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How To: Read more books
- samd 17y ago5. Stop reading Hacker News.
- MikeCapone 17y agoBut how?
- ErrantX 17y agoat the first sign of mental difficulty, I tab to a different window and begin typing the URL of a favorite blog. Heh. As I read that I realize I have being doing it pretty much all day today.
- badave 17y agotl;dr: Stop visiting hacker news, reddit and other blogs; stop interacting with people; get books from the library for free. My opinion: seriously, blogs should count as minibooks and everytime I read a particularly good and in depth blog or something that elicits the "I'm smarter for reading that" moment, I'm going to keep a tally. That tally I'll consider a chapter of a book. At 300 chapters, I'll count that as a book. Let's see how many books I have after a year. I think it'll be around 100.
- krmmalik 17y agoI dont know if this was meant as a quasi-sarcastic comment or not, but i have to say, i seriously agree with you. For me, blogs are micro books. And i have daily "aha" moments, that i cant get from books at this frequency. And if you start including video, (If the speech was converted to text), then lets just say my number is close to 2 or 300 if not more. Ultimately it's about having many "i am smarter" moments
- jacobolus 17y ago> daily "aha" moments, that i cant get from books at this frequency. You’re reading the wrong books.
- tome 17y agoHang on: you read about 100 "particularly good and in depth blog"s per day?
- krmmalik 17y agoNo, what i'm saying is. If you sum up the amount of text i read (incl speech converted to text) from blogs and video etc, then it would come to about 2 to 300 books at the end of the year.(in my estimation).
- badave 17y agoNot necessarily just blogs, but I'd say around 100 articles easily. I'd also include tutorials and discussions that are substantial as part of reading those articles.
- revorad 17y agoExamples please? I still find that number hard to believe.
- badave 17y agoOk, for example, this morning I've gone through: http://zef.me/2913/javascript-oop-style-performance http://zef.me/2913/javascript-oop-style-performance http://cairnarvon.rotahall.org/2010/02/28/search-trees-are-e.. http://cairnarvon.rotahall.org/2010/02/28/search-trees-are-e.... http://norvig.com/sudoku.html http://norvig.com/sudoku.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_Algorithm_X http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_Algorithm_X http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=tutorials.. http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=tutorials... http://www.extjs.tv/index.php/2010/javascript-debugging-tech.. http://www.extjs.tv/index.php/2010/javascript-debugging-tech.... I suggest reddit.com/r/programming, Hacker News obviously, and YourVersion.com for finding new stuff to read based on your interests, and then you can usually find more to read without too much trouble. There is always more!
- markbnine 17y agoMaybe instead of actively alienating people and getting rid of hobbies, you can find people who share the hobby of reading?
- scdlbx 17y agoI've found that simply setting aside some time every day or every couple of days for reading is sufficient. Once I start reading I have no problem continuing.
- mcav 17y agoAaron recommends isolating yourself from other people, stopping reading blogs entirely, and getting rid of other hobbies. If your goal is to read a lot, obviously it's primarily a matter of finding time to read. Aaron's advice is extreme, though. Don't isolate yourself entirely -- from people, the world, or even social media like blogs. Each of those has value. As the saying goes, moderation is key.
- sp332 17y agoFinding time is never an issue. Every day, you are handed 24 shiny new hours to spend. The real issues (which Aaron addresses) are motivation and mental ability.
- mcav 17y agoYou get 24 hours each day, true. But it's not just about motivation and mental ability. The time you have available to read is only time you aren't doing something else. If you have a job, or school, or family duties, or anything else, you may not have much time available to read. Your downtime is available for you to use as you please -- via reading, or watching TV, or whatever. That's when it's an issue of motivation. Sometimes people don't have a lot of downtime.
- sp332 17y agoWhat I meant by motivation is priorities - "The time you have available to [work|study|family] is only time you aren't doing something else."
- seanc 17y agoFor many people, time management is really relationship management. I read that on a blog somewhere. A lot of grown ups, most things we do, we do for other people, in one way or another. So when we pick a thing off of the to do list, we are picking a person to serve.
