- get books you want to read
- choose a time (in the evening)
1. after that time, screens become forbidden
2. read until you're sleepy
3. sleep
How to read more books
181–190 of 310 posts
Re: How to read more books
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you trust anything written after 2023 or so to not be slop? Or even trust the claims that it was written before 2023?
Why does it matter whether the writing is AI generated or not? You should always be critical of everything you read. I have stopped reading plenty of books after a few chapters when I realized there was little value in it for me.
We read books because the words convey meaning, not because they appear to.
Re: How to read more books
#183I 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…
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…
Agree. I'll listen to nonfiction because it just feels like a long podcast. Fiction I always read. But in general I'm not a huge fan of audiobooks.
Re: How to read more books
#184> I have become good at walking my dog while reading — I even got complimented for that by a stranger — and I make sure I never go to the bathroom without a book.
Come on now, what is this Monty Python?
Re: How to read more books
#185A lot of things in this article made me go "wait, are you me?", it's fascinating.
The strategy for swapping whatever you do on your phone whenever you have 2 free minutes with reading helped my reading a lot, too. I initially swapped scrolling Reddit with short-form reading https://pokerfacowaty.com/blog/reddit-heroin and then swapped that for my ebook reader, reading books and a weekly newspaper. The latter also helps being less angry at news when you're not reading them in the form of rage bait tweets.
As for highlights, I now have hundreds of handwritten ones on my books, no sensible support for it in open source apps is the only thing keeping my Kobo on its stock firmware (unfortunately).
Re: How to read more books
#186I always have two books going. An important one I read at home in peace and one I can read on public transport because I don't have to / want to concentrate on it too hard.
Reading in public transport has helped me to read more often at home too
Re: How to read more books
#187I don't want to read more books though. I want to gain more skill and knowledge. Reading a book is a vehicle, but aiming for X books read is likely to mean not comprehending everything. I like to mull on ideas. Also some books are meh and you want to skip over chapters.
Re: How to read more books
#188Earlier 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…
Agree. I'll listen to nonfiction because it just feels like a long podcast. Fiction I always read. But in general I'm not a huge fan of audiobooks.
A good non fiction book should take a year to "read" though. Because you'll need to stop, reread, scribble, look up online for other help. It should be a challenge!
Re: How to read more books
#189I used to be able to read a lot while commuting. Unfortunately, many other passengers now delight in either yapping loudly on their phone or playing utter shit on its speakers. It takes me out of it...
In the UK there are "quiet coaches" which sometimes work. Sadly, though, our social conventions are crumbling. British people don't like confrontation and use the "tut" as a sign of strong disapproval. This is understood by fellow Brits as they'll lose at least a week of sleep if a tut is applied, but it's not understood by others in our society.
Re: How to read more books
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not both?
Because using the other methods of learning, possible coupled with having a search environment inside the chat for the future, or creating memorization material for the stuff i specifically want to memorize - seems more efficient and effective.
Two things here. First, you have to know what to ask an LLM. A book on a subject is already organized with all the information that could be returned by the same prompts that would lead to it. The prompting effort was essentially already done by the author and publisher.
Second, you’re getting a more compressed and lossy form of that information from an LLM, unless you go to such efforts that it’s be easier to just read the book. It’s akin to a conversation where a friend asks you about a book in finer and finer detail until you either recite the book for them word for word or direct them to just go read the book.
So, I don’t think LLMs are replacements for reading books. They’re complimentary.