Live data from Hacker News

Serial Reader: Reading Schedule Builder

serialreader.org

1–10 of 56 posts

Re: Serial Reader: Reading Schedule Builder

#2
Sadly this doesn't include many books. Probably going by free ebooks library or such.

Would Love to hear from other's book recommendations fiction or non.

Those looking for inspiration I'd recommend (not in order)

* Ray Bradbury

* Pearl S. Buck

* John Wyndham

* Fyodor Dostoevsky

* Frank Herbert - Dune

* Terry GoodKind - Wizard's first rule

Re: Serial Reader: Reading Schedule Builder

#5
post #2

Sadly this doesn't include many books. Probably going by free ebooks library or such. Would Love to hear from other's book recommendations fiction or non. Those looking for inspiration I'd recommend (not in order) * Ray Bradbury * Pearl S. Buck * John Wyndham * Fyodor Dostoevsky * Frank Herbert - Dune * Terry GoodKind - Wizard's first rule

It's caught some shit over the years, but it's hard to go wrong picking almost anything off Bloom's (IIRC somewhat reluctantly-compiled, at the request of the publisher) list from the appendices of The Western Canon.

There's another pretty good one, that includes more science writing and such, at the end of Adler's How to Read a Book.

Bloom's:

http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

Adler's:

http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtadler.html

And that site has a bunch of other lists in a similar spirit, on it.

[EDIT] One thing to beware of with free ebooks and non-English works in translation, is that it's pretty common for older public-domain translations to be needlessly-obtuse to a modern reader, or outright bad. Worth taking a few minutes to compare your options before committing to one of those.

Re: Serial Reader: Reading Schedule Builder

#6
I am an avid reader, reading 2 or 3 books at a time, alternating between history and economics to fiction and fantasy, with detours into science and periodicals (like The Economist). I think I exceed this 50 books/year goal easily, but I never bother counting. I am also lucky to read in more than one language, for a nice variety. Incidentally, I read Moby Dick this year and found it a mixed experience, but more on a pleasure side.

Anyhow, it's been very interesting to see changes in myself the attention span required. I have to consciously put my phone and get cozy in reading chair so I am not distracted.

For my teenage children, once phones and high school was introduced, their reading dropped quite a bit. They still read but they seem like madly dancing gadflys in their approach to it.

Yesterday we visited with friends and their 12 year old daughter was on chapter 3 of Count of Monte Cristo and was complaining that it was dull and when it was going to start being awesome. We (her parents and our family) were cheering her to stay with it because the epic tale of escape and revenge (served quite cold) is really good.

Re: Serial Reader: Reading Schedule Builder

#9
post #4

Does anyone know of a more generic piece of software for this? I want to be able to input my own books to read and get a schedule.

readinglength.com can give you an estimate based on page count, which, if you wanted to build your own tool, is freely available for most books via Open Library's API.

Re: Serial Reader: Reading Schedule Builder

#10

I am an avid reader, reading 2 or 3 books at a time, alternating between history and economics to fiction and fantasy, with detours into science and periodicals (like The Economist). I think I exceed this 50 books/year goal easily, but I never bother counting. I am also lucky to read in more than one language, for a nice variety. Incidentally, I read Moby Dick this year and found it a mixed experience, but more on a…

I find that part of the reason a book can feel so great is because of the time investment. If you could somehow read Count of Monte Cristo in 5 minutes and absorb all the information I don't think it would have the same impact. So basically you need the "dull" or at least more mundane parts of the story so that the climax can exist and actually feel climactic.

Semi related, but I feel like this is one of the reasons that a lot of Japanese RPG games are 80-100 hours long. It feels much more like a long adventure and despite a large percentage of it being mundane it really adds to the emotional investment in what you are doing.

Post reply on HN