9 ms·

Lessons learned after 300 books in 4 years

102 points by 300 10y ago

Paul_S 10y ago
I decided to read a book a day this year. So far I'm ahead at 336 and here are my counter opinions. "* It’s much better to read the best book on the topic 5 times, than to read 5 different books on the topic once." Flat out no. Unless you're a freaking machine. Reading different books covering the same topic keeps me interested more. I don't mind the repetition then because I get the warm "I know that" feeling. "* Eyes that pay read better than eyes that don’t. Eyes that pay more read better than eyes that pay less. In other words, when you pay for a book or a course, you’ll dedicate more to it, so you’ll get more value from it." Total nonsense. I'm not paying my friends or the library to borrow their books. Next you'll be telling me hardback books transfer ideas better. Well, my e-reader has a hard case. And I paid 300 quid for it. "* If you read ~1h (almost) every day, you’ll be able to read 60-80 books per year." If you use all your idle time you can read a book a day. Cooking? You mean reading and cooking. Commuting? Reading. Sitting on the toilet? You get the idea. Waiting for the kettle? Seconds add up! I agree with the rest.
- 300 10y ago
  Thanks for your comment Paul! Kudos for a book a day, just in my honest opinion, that's an overkill. I think it's really important to have time to think and make notes about what you read. Even re-reading the same books can often give you different insights, depending on your inner state, life circumstances, etc. I respect your opinion on your points, and I'll not argue those. I shared my insights, based on my experience, and I wish I knew some of them before much earlier - it would save me a lot of time. -Jovica
  - Paul_S 10y ago
    The problem complicating re-reading "the best" book is how do you know which one is the best? Reading a new one has a non-zero chance of reading a better one. A variation on the secretary problem where interviewing can have a negative cost. As for a book a day being overkill - you're right, I'm not going to keep this up next year. Normally I read ~80 books but last year I was unemployed for several months and ended up reading >200 even though I was busy looking for work (which involves a lot travel and waiting around which is when I got religious about using my deadtime rather than "killing" time with HN) and I thought fuck it, I'll give it a go at which point I got hired within a month but wanted to see if I can keep going. It's getting really busy with deadlines but I'm confident I can catch up during christmas. For people wondering: yes, I have no family.
    - 300 10y ago
      Good question. I put quite a lot of effort to explore available books on the topic, but that would take another (much longer) blog post. Good luck with your quest! If you need some inspiration for books to read, check out this great list: https://sivers.org/book https://sivers.org/book
      - Paul_S 10y ago
        Open the page, sort by "best" and see how far up you have to go before you get to a book that doesn't get a negative review. As far as I can tell no one has this figured out yet and it's a no way of proving a program will stop without running it sort of a thing - all we need now is a name for this law relating to books.
        TeMPOraL 10y ago
        Everything gets negative reviews - even if God Himself stepped down and put a poem on Amazon that was explicitly designed to trigger hidden backdoors in people's firmware to induce state of extreme pleasure, somebody would leave a negative review because they've only read second stanza while drunk, and decided it sucks. One has to get used to it, and learn not to flinch away from reading an occasional negative review to make sure whether it's just someone's very specific subjective opinion, or whether it can be a problem for many other readers too.
- vijayr 10y ago
  a book a day Wow! What kind of books are these? How long do you spend everyday reading?
  - Paul_S 10y ago
    Unfortunately goodreads doesn't offer any kind of meaningful stats. I'm guessing it's 50/50 fact & fiction split but I could be wildly off. What goodreads does tell me is that 1/10 of them I rated 1 star. This is my biggest problem - I have not yet found any reliable way to find recommendations. I don't know how much time I spend reading, it's almost never exclusive reading time - it's almost always multitasking with something else. I spent at least 4 hours today and it's only mid-afternoon here. Limiting my HN time seems to work and HN is the only social media I'm on. I always have at least two books on the go and one of them is an audiobook so I can keep reading when I'm cycling, doing laundry, etc.
- sotojuan 10y ago
  I agree that it's really easy to find time for reading. For us in tech, just replace your HN/Reddit time with reading and you'll be surprised how much you can read!
  - Paul_S 10y ago
    I have a strategically placed book at the office. Every time I go to get tea and I'm waiting for it to brew or waiting for the meeting to start I read a few pages. It sounds ridiculous but I'm confident I'll finish that book within a year - purely by adding up the brewing/waiting time.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Personally, books are why I don't mind having ~40 minute commute one-way to work in the city. I use public transport and read books. Of course, I try to read some more at other times too, but at least I have a guaranteed minimum of 5-6 hours of reading time each week. I'd be utterly mad if I had to commute that long by a non-self-driving car though.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > " It’s much better to read the best book on the topic 5 times, than to read 5 different books on the topic once."* I think the author has a point. Maybe re-reading a book 5 times is not better than 5 different books, but re-reading it at least once is still a good investment. First, it turns out one doesn't remember all that much from the book after the first read. Second - and more important - when you're re-reading the book, you benefit from having the overall big picture in your head already, so you can re-evaluate earlier parts of the book using your knowledge about the whole.
