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I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

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Re: I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

#31

Post by jezzamon »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #30
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

I had a very ambivalent reaction to this blog post. Most importantly, I find the author's relationship to reading quite odd. Basically, all he talks about is reading self-help books. Not really any reading for pleasure, nor does he discuss reading to learn about other non-self-help related topics that might interest him, just for learning's sake. So he seems to approach reading primarily from a "how is this going to…

> As we know only too well, reading books is considered the fundamental ingredient for moving from mental inferiority to inspiring intelligence. I stopped right there.

I think that statement is a little tongue in cheek, if you read the rest of it.

Re: I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

#32

Post by lancesells »

pierot wrote: post #10

Please read more fiction. Why should everything be about becoming a 'better' person? Why not enjoy a good story? Unconsciously you will learn something, even from fiction.

Fiction gives me so much more than the "science-light" books mentioned in this blog post.

I don't think these books are bad and without ideas or merit, but many of them show an idea in the first two chapters and then repeat it for the rest of the book. It's like an expanded blog post with adequate but average writing. Reading 40 of them in a year is going to leave most people not remembering anything significant. Kind of like people that say they travelled to 40 countries in a year. You're not going to get anything other than surface-level understanding and some jetlag.

Re: I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

#33

Post by WolfeReader »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #12

>As we know only too well, reading books is considered the fundamental ingredient for moving from mental inferiority to inspiring intelligence. Lost me right at the first sentence. It's inferior to believe that books are a fundamental ingredient in allaying mental inferiority. Most knowledge is tacit and comes from doing, not reading. The hero who confronts the lion gains wisdom along the way. The nerd in his library…

Strong anti-intellectual vibes here. A mature mind can learn from second-hand experience - this is after all why religions have scriptures, why technology has manuals, and why civilizations record their history.

As a parent - and as a former child, too - I'm all too familiar with the childish attitude that you don't need to learn from the lived experience of others. If every adult in your life is telling you not to jump off of the trampoline, you still think "I bet _I_ can jump off the trampoline! What do they know?" And one or two broken legs later, you just gained wisdom the hard way.

Most people outgrow this mentality, and learn to consider and respect sources of experience besides their own.

Re: I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

#34

Post by youoy »

Classic confusion "correlation = causation". If interesting/knowledgeable people read more books does not mean that reading more books will make you more interesting/knowledgeable. It's usually the fact that for those people other intrinsic interests move them to read more books. So reading more books is a "symptom".

Re: I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

#35

Post by runjake »

I think reading books is important for exercising my attention span and imagination (which is why fiction is important).

The caveat there is that I follow Naval Ravikant's advice and if I'm not liking a book, I either skip around to the parts I care about or I discard it and move onto another.

I've discarded a number of reputable, oft-recommended books because they did not click with me, such as Taleb's books, Think and Grow Rich, etc etc.

Re: I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

#36

Post by smaddox »

pessimizer wrote: post #23
t-3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading too much fiction also leads to diminishing returns. The number of works that can be considered of high quality is not infinite, and it diminishes exponentially in relation to the number of books read. After a few hundred or thousand, fiction will be like cigarettes - forestalling a craving but providing little to no pleasure.

You can get pleasure from reading things other than fiction. I agree, though, that stories of made-up people that aren't intended to illustrate any particular idea are as profound as a series of random numbers.

If you think novels, especially good ones, are "stories of made-up people that aren't intended to illustrate any particular idea", then you're missing quite a bit.

Re: I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

#37

Post by sleepydog »

t-3 wrote: post #19
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

I had a very ambivalent reaction to this blog post. Most importantly, I find the author's relationship to reading quite odd. Basically, all he talks about is reading self-help books. Not really any reading for pleasure, nor does he discuss reading to learn about other non-self-help related topics that might interest him, just for learning's sake. So he seems to approach reading primarily from a "how is this going to…

Reading too much fiction also leads to diminishing returns. The number of works that can be considered of high quality is not infinite, and it diminishes exponentially in relation to the number of books read. After a few hundred or thousand, fiction will be like cigarettes - forestalling a craving but providing little to no pleasure.

I really doubt anyone can read all the "high quality" fiction out there in their lifetime. If you're reading 12 books a week, sure, but I think that's really too fast.

Re: I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

#38

Post by t-3 »

sleepydog wrote: post #37
t-3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading too much fiction also leads to diminishing returns. The number of works that can be considered of high quality is not infinite, and it diminishes exponentially in relation to the number of books read. After a few hundred or thousand, fiction will be like cigarettes - forestalling a craving but providing little to no pleasure.

I really doubt anyone can read all the "high quality" fiction out there in their lifetime. If you're reading 12 books a week, sure, but I think that's really too fast.

You don't need to read all of them, just all within a certain discoverability threshold not sharing the same archetypes. At that point, the rate of encountering high quality works which are not stale will fall to almost nothing.

Re: I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

#39

Post by timeon »

t-3 wrote: post #19
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

I had a very ambivalent reaction to this blog post. Most importantly, I find the author's relationship to reading quite odd. Basically, all he talks about is reading self-help books. Not really any reading for pleasure, nor does he discuss reading to learn about other non-self-help related topics that might interest him, just for learning's sake. So he seems to approach reading primarily from a "how is this going to…

Reading too much fiction also leads to diminishing returns. The number of works that can be considered of high quality is not infinite, and it diminishes exponentially in relation to the number of books read. After a few hundred or thousand, fiction will be like cigarettes - forestalling a craving but providing little to no pleasure.

There are more categories then just 'fiction' and 'self-help'.

Re: I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

#40

Post by anotherhue »

pessimizer wrote: post #23
t-3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading too much fiction also leads to diminishing returns. The number of works that can be considered of high quality is not infinite, and it diminishes exponentially in relation to the number of books read. After a few hundred or thousand, fiction will be like cigarettes - forestalling a craving but providing little to no pleasure.

You can get pleasure from reading things other than fiction. I agree, though, that stories of made-up people that aren't intended to illustrate any particular idea are as profound as a series of random numbers.

Got you covered, this has fantastic reviews:

https://www.amazon.com/Million-Random-Digits-Normal-Deviates...

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