- JustAGeek 17y agoThe 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. :)
- dylanz 17y agoI'm doing a train commute as well, and also loving it because of exactly what you explained :)
- eru 17y agoI 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.
- sgoraya 17y agoI have a total of about 2 hours drive time every day - Audio books have been great, especially after work. It has been a great way to decompress; I actually enjoy, to an extent, my commute since it allows some of the days tensions to dissipate and I get to listen to and finish about 2 books a month.
- staunch 17y agoAudiobooks and podcasts work just fine for drivers (and on the train too). It's the weirdest feeling when you find yourself picking the slowest lane in traffic just so you can spend more time enjoying what you're listening to.
- cglee 17y agoI used to love audiobooks, until I realized how much longer they took over reading. I prefer podcasts for drives, but even a lot of those aren't very focused and tend to banter.
- rortian 17y agoI wonder if pg ever considers paying Aaron to stop writing stuff. People that read stuff like this have got to start wondering, "Is it really a good thing to get a payoff before I am ready for it?"
- dylanz 17y agoI don't like carrying books around. An ebook reader has me reading a lot more now. Just load it full of good reads, and you feel obligated to get through it all. Also, scanning through HN for good book recommendations. I'm reading "The Art of Learning" right now, and loving it (it's got me back into chess!).
- chime 17y ago"#3 Alienate everyone close to you" is the complete opposite of what I do. My favorite technique is to read a book out loud to my wife (and before I was married, to friends). It improves my reading/pronunciation and we discuss the book as it progresses. We learn something new while spending time together. Someday I hope to read to my kids and have them read back to me. I like reading by myself too but I'd rather read it with someone.
- jacobolus 17y agoReading aloud is fun, and can be useful, but it is extremely slow. No one reads 100 books aloud per year.
- edw519 17y agoThe 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 from someone whose opinion I respect so much. I love reading books, programming, sports, good food and drink, and a whole bunch of other things. But none of those things is an end unto itself. I do all of them as part of building a better life. Why? To share it with other people! No matter how many cool things are on my list, sharing my life with others is always #1. If I find myself alone, then sure, I'll pick up a good book or project. But avoiding other people in order to have more time alone for books? Except for extreme circumstances, that just doesn't make sense to me.
- 47 17y agoI am really surprised he is really suggesting that!
- slig 17y agoI thought he was being sarcastic.
- axod 17y agoFrom the comments: "I don’t watch TV, I have no social life"
- euccastro 17y agoHe's quoting someone else there. He's presenting that quote as a "shorter and better" account of his situation, but I don't know if every extreme should be taken literally.
- azanar 17y agoI suspect more deliberately exaggerated than sarcastic. Many people tend to see deliberately introversion and aloneness as deliberate alienation. It's a cognitive leap that still confuses me; people assume a behavior that isolates the individual is out of spite for the social collective, even if the person carefully explains that they aren't doing this out of scorn but out of personal need or desire. My suspicion is that aaronsw is just describing his relationship to those around him the same way they would describe it, but in more matter-of-fact terms. That he seems to have offended people so makes me think he touched a nerve, even if it did it tongue-in-cheek. My first reaction to this is to start reflecting on the social biases we have which would cause us to recoil in such disgust to the suggestion; are we being unreasonable in our expectations of the people around us?
- tungstenfurnace 17y agoHere's a radical idea: only read books that you enjoy and find interesting. Don't measure reading success by the number of books, but by how far your hair was blown back :-)
- axod 17y ago>> "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.
- jey 17y agoBooks are actually usually written by humans. In fact they often serve as a device for condensing, organizing, and transmitting one human's collected insights on a topic to many thousands of other humans. It's pretty efficient and effective. dislodges tongue from cheek
- axod 17y agoYeah they certainly have their place, but I would never put them above human contact. I'd go insane.
- Enra2 17y agoAt that point it seemed obvious to me that he was kidding.
- Psyonic 17y agoI know it seems that way, but I don't think he is. Exaggerating a bit, possibly, but not kidding.
