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How to read more books

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Re: How to read more books

#281

Post by picklesman »

keeganpoppen wrote: post #276
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…

oh man-- that seems peak, except for the part that my reading level is dynamic between "i wasnt actually paying attention" to "my brain is @ 5x and i am flying through the material"... very interesting idea, though-- kinda like a pace setter at a marathon or bike race or whatever. i endeavor to try this for myself.

Indeed it keeps me on pace and paying attention.

Finding the right speed takes some experimentation. Too slow and my mind will wander, too fast and I can't absorb the material / don't have enough time to ponder.

Re: How to read more books

#282

Post by picklesman »

wtetzner wrote: post #280
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…

This sounded weird to me at first until I realized that this exactly what I do when watching a movie with subtitles.

Yes, it feels very similar. Except speeding up a movie seems absolutely insane to me, whereas with a book it just feels like matching my mental ingestion rate.

Re: How to read more books

#283

Post by chistev »

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…

> I read 189 books last year, mostly due an accidental discovery.

How is this possible?

I tried reading while listening to an audio book and I had to stop after a few books because sometimes I want to re-read a sentence or paragraph or go back to a previous part of the book, and it just messes up my momentum.

I now no longer use audiobook and I just read the book.

I've read 16 books thus far this year.

Re: How to read more books

#284

Post by WolfeReader »

Eueudhsbsj32 wrote: post #264
WolfeReader wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wow, you are drinking the corporate kool-aid eagerly.

The brain understands concepts. I can say, for example, "a penny saved is a penny earned" and understand that I'm talking about money and savings in general. I've felt the satisfaction of a full bank account and the panic of a near-empty one.

The AI knows that someone once wrote the words "a penny saved is a penny earned" in that order. It has ingested volumes of wise sayings and economic texts to facilitate the statistically accurate words which will follow previous words in the conversation.

Re: How to read more books

#286

Post by gofreddygo »

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…

That is diametrically opposite to how I read non-fiction. Its designed on how I approach a new codebase effectively.

first is skimming and context. table of contents, the preclude, intro etc. Then author (interviews, actual work done, other books, friends, enemies) to build a picture of who it is that's talking and what the topic is. 70% books fail this filter.

then the book itself, i usually pick 2 (sometimes 3) books on the topic fed by the research I just did. and i'd build a picture of the main points. skimming through the pages to see what the structure is and what stands out for all books.

now comes the actual reading. i now start reading in chunks. that make me question things, clear out my understanding and the picture of events, groups and people involved in the subject. this is the most time consuming and usually where i lose interest. i make notes in a few index cards or binder leaves or a text file for when I want to revisit.

this format of consumption has proved vastly superior to reading books start to end. I can usually see where the author is biased, pushing agenda or trying to please or oppose some one. and this works amazingly well for old texts (art in 1500s, finance in 1800s, history, programming languages, etc)

Re: How to read more books

#288

Post by stevenwoo »

kriro wrote: post #202

I do not agree with his take on audio books. I find having a book with me and reading at all times as suggested a bit impractical, however for audio books it is way more feasible. I have long-ish commutes of 5h every couple of weeks and listening to audio books on the drive is great. I also listen to audiobooks when I vacuum, clean, grocery shop. Always unabridged versions and I research quite a bit what I want to li…

Some audiobooks can add to the experience - for instance in both Flowers for Algernon and Stranger in a Strange Land the main character evolves in ways the performer encapsulates in their voice that most readers probably did not do as well - I read both in print about 40 years ago and listening to the audiobooks recently was a revelation. There’s also A Confederacy of Dunces - this has multiple American accents that I bet no non native speaker could capture and possibly escapes most Americans as well. Another example is Infinite Jest - some people like the going back and forth with the footnotes but i preferred the audiobook incorporating the footnotes with a second narrator of different gender than the main one with an audio cue.

Re: How to read more books

#289

Post by picklesman »

gofreddygo wrote: post #286
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…

That is diametrically opposite to how I read non-fiction. Its designed on how I approach a new codebase effectively. first is skimming and context. table of contents, the preclude, intro etc. Then author (interviews, actual work done, other books, friends, enemies) to build a picture of who it is that's talking and what the topic is. 70% books fail this filter. then the book itself, i usually pick 2 (sometimes 3) boo…

What you’re describing sounds more like studying / reading textbooks and is totally valid, but not the type of reading I’m talking about, which is mostly for curiosity and entertainment.

Re: How to read more books

#290

Post by picklesman »

chistev wrote: post #283
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…

> I read 189 books last year, mostly due an accidental discovery. How is this possible? I tried reading while listening to an audio book and I had to stop after a few books because sometimes I want to re-read a sentence or paragraph or go back to a previous part of the book, and it just messes up my momentum. I now no longer use audiobook and I just read the book. I've read 16 books thus far this year.

I basically replaced all forms of entertainment with reading. I find there is also less of a barrier to start since the audio part makes it feel slightly more passive.

I still watch movies / tv / YouTube occasionally but I’m much more selective.

As for pausing and rereading, I find a good pair of earbuds helps me do that pretty effortlessly, and I tend to do it often towards the beginning of a book.

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