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I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

durmonski.com

41–44 of 44 posts

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

#41
post #19

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.

Reading fiction isn’t about the books, it’s about yourself. The books are a stimulus to introspect about your relation to the text.

As long as you keep changing, the quantity of books to read is infinite. I like the analogy of the article that books are like a stream and just dip in and pick the one of the moment and let the rest float by. It’s only people who don’t change enough who consume too much from the same point in the stream and feel the effects of water sickness.

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

#42
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.

If the author's goal is to live better rather than read about how to live better, I don't think the solution of reading make-believe fits. The same rejoinder exists: the author would be better served by actually meeting new people and learning from them rather than reading pretend.

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

#43
post #3

I don't want to challenge my existing beliefs with new knowledge or points of view, unless it can be expressed in a sentence or two on the internet.

If you'd read the article, you'd understand that the author was discussing the diminishing returns of reading yet one more book over spending time absorbing and putting the lessons to real-world use.

They give the example of reading many books about exercise vs reading one book and doing the exercises it describes. The latter will end up fitter than the former.

I can give another example: take 2 novice chess players. Have one of them read 40 books in a year without playing chess. Have the other read 1 book, then spend the rest of the year playing chess. Who do you think will be a better chess player?

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