- known 17y agoI used to visit http://www.bn.com http://www.bn.com store on every saturday & sunday to read more books.
- maurycy 17y agoBla, 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 technical books about management. I was able to fluently speak about postmodernism, and I was a complete imbecile. It took me few years to realize that I actually learned nothing from books. My world expanded enormously just within few years because of few random discussions, people I met and admire, as well as Internet, and silly blogs. If you say that books help you to focus, I'd recommend taking some hardcore courses of typography. Writing down the whole alphabet takes much more patience than reading almost any book. I agree that you should read books, if you enjoy them. However, please stop treating books as something more special than watching a movie, taking a walk or other pleasures of life.
- mquander 17y agoI think this is with you, not with the books. Maybe you're talking about when you were a teenager or before -- I did a poor job of reading many books when I was younger, too. But most adults don't read good novels or tracts on philosophy or sociology and then come out learning "nothing." I promise that there is much more than "nothing" inside. I think it's awfully pessimistic to say that you can't learn anything from books after your experience; books are more or less the only window into almost the entire history of human thought and storytelling, and not being able to incorporate that history into yourself is a problem.
- maurycy 17y agoYou're the essence of the problem, messieur. What's so pessimistic about it? Whatever floats your boat, pal. If books enrich you, keep reading. Do not force everyone else to do so, though. Might be that there are other sources of enlightenment. Nature, nice chicks, long discussions, Italian restaurants etc. It's pure symbolic violence what you do right now, pal. Easy test, though. Speak to a random literature folk, who graduated five years ago, or so. By average, he is completely clueless. You recognize he is smart, uses much complicated buzzwords than you've ever heard of, but chances are, you do not expect him to change the world, nor get laid. It should be obvious what's my point. If you're smart, books might help you. If you're average, books won't change it significantly and sometimes might make things much more worse, clouding your mind or hiding your ignorance behind overly complicated concepts. Accidentally, most of the world is not that smart, and it's perfectly OK. That's why I say that books are overrated, and we should ask yourself a question whether we really get so much from them as we think we do. Chances are that some people will keep reading but others would be more happy dancing, drawing or being next Sasha Grey or Stoya, without this guilt they don't read enough books. By the way, I don't say that there is "nothing" in books. Nothing can be something, too. However, the knowledge about Humbert Humbert and a little girl he loved, is, for me, nothing significant.
- scorciapino 17y agoHaha, my technique is also blocking websites. Here it goes, might be useful for someone: http://pastebin.com/AhY3mgU4 http://pastebin.com/AhY3mgU4
- liquidben 17y agoI fully agree with the value implicit in having that library book deadline to push you to finish something that you wouldn't have finished otherwise (100 Years of Solitude was that book for me). At the same time, you can avail yourself of the cost-free access to try something that you can't find in bookstores in case you won't like it. I got to surprise myself with enjoying Asterios Polyp and hating Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan. If you try and like it, please donate to your local public library! Just think of how much you're not spending on books and how much you'd spend for Netflix discs As a side tip, I've usually got notions towards more books than I actually want to check out at a time, so creating an Amazon wish list is a really easy way to track interests.
- mquander 17y agoIf I may, I would like to point out the following related discussion at Infinite Injury and Less Wrong on the virtues of reading original sources in the sciences: (original) http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2010/02/25/reading-originals/ http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2010/02/25/reading-origin... (response) http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ul/for_progress_to_be_by_accumulation_and_not_by/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ul/for_progress_to_be_by_accumulati... (I agree mostly with the arguments made in the Less Wrong post, viz. "If one wants to know the Standard Model, sure, study it directly, but if you want to actually understand how to do the sorts of things that Newton did, you would be advised to read him, Feynman and yes, Plato too, as Plato also did things which contributed greatly to the development of thought.")
