81–90 of 146 posts
I used to keep a list like this (more modest though) but I stopped once I realized it's demeaning both to me and the books. The problem was that the list had no other purpose except as a kind of trophy case. I felt proud about my list, as if finishing a book is an achievement, as if reading is a sport, as if reading a lot makes you better than those who read less. I was disgusted by my own vanity, and moreover, consi…
Audiobooks, borrowed for free from my library and listened to via the excellent Libby app, have been a life-line over the past four years. I went from 3-4 books a year to 3-4 books a week, sometimes more. I listen in the bathroom, while exercising, cooking, cleaning, cycling, gardening. My listening speed is typically 1.75x for dense prose and hard science, all the way up to 2.5x for fiction and biographies. The secr…
First, does this work very well for technical books? I would imagine not very well. Anytime you came across a code sample, a table of information or a diagram, I assume the audiobook rendition of it would be effectively useless. So perhaps the audio approach completely excludes technical reading?
Second, do you ever shake the feeling that having a book read to you is somehow qualitatively not as good as reading it from the page? I feel like seeing the written words on the page and the shapes of the sentences and the punctuation and having to interpret the tone and rhythm yourself is part of the experience of consuming literature. Does hearing it feel ... less to you? Is it the kind of thing that you just learn to get over, or does it stick with you? Or perhaps it was never an issue at all?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or stop reading if you feel it is not worth your time.
Yes, this is something I had to learn over the years. I always had this notion that I HAD to finish something (book, movie) to be able to express the opinion on it. Now, if I dont enjoy it I just stop reading and when I’m asked what did I think of it I simply answer that I didnt finish because xyz. It gives you so much more time resulting in reading something you actually enjoy.
Audiobooks, borrowed for free from my library and listened to via the excellent Libby app, have been a life-line over the past four years. I went from 3-4 books a year to 3-4 books a week, sometimes more. I listen in the bathroom, while exercising, cooking, cleaning, cycling, gardening. My listening speed is typically 1.75x for dense prose and hard science, all the way up to 2.5x for fiction and biographies. The secr…
I've never really gotten into audiobooks, but my pace of reading paper books has fallen off considerably lately, since I've fallen into a pattern of simply falling asleep when I pick up a book. My girlfriend loves audiobooks because she can "read" while doing chores or walking or whatever, and reads constantly. So I've been considering trying that out, and I have questions for you. First, does this work very well for…
I just laughed imaging a professional voice actor reading out a block of code in a stately voice, complete with all the punctuation. "public function getName(Person $user)" xD
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…
I don't know exactly what I average per day. But certainly way more than a measly 12 pages.
Did he actually read War and Peace, The Great Gatsby, Catch 22, Candide, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Malcolm X biography and two other books during the single month of Feb 1969?? I find that a tad hard to believe... But whatever. I'm a pretty fast reader myself, so I'll take that as a challenge / inspiration for myself :)
War and Peace aside, most of those are pretty breezy reads, so if you’re laid-up sick for a couple weeks with nothing else to do it would be easy to blow through them all.
I used to keep a list like this (more modest though) but I stopped once I realized it's demeaning both to me and the books. The problem was that the list had no other purpose except as a kind of trophy case. I felt proud about my list, as if finishing a book is an achievement, as if reading is a sport, as if reading a lot makes you better than those who read less. I was disgusted by my own vanity, and moreover, consi…
It's odd to see his transition from mysticism and philosophy in the 70s (Jung, Gurdjieff, Watts, Proust, Plato), to Republicanism today (Scarborough, O'Reilly, Rand). I don't want to generalize too much (he also read RBG's autobiography) but there's definitely a move towards politics.