Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Art Garfunkel's Library

artgarfunkel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 146 posts

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#31

Post by froh »

gnuj3 wrote: post #13
5mv2 wrote: post #10

Interesting. Number of the 100 of his favorite books written before year X: 1500 6 1900 29 1950 24 1990 41 2022 0 → it's all pretty recent, which is surprising for a Taleb reader → but 0 was written in the last 30y! Also, 0 of the books he read in the last 30y made it to his 100 favorites list. When I did the same exercise, 50% of my favorite books were readings from early adulthood. It scared me: am I not learning a…

Looks like The Road by McCarthy (2006) is marked as his favourite but for some reason is not included on the favourites list.

the list has a second page, unintuitively linked from the _top_ of the first one:

https://www.artgarfunkel.com/books2.html

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#32

Post by lornemalvo »

irrational wrote: post #18
janvdberg wrote: post #8

I love this! Everyone should keep a list like this (self-hosted). It also makes me a little bit sad, as there are SO MANY books and this shows that a lifetime of reading will only get you to maybe 2000 books. Choose wisely what you read.

This is why I’m surprised by people rewatching tv shows and movies, rereading books, etc. You have a limited amount of time before you die and an, effectively, infinite amount of material to consume. Most of it is dross, but enough isn’t that there is no time to revisit.

There are shows/movies with so much depth, that you grasp some details (about the plot, characters, composition or the art design) only when watching it a second or third time.

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#33

Post by egypturnash »

irrational wrote: post #18
janvdberg wrote: post #8

I love this! Everyone should keep a list like this (self-hosted). It also makes me a little bit sad, as there are SO MANY books and this shows that a lifetime of reading will only get you to maybe 2000 books. Choose wisely what you read.

This is why I’m surprised by people rewatching tv shows and movies, rereading books, etc. You have a limited amount of time before you die and an, effectively, infinite amount of material to consume. Most of it is dross, but enough isn’t that there is no time to revisit.

Some things have depths they only reveal when you are ready for them.

Some things are just comfortable and fun to revisit.

Some things are even both.

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#34

Post by coldtea »

kleiba wrote: post #29
coldtea wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as there are SO MANY books and this shows that a lifetime of reading will only get you to maybe 2000 books. I get through about 15 books a month - 2000 would be like 10-12 years, not a lifetime.

I have three little kids, I get through about one page a week.

Don't give up! They will have a phase were they wont want much to do with their uncool parent between 14-17 anyway (teenagers be like that), where you can exploit for time to read. And if not, they'll be out for college at 18 or so. After which you still have 2 or so decades you can still read at will (you might not have the money for books though, due to tuition fees and such).

So the parent commenter's generalization "at most 2000 books in a lifetime" is hardly accurate - and has been way bypassed by any bookworm I know.

Heck, one can read 2000 books before the time they have kids too. I had already read about that number by 20-25 starting from about 10-11 or so with sci-fi stuff like Verne and Asimov, and moving to literature and non-fiction soon.

I know because I need to pack them every time I move - it's the most labour intensive part of a move to take the library with us, in 100s of cardboard boxes, which then stay unopened for 3-6 months after moving to a new house.

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#35

Post by podviaznikov »

gnuj3 wrote: post #11

I started keeping a text file with all things I read and another one for audiobooks. Since Obsidian came out I use it to edit my file and link books together. I use the following format: [[title]] by [[author]] (date finished) That way I generate a separate file for each book where I can keep notes and my rating. I also keep a separate file for each author so I can easily link all the books/short stories/essays etc b…

I just store them in apple notes now. Also I usually save a bit more info by default.

https://podviaznikov.com/readings/what-do-you-care-what-othe...

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#37

Post by hmcamp »

kleiba wrote: post #29
coldtea wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as there are SO MANY books and this shows that a lifetime of reading will only get you to maybe 2000 books. I get through about 15 books a month - 2000 would be like 10-12 years, not a lifetime.

I have three little kids, I get through about one page a week.

Audiobooks my friend. Listening at +1.5x (playback speed) helps

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#38

Post by belter »

With all due respect to Art Garfunkel, whose work I greatly admire...I would suggest to tone it down a little bit :-) and maybe change the text on the page 1968 to 1978 from "We are pleased to present a listing of every book Art has read since 1968." to maybe "We are pleased to present a listing of every book Art bought, opened once, perused, read a few pages and some he read since 1968..." :-))

From 1968 to the end of 1978 you have approximately 3650 days...And since the page has the somewhat unusual take of also prominently listing the number of pages of each book...I was able to gather the total number of pages amounts to 43,612 pages. 12 pages per day for 10 years? Uhmmm...

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#39

Post by kachnuv_ocasek »

belter wrote: post #38

With all due respect to Art Garfunkel, whose work I greatly admire...I would suggest to tone it down a little bit :-) and maybe change the text on the page 1968 to 1978 from "We are pleased to present a listing of every book Art has read since 1968." to maybe "We are pleased to present a listing of every book Art bought, opened once, perused, read a few pages and some he read since 1968..." :-)) From 1968 to the end…

In all honesty, 12 pages per day doesn't really seem that much.

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#40

Post by jcynix »

belter wrote: post #38

With all due respect to Art Garfunkel, whose work I greatly admire...I would suggest to tone it down a little bit :-) and maybe change the text on the page 1968 to 1978 from "We are pleased to present a listing of every book Art has read since 1968." to maybe "We are pleased to present a listing of every book Art bought, opened once, perused, read a few pages and some he read since 1968..." :-)) From 1968 to the end…

Hmm, instead of 12 pages per day, that's just 84 pages per week. Nothing to "tone down" IMHO, because that's easily managable. We have about 5K books at home (not pages, books) which we bought and read over 40 years (not owning a TV set over that time ;-) and reading sixty to one hundred pages per evening isn't that hard to accomplish for a book lover.
Post reply on HN