- jacobolus 17y agoThe infinite injury article is (IMO) complete hogwash. Its author assumes (but never explores or explains the assumption) that there's some unidirectional arrow of improved understanding and pedagogy through time (“progress”) and that therefore modern explanations are inherently more sophisticated/subtle/polished than the original grapplings with a subject. What he misses is that the seminal papers in any field are forced to really grapple with a subject for its own sake, while later works fetishize dogma and ceaselessly pander to the interests of whoever is paying for the work to be done, simplifying concepts to be understood by those of uncertain prior experience, and packing in features (ooh, glossy pictures! companion website!) that will sell copies. There are some areas where studying the originals is not especially helpful, because subjects weren’t yet understood. For instance, the founders of quantum mechanics really had no clue what was going on at the beginning, and their early papers are mishmashes of math pulled from other sources which sometimes fortuitously explained their experimental results. So by all means, go grab Townsend’s Modern Approach to Quantum Mechanics (2002) as a more practical and informative work. In other areas, the famous “originals” (which is to say, those works which were good enough to last centuries while their contemporaries faded into oblivion) are wonderful. There’s much more insight packed into Machiavelli, Tocqueville, or James Madison’s writing than any modern political science textbooks. And yes, economics as a field would be way better off if its practitioners had any idea what its foundational assumptions were about, or tried really deeply considering (e.g.) Smith, Veblen, Marx, or Keynes (or even, say, Von Neumann and Morgenstern), who had a real world to answer to, not just other economists.
- breck 17y ago> I’ve read a hundred books a year for the past couple years. I read about 30 books a year. I read about 15 books for the first time, and then I reread a few of my favorites over and over. I find some books are worth 1000x more than others. So when you've identified these great books, it would be a shame to not reread them frequently.
- rdmcfee 17y agoBeside the point of this article I'm amazed by the following: "The average person spends 1704 hours a year watching TV". From my understanding an average work year is around 2000 hours. If 'the average person' worked in an enjoyable environment that was as pleasant as watching television or reading a book they could easily almost double their input at the workplace by cutting out television. Whether that would double their output is a different question all together. Would be interesting to see a breakdown of time spent watching television vs. per capita productivity for different first world countries.
- rdmcfee 17y agoAlso note that 1074 hours per year is just shy of 3 hours per day, seven days per week. Unbelievable!
- maw 17y agoIt is a lot of time, but don't forget that to watch TV you basically just need time. To work you need time and attention, and at some point you don't have the energy to give work the attention it needs to get done.
- brezina 17y agoCopying my comment that I posted on Aaron's blog: One more simple lesson that I learned only in my early twenties. You don’t need to finish every book. This is a simple but powerful lesson. It reduces the mental burden of starting a new book to near zero. I’m now comfortable putting a book down 200 pages in. And that makes it much easier to start the next 600 page novel. High school english classes teach us the wrong way to read books. It took me a long time to unlearn what I was taught.
- pauljonas 17y agoYay, I struggle with this too. Have this compulsive need to complete the entire book. Afraid, that not devoting enough effort I will shortchange my reading effort. That I'd be withdrawing from a challenging but fruitful experience (if the text is difficult, or the author's style is boring or has a level of incomprehensibility). I resolved this dilemma by at least making it half way through a book, or at least first two chapters for those dreadful cases. Or not at all, as of late, have realized that there is just so much to read, that no need to waste on uninteresting/uninspired.
- swombat 17y agoThe difficulty with this advice is that many great books start slow, particularly since they were written in times where people had plenty of time spare for reading, or they were published in serial form where the author was paid by the word, and so stretched out as far as possible. This doesn't make them any less great, but it does mean that if you filter them because "I'm a little bored 100 pages in", you're losing out on some of the best stuff.
