61–64 of 64 posts
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Lol I always laugh when I see people talk up Dostoevsky and any 19th century writer. It's 2025 now and literature has improved in depth and characterization as much as any other field.
What's a good novel from the last 20 years? Genuine question. Looking back at everything I've read, it all has been older than that. I don't really pay attention to novel news so it's more like I only read stuff I've heard about in the past.
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> breadth and depth of understanding about psychology have improved dramatically Provide one tiny bit of evidence for this. Do you seriously think that Shakespeare (for e.g.) did not have a profound understanding of human psychology?
not who you are replying to - but: Shakespeare was limited by the number of interactions he had with humans. He did not have the internet. We also have neurology as a science now. So that's one bit of evidence for the claim. Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time…
The internet may increase the number of interactions, but decreases their quality.
Looking at most online interactions it looks to me that people show less empathy and understanding than they do IRL.
> Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time by many humans working together. Two things can be true.
Does that help write better books. If the claim was true the best fiction would be written by psychologists and neurologists. Is it?
I think that knowledge is on the wrong side (for writing fiction) of Chesterton's distinction (in a work of fiction - I cannot remember which Fr Brown story) between understanding someone from the inside with empathy and from the outside with analysis.
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This is a ludicrous take. I was on vacation last week and read three books, albeit not weighty novels. I can't remember when I read as few as 10 novels per year. I'm not a CEO, but reading is also far from my only hobby.
To be clear first: The parent is being a little unreasonable. However. There's no need to resort to insults, nor to use a single person as an example, which doesn't make sense, regardless of whether it's their "only hobby". Average novel reading speed is an impossible metric. E.g. WPM measurements are irrelevant to long-form reading, are irrelevant to literary reading, and don't account for processing, tangential tho…
I'm not sure we're doing that. That's certainly not my intention. I know and respect many people who read zero books per year.
I think what we're doing is showing surprise that reading ten books per year is seen as a flex or is worth lying about very publicly, and demonstrating (albeit unscientifically) that it's not that unusual.
The post does not answer 'How to Read a Novel'. Most of the post is devoted to 'Why I think fiction is useful'. The author's answer: vicarious learning. Author answers how to maybe rank and choose a book: Book that provides recognizable experience of human decision making is better than book that does not. Which is fine. But not 'How to Read a Novel'.