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How To: Read more books

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Re: How To: Read more books

#81

Post by Psyonic »

Enra2 wrote: post #70
axod wrote: post #28

>> "since books can usually substitute for human company: you can take them with you on the train and to meals and curl up with them at night and so on." Seriously? Comes across as slightly sad to me. The top priority on everyones list should be friends+family IMHO. Everything else is just 'stuff'. Also I'd say there's far more to be learned/gained/enjoyed from other human beings than in any book.

At that point it seemed obvious to me that he was kidding.

I know it seems that way, but I don't think he is. Exaggerating a bit, possibly, but not kidding.

Re: How To: Read more books

#82

Post by badave »

JustinSeriously wrote: post #68
revorad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Examples please? I still find that number hard to believe.

I don't know if you can read 100 good things daily , but you can easily get the equivalent of 20 really good books a year just by reading occasional links from Arts & Letters Daily at http://www.aldaily.com/ . (I'm not affiliated with the site, I've just found it to have a good signal-to-noise ratio.)

Cool link, will check out.

Re: How To: Read more books

#83

Post by robryan »

badave wrote: post #35
revorad wrote: post #31

Earlier 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…

How much of the comments do you read? I find it hard to believe you would have the time for so many posts and peoples opinion on them.

Re: How To: Read more books

#85

Post by [deleted] »

barrkel wrote: post #48
edw519 wrote: post #24

The biggest consumer of time is undoubtedly other people, in large measure because talking to other people is so fun that you don’t notice time going by. By keeping yourself away from other people (living alone is a good start), you free up an enormous amount of time for reading. I find this is particularly useful in reading books, since books can usually substitute for human company... How sad, especially coming fro…

Aaron is pretty young and acts it. He often comes out with incredibly naive posts, especially on topics like the economy, or politics. But the counterpoint is that his reading (especially re history) sometimes means he comes out with counter-intuitive or enlightening stuff. Speaking for myself, I find other people a real energy drain. I don't live alone, but I feel delight and a deep sense of relaxation when I get th…

[deleted]

Re: How To: Read more books

#86

Post by klipt »

maurycy wrote: post #33

Bla, 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…

From silly to hardcore stuff, like philosophy, sociology and literature critique. From novels to strictly technical books about management.

I was able to fluently speak about postmodernism, and I was a complete imbecile.

If your idea of hardcore is literary critique and postmodernism, perhaps you were reading the wrong (IMHO) books. Have you ever tried "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman", "Godel, Escher and Bach", or anything by say, Terry* Pratchett?

* whose opinion of literary critique is neatly summed up by this quote:

'I save about twenty drafts -- that's ten meg of disc space -- and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there's a cry here of 'Tough shit, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!' and the rest are wiped.'

Re: How To: Read more books

#87

Post by eru »

dylanz wrote: post #19
JustAGeek wrote: post #12

The 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. :)

I'm doing a train commute as well, and also loving it because of exactly what you explained :)

I also read on my commute. But since I only have to walk eight minutes, I usually get through no more than one article in the Economist --- with all the traffic and that.

Re: How To: Read more books

#89

Post by el_dot »

maurycy wrote: post #33

Bla, 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 taking a walk. But when your goal is to become a good writer, a better teller of stories, then reading Tolstoy can be an epiphany of sorts. You see how his stylistic effects can be applied to your own writing; how a novel can capture the spirit of the times much more effectively than any historian could, and so on and so forth.

Knowledge is only good when applicable, otherwise it is useless.

Re: How To: Read more books

#90

Post by eru »

Psyonic wrote: post #80
markbnine wrote: post #5

Maybe instead of actively alienating people and getting rid of hobbies , you can find people who share the hobby of reading?

What's the use? If you'd all rather be reading, I can't imagine your parties are terribly thrilling

You could take turns getting rid of people intruding. Division of labour should give you more time to read.
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