- zzzmarcus 17y agoI don't agree with some of Aaron's suggestions, but I enjoy reading and have thought about this some too. I have a FT job, a wife, a 7 yr old and a 7 mo old and I mangage to read 2-6 books a month. Here's what I do: 1. Audiobooks - I subscribe to Audible.com and get books audiobooks from library and occasionally Librivox. I listen on my 20 minute commute, while I exercise, and when I'm doing mundane tasks like the dishes or cleaning. 2. eBooks - I put the icons for Stanza and GoodReader on the homescreen of my iPhone. When I find myself about to tap a game or feed reader or YouTube or whatever I check myself and ask myself if I'm in a good state to read (e.g. awake enough, have more than 3 minutes). I don't feel like I'm denying myself the entertainment of another game of Doodle Jump as much as consciously encouraging myself to opt for something that I generally find to be more satisfying. 3. Books by the bed. Nothing new there. I sometimes squeeze in a little time to read real, paper books before bedtime or when I wake up. I haven't turned down the thermostat, alienated people, ordered stacks of library books or blocked any blogs (though I have drastically reduced the number of blogs I subscribe to). In fact, I feel like my life is generally the same as it was before I started reading a lot, except for the value I've found in what I read. If you're curious, here's what I've been reading: http://goodreads.com/zzzmarcus http://goodreads.com/zzzmarcus
- kiba 17y agoMy idea of hanging out is to read books with the other friend. Though, my friend is a theoretical physic geek.
- bliss 17y agoI'm in agreement with one point at least. I used to force myself to complete books that I wasn't enjoying out of some misplaced sense of achievement on completing a "difficult" book. I had the misfortune of reading "A Chancer" by James Kelman (otherwise, one of my favourite authors.) I was on a 4 hour bus trip, I was a captive audience. It was dreadful. I stopped reading the boring story that I didn't care about and let my mind wander for 4 hours instead. After that I now feel empowered to put down a book that I'm not enjoying, even one I feel is meant to be "good for me."
- markbao 17y agoThere was a site here on HN that was basically about what books you were reading and finding books your friends were reading. What was that site?
- scscsc 17y agoHe doesn't seem to motivate his post, but I think reading (more) (books) should not be a goal in itself...
- orblivion 17y agoBut if I blocked hacker news, how would I find this informative article?
- diN0bot 17y agohow to read more books: pirate them. or buy them online or to an ereader. however you get them, convenience is key. i read 2,000-3,000 pages a month since putting books on my computer. love it.
- shalmanese 17y agoA PDA with a good ebook reader boosted my reading rate by about 1 book a week. During the day, there's an innumerable amount of 1 - 10 minute pauses in your life that you can use to whip out a PDA and read a couple of pages. Unfortunately, now I have an iPhone where the web browser is better than the ebook reader so I find myself reading hacker news rather than novels.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- john7 17y agoWhy not to read more books: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/lit/chapter5.html http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/lit/chap...
- mhartl 17y agoYou might like this quote, which is in a similar vein: Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. -- Albert Einstein
- 100k 17y agoI read about 40 books a year[1]. The main way I do this is not alienating my friends but by not watching TV. I have started watching DVDs and Netflix instant stream recently and this has cut into my reading time. I do recommend requesting books at your library. It is awesome, like Netflix for books. I would like to try blocking my favorite websites. I don't know if I would read more, but I certainly would work more. [1] I have kept track of this since 2006, inspired by Kevin Drum. Here's my lists: http://justlooking.recursion.org/2009/Jan/2#books-2006 http://justlooking.recursion.org/2009/Jan/2#books-2006 http://justlooking.recursion.org/2007/Dec/31#books-2007 http://justlooking.recursion.org/2007/Dec/31#books-2007 http://justlooking.recursion.org/2009/Jan/2#books-2008 http://justlooking.recursion.org/2009/Jan/2#books-2008 http://justlooking.recursion.org/2010/Jan/24#books-2009 http://justlooking.recursion.org/2010/Jan/24#books-2009
- raintrees 17y agoKeep a book in the bathroom. It encourages one to slow down and let nature take its course, and get some education/entertainment at the same time.
- benatkin 17y agoJust make sure you really do slow down. http://www.esquire.com/features/answer-fella/toilet-reading-1209 http://www.esquire.com/features/answer-fella/toilet-reading-...
- tzury 17y agoIMHO, at least 85% of the books sold at Amazon (for instance) are better not being published at all. Being obsessive about reading books is nothing but an instance of OCD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_di...). Not daring of judging the author of this post. Yet, you cannot live this way for too long, it might be good for a while. If this situation become a constant form of life of one, that one is about to go insane.