddler grants you. For really in depth stuff I'll slow it down a lot, but a Stephen King dime store novel or John Grisham thriller? Oh yeah, speed it up no worries