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How to read more books

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Re: How to read more books

#261

Post by Paul_S »

"Avoid even audiobooks. Big corporations want to grab your attention by trying to market audiobooks as books for busy people, but don’t fall for the trap."

What nonsense. I doubled my number of books by using audiobooks. Audiobooks slow you down as well, so you can enjoy fiction at a slower pace since x3 is the fastest you can go (plus silence trimming for extra speedup). Even at slower speed I more than doubled the number because of how much dead time exists in our lives.

Maybe if you are rich, have servants and can spend any amount of time you want reading then you can stick to paper.

Re: How to read more books

#262

Post by freedomben »

alunchbox wrote: post #248
picklesman wrote: post #235

I read 189 books last year, mostly due an accidental discovery. I have a lot of trouble reading in noisy places, since I get distracted easily. My habit would be to put on some very minimal / low-information ambient music like Stars of the Lid and it worked well. Then one day I randomly decided to put the audiobook on while reading and it was a revelation. After adjusting the audio rate to match my reading speed (usu…

wait audiobooks is = reading? Do you find the retention of info as valid? I have a hard time focusing at least in my experience haven't tried audiobooks in a long time. At least for me the effort of scanning, reading, and thinking about the authors perspective and the grind is where the knowledge sinks in for me.

> wait audiobooks is = reading?

If you're reading along with the audio like OP, then definitely.

But even by itself I think there's a case to be made. Retention for some people (especially those with ADHD can be higher with listening than reading if they listen while doing a low-mental-effort task). If you absorb the material, I think it counts personally.

Re: How to read more books

#263

Post by hk__2 »

card_zero wrote: post #29
hk__2 wrote: post #19

> 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.

Who asked what you prefer? That has nothing to do with reading more books. Personally I have pages from books projected onto the walls, so that if I ever accidentally look up from the book that I'm reading, I read part of another book. Also I hire a mercenary soldier to watch me at all times, and if I try to stop reading even for a moment he jumps at me with a combat knife and pushes an open book into my face. In thi…

Neither the author, you or me have to wait for someone to ask us; we just share our thoughts with strangers in the hope to bring something positive into the conversation.

Re: How to read more books

#264

Post by Eueudhsbsj32 »

WolfeReader wrote: post #259
Eueudhsbsj32 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're implying AI is incapable of producing meaningful output? Have you not used models from the last few years?

They may have been implying it; I'll say it. Token prediction machines do not produce meaningful output . It is much more likely that they will regurgitate, without attribution, something meaningful that a human wrote (in their plagiarism/training data). Meaningful "output" is only meaningful if the author understood the meaning, instead of predicting words in sequence.

In what way does a human author "understand the meaning" that AI does not?

Just because a brain is made from organic material rather than silicon, doesn't make it less of a prediction machine.

Re: How to read more books

#265

Post by moate »

titularcomment wrote: post #238
blakes wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't blindly trust a brand new author in 2026, but it's very easy to trust an author that has put out good writing in years past. Not hard to find, there has been plenty of great books written after 2023. New authors however will certainly have to earn trust for a few years now I think. It's similar with music, if someone puts out their first album in 2026 and has no singles or EPs, no YouTube presence, etc., i…

I don't understand caring about 'slop' in creative media. Its pressingly more important in programming because there are a lot of bugs linters, complicated language models and even fuzzy sandbox searches can't catch. Even if they did, coding is collaborative work and maintaining vibecoded infra is a genuine hassle. However, none of these apply to music or books. AI or not, humane feelings always shapes a piece to its…

why not enjoy the piece>> The theft.

I for one can't enjoy a piece of creative media made by AI because I know it only exists so that a handful of losers can profit off the wholesale theft of actual human creativity. Other people don't share these qualms (they are also losers) and that's their choice. Honestly, I could give a fuck if AI tanks coding because I think the internet as we now know it is a mistake of capitalism and if using the plagiarism machine causes codebase maintenance to be harder, aww shucks sucks to suck, guess that's your job now? IDK, I'm married to an artist/writer and was a cook for most of my 20s so I have become a neo-luddite in my middle age when it comes to this specific topic.

Weird how "where you are in the world" affects your view of things, right?

Re: How to read more books

#266

Post by hk__2 »

silcoon wrote: post #152
hk__2 wrote: post #19

> 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 req…

Yes. In my experience, I need to at least read a book for 1-2 hours to really enter the story, and then I can read for 10 minutes here and there. The issue is if I start reading the book 10 minutes by 10 minutes I never really enter the story and it takes me more time to finish it.

Re: How to read more books

#267

Post by misiti3780 »

latexr wrote: post #258
misiti3780 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont know you about you, but the reason I read is to learn and retain -- many studies havnt shown audiobooks are much worse than reading for retention. Example: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247504935_They_Hear...

> I dont know you about you, but the reason I read is to learn and retain Millions of people read for entertainment. If you ask the people who read Fifty Shades and other erotic novels¹, how many do you think would say they do it “to learn and retain”? In fact, not retaining is something I would like to do with certain pieces of media, so I could reexperience their impact. Have you ever listened to a good audiobook f…

I only read non-fiction, maybe my situation is unique.

Re: How to read more books

#268

Post by noisy_boy »

alabhyajindal wrote: post #218

> I always have a book with me when I go out with my partner, even if I don’t usually end up reading it. If she has to run an errand and I have to wait, I don’t waste my free time with nothing to read. 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.” This does not sound an improvement over using a phone. W…

> It's okay to not do something for a minute.

Not doing anything and being totally idle for a while is nothing to sneeze at. Especially in this day and age.

Re: How to read more books

#269

Post by bluebarbet »

misiti3780 wrote: post #233
latexr wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a meaningless gatekeeping distinction. Unless your sole goal is to be a poser who wants to be perceived as a literate intellectual who is oh so cultured and well-read, however you consume the book is up to you. Who the heck is thinking “I really want to read more books, but only if it’s in the way this stranger tells me I should, not the way I enjoy”? If you like reading paper books, good. If you like reading el…

I dont know you about you, but the reason I read is to learn and retain -- many studies havnt shown audiobooks are much worse than reading for retention. Example: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247504935_They_Hear...

The "havnt" is letting you down.

Re: How to read more books

#270

Post by gertlex »

picklesman wrote: post #247
gjm11 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I might have trouble with that approach for "harder/denser non-fiction" because for such reading I might well want to stop and think from time to time -- maybe there's an argument I'm not convinced by and want to reason through step by step, maybe there's a mathematical calculation with a non-obvious step, maybe there's a clever observation that I want to think about the implications of, maybe I've just reali…

Oh for sure. I listen with wireless buds with a huge button (Jabra Elite 4, sadly no longer made) so pausing/unpausing takes almost zero effort. For particularly dense passages I'll just slow down the audio as needed as well. Even for fiction I find myself starting more slowly as I get to know the characters, and then speeding up as I want to.

Regarding the button control, if others are looking for similar, I found that a bluetooth audio control device intended for mounting to motorcycle handlebars (so, water resistant, big buttons) works well while I'm doing dishes to manage audio going to my bluetooth hearing aids.
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