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Art Garfunkel's Library

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Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#91

Post by jrochkind1 »

lelandfe wrote: post #74
supersrdjan wrote: post #47

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…

Does keeping a record of things necessarily imply vanity? It seems to me that your problem was with your own feeling toward the list - “I felt proud about my list” - and not the list itself. Where does that feeling come from? It might be worth exploring.

Not necessarily. It depends on the purpose(s) of the list.

What are the purpose(s) of keeping a lifetime list of books read?

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#92

Post by dredmorbius »

janvdberg wrote: post #8

I love this! Everyone should keep a list like this (self-hosted). It also makes me a little bit sad, as there are SO MANY books and this shows that a lifetime of reading will only get you to maybe 2000 books. Choose wisely what you read.

A lifetime is about 4,500 weeks.

For most people, a book is probably a multi-week investment, though lighter fare can go quicker. You can also skim, or read segments only, or quit bad books quickly. I recommend each of these where appropriate.

There are roughly 300,000 "traditionally" published books printed each year in the United States (Bowker ISBN registrations), a million or three including self-published. The US Library of Congress has 40 million catalogued titles, and Google estimated about 140 million books published (through its Google Books project) as of 2015 or so. You will sample only a tiny portion of the world's literature.

The most-read books of all time are, in rough order: The Bible, the Quran, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, all reporting (with various degrees of precision and accuracy) ~0.5 -- 5 billion copies), then possibly Cervantes Don Quixote, and the Harry Potter series. Three of those, at least, are principally propaganda, in the original and/or modern senses.

A well-established historical novel may sell roughly 200 million or so copies, as with A Tale of Two Cities or The Little Prince.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books>

The Facebook (and now TikTok) homepages and/or app screens now dwarf these.

Quantity ... has its benefits, but also disadvantages. "Of the reading of books there is no end" says The Preacher in Ecclesiastes.

I recommend reading well, I've suggested Great Books as at least a good starting library, though my other suggestion is to have a good guiding question and to follow that.

Keep in mind that following recent trends, news, gossip, etc., can engross all your time and attention with very little long-term staying value. I don't remain wholly ignorant of what's happening, but I try to dip very lightly from that pitcher.

From a recent comment of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32669503>

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#93

Post by cscheid »

hamburglar wrote: post #82
peteforde wrote: post #51

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…

> 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 can't answer for OP, but I did spend a year commuting a bunch and got through ~60 books or so that way.

I went from having time for 10-15 books a year to having time for ~60 books a year, so yes, you do miss a little. But not ~50 books worth of missing. It's easily worth it.

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#94

Post by [deleted] »

supersrdjan wrote: post #47

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…

[deleted]

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#95

Post by karaterobot »

superb-owl wrote: post #71

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.

One of my biggest fears is that people will look at the books I read and assume they know how I view the world. I like to read things I don't necessary know about or agree with already.

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#97

Post by mahogany »

hamburglar wrote: post #82
peteforde wrote: post #51

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…

> 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?

Why would it be? I get where you're coming from, as I generally prefer reading over audiobooks, but it may be good to remember that story-telling began as an oral tradition. I don't see why reading a story would be superior to having someone tell you a story. I doubt The Odyssey was a lesser experience before it was written down.

We live in a time where we predominantly use and prefer the sense of sight, especially as a means of information transfer, but maybe we should let hearing have some fun too. :)

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#98

Post by AlbertCory »

peteforde wrote: post #51

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 hired a voice actor, Maxwell Glick, to do the audiobooks for my two books (https://www.amazon.com/Audible-The-Big-Bucks/dp/B0BDBG5VNP/r... is the latest. Your speed is interesting, because when I was reviewing his work, I only used 1.5x. Any faster sounded like a cartoon character and I might miss nuances in the dialog, among other things.

Someone else mentioned code samples. Fortunately I only had a couple Mesa samples in Inventing the Future and I actually gave him some audio for the way to read them. My guideline was "how would a CS professor read this in class?"

There IS a "pronouncing Mesa" epilogue to the manual, which helped. But a book with a whole lot of code in it? I don't think that would work.

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#99

Post by jpmattia »

peteforde wrote: post #51

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 recommend Jabra Elite 75t.

Discontinued as of this month: "FYI Our current top pick, the Jabra Elite Active 75t, has been discontinued and is no longer available."

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-workout-head...

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#100

Post by AlbertCory »

user3939382 wrote: post #84
hamburglar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> First, does this work very well for technical books? 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

See my comment above. I did exactly that with Inventing the Future.

Maxwell didn't know how to read Mesa, of course, but I gave him the audio for how to read it. Just imagine what a CS professor would do if they read the code off a whiteboard, and do that.

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