Keep a book in the bathroom. It encourages one to slow down and let nature take its course, and get some education/entertainment at the same time.
How To: Read more books
101–107 of 107 posts
Re: How To: Read more books
#102IMHO, at least 85% of the books sold at Amazon (for instance) are better not being published at all.
Being obsessive about reading books is nothing but an instance of OCD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_di...).
Not daring of judging the author of this post. Yet, you cannot live this way for too long, it might be good for a while. If this situation become a constant form of life of one, that one is about to go insane.
Re: How To: Read more books
#103The best way to read more books is to get a job where you have to commute. And by that I mean commute by train. That's giving me almost 2 hours per day for pretty uninterrupted reading. Not that I read 100 books per year but it seems that it's much more than my co-workers, so I guess I'm above average. Because of that I actually enjoy commuting. :)
Audiobooks and podcasts work just fine for drivers (and on the train too). It's the weirdest feeling when you find yourself picking the slowest lane in traffic just so you can spend more time enjoying what you're listening to.
Audiobooks are of course an option. However, I've found that, for me, listening to something isn't the same as reading something.
When I read something, it sticks much better than when I listen. It's actually the same when I read something aloud, more often than not I have to re-read the text for myself afterwards, reading aloud doesn't seem to register with me. :D
Re: How To: Read more books
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Examples please? I still find that number hard to believe.
Ok, for example, this morning I've gone through: http://zef.me/2913/javascript-oop-style-performance http://cairnarvon.rotahall.org/2010/02/28/search-trees-are-e... . http://norvig.com/sudoku.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_Algorithm_X http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=tutorials.. . http://www.extjs.tv/index.php/2010/javascript-debugging-tech... . I suggest reddit.com/r/programming, Hacker News…
Two of your links don't work. The first post is interesting, but I think the Crockford book is a much better read. Norvig's articles and wikipedia are of course awesome! I don't count them as blog posts though.
The other point you illustrate is that most reading on the internet is scattered into bits and pieces. Going through all of those topics in one morning is too much, for my brain anyway. I'd much rather read on one of those topics at length and work out some problems and code. Reading small posts here and there may make me feel smarter, but I'm not convinced it actually makes me smarter. I ask myself, "How does knowing this change my expected behaviour or my anticipation of the world?".
Re: How To: Read more books
#105Keep a book in the bathroom. It encourages one to slow down and let nature take its course, and get some education/entertainment at the same time.
Just make sure you really do slow down.
http://www.esquire.com/features/answer-fella/toilet-reading-...
Re: How To: Read more books
#106Copying my comment that I posted on Aaron's blog: One more simple lesson that I learned only in my early twenties. You don’t need to finish every book. This is a simple but powerful lesson. It reduces the mental burden of starting a new book to near zero. I’m now comfortable putting a book down 200 pages in. And that makes it much easier to start the next 600 page novel. High school english classes teach us the wrong…
The difficulty with this advice is that many great books start slow, particularly since they were written in times where people had plenty of time spare for reading, or they were published in serial form where the author was paid by the word, and so stretched out as far as possible.
This doesn't make them any less great, but it does mean that if you filter them because "I'm a little bored 100 pages in", you're losing out on some of the best stuff.
Re: How To: Read more books
#107Bla, bla, bla. The most important question is, I think, why force yourself to read more books? I grew up in a family where everyone reads a lot of books. No one forced me to read books but I spent most of my childhood reading something, being completely convinced that it is good for me. I used to read everything. From silly to hardcore stuff, like philosophy, sociology and literature critique. From novels to strictly…
The question to ask yourself is what exactly were you trying to learn from philosophy, sociology and literature critique ? And why did you think such books would benefit you? If you read the wrong types of books, the ones that do not resonate with your goals, then you will gain nothing. Reading Tolstoy, when your goals are in physics, will seem like a waste of time, a mere pleasure, sort of like watching a movie or t…
I agree. However, I find this approach very rare. The current trend it that every erudite should read Hemingway, Nabokov, Catch 22, and many other books. I think it is worth time for some people, but not for the whole society.
My approach, shortly speaking, was that I've found most of the stuff not challenging at all. So, I raised the bar, reading literature critique. Then, I realized it is pure bullshit, and jumped into sociology, then into philosophy, then into philosophy of mathematics and it turned out that pure textbooks are much more interesting after all.
Shortly, I agree it depends on the goal. Keep in mind, though, that people's goals vary a lot. And that's my point rephrased otherwise: if you are not interested in reading something, give up. Unfortunately, the current trend is to read books, and if you find nothing in them, the problem is in you. I try to fight with this symbolic violence, whenever possible.
@klipt, I don't want to create so many responses so I will give you the feedback here.
Yes, I read all the books you've mentioned, except Pratchett, which bores me to hell. I've found Goedel's proof itself more enjoyable to understand than the books about it. The commentaries, in this particular case, seemed mostly unnecessary. (I don't like this fetish of Goedel's work that extrapolates its misunderstanding to all other ares; eg, Putnam)