- kartan 10y ago
  > "* It’s much better to read the best book on the topic 5 times, than to read 5 different books on the topic once." I agree that it is expressed in a too strong way for me. I will probably say that it is better to read twice the best 5 books in a topic that to read 10 on that same topic. Variety helps, but repetition is also good for retaining ideas. And for me the "best" books are the ones that present that ideas more clearly. The value of re-reading probably depends on how good is your memory and varies for each individual. I like the combination of re-reading with reading more on the same topic to get knowledge.
  - 300 10y ago
    True. I should have explained it better, and say that I didn't mean it literally. As you said, repetition is good to retain ideas. Also, I was able to get different ideas and insights from the same books, just based on my inner personal state, and my life circumstances at that point in time.
- nathan_f77 10y ago
  That sounds impossible to me. How can you possibly read one book every day, unless they're extremely short? I could imagine this being true if you dedicate something like 8-12 hours per day, but how do you have time for that?
  - ashark 10y ago
    Hardy Boys/Goosebumps/Boxcar Children? That's about the most advanced literature I can imagine achieving 1/day with.
  - Paul_S 10y ago
    That's what I thought too but no, it's totally doable (I am doing it after all) and the average page count according to goodreads is 357. I have no family, I work a 9-5 at a multinational and my only other hobby is bouldering. I use every spare moment to read. If you added up all your spare time every day you'd be surprised (clearly). It's not evenly distributed - I usually catch up over the weekend when I have loads of free time (2 days). Also it doesn't take 8 hours to read a book (at least not every one, fiction is pretty quick). Not even an audiobook (which are slower even when you speed them up x2.5)! Even if it took 8 hours on average (which might be right, I never actually tried to measure this) you could still read 9 books a week with 72 hours: ( (24 * 7) week - 40 work - (8 * 7) sleep ) / 8 hr/book = 9 books
    - kayoone 10y ago
      How about cooking, laundry, daily hygiene etc. It would be really hard reading all the time while doing that.
- dxhdr 10y ago
  Best 3 books out of the lot that you can recommend? Thanks!
  - Paul_S 10y ago
    I'm happy to share. - "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books I-II" - "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, books III-IV" - "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, books V-VII" Even though these are genuinely the best books I've read this year and genuinely world-view altering that might be not what you're after. Here are 3 good books I'm happy to recommend instead: - "Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945" by Tony Judt - "A History of Future Cities" by Daniel Brook - "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space" by Carl Sagan (if you already read Pale Blue Dot which I appear to be late to the party on try "Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective" by Thomas Sowell) And if you're after fiction instead: - "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera - "The Cunning Man" by Robertson Davies - "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck That's a nice round 10 recommendations so let me have a bonus one for year 2015: - "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" You will never read the news the same way.
    - pas 10y ago
      Have you read Pinker: The Blank Slate, and Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty? And "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" by Samuel P. Huntington? Also, Gleick: Chaos? Oh, and for fiction the James S. A. Corey: The Expanse series, veeeery easy to read, normally funny, and quite clever.
      - Paul_S 10y ago
        Thanks, no. I'll start with "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" as it's the most controversial one (spread of reviews) and if I like it I'll keep going.
        10y ago
somberi 10y ago
May I ask how you get the time and how you are able to read a book under a day?
- webreac 10y ago
  When I was student in french "classes preparatoires" (between 19 and 20yo), my binom was fond of books. He read between 2 and 3 books per day when most pupils had difficulties to cope with workload.
  - steveeq1 10y ago
    What does "binom" mean? Is that a typo? I tried looking it up online, but don't see anything.
    - antoineaugusti 10y ago
      It means someone you work with. A binôme in French is a group of 2
    - Pamar 10y ago
      See also this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_(polynomial) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_(polynomial)
- ci5er 10y ago
  At only a book a week, you'll easily hit > 200 in 4 years. No need to complete one in a day. Except for technical text books, most books can be "got through" in well under 4 hours. For most people, if they simply read instead of zoning out in front of the TV, (or being obsessed with social media!), that will yield >20 hours/week!
stared 10y ago
> It’s much better to read the best book on the topic 5 times, than to read 5 different books on the topic once. Rather than being an obvious truth, for me it is a grave mistake. I rarely read a book a few times (but also: I am very slow (careful!) reader), and go back if I want to quote something verbatim, or lookup a number/reference. In book reading I prefer quality than quantity. But what is crucial, rarely there is a single, obvious "best book". At the same time, reading only a single book leaves false impression that everything is known, there are no controversies, no different looks or approaches, etc.
- ci5er 10y ago
  For me, for a new field, I never know which is the "best" book. And whichever it is - it's not complete; there are additional nuggets to be found, maybe in the corner of a minor chapter, in many/most of them. I will read ~100 to just get a feel for the lay of the land. This is because I don't know what I don't know and certainly don't know enough to pick the best! And then go back and re-read (with more directedness) 10~20 of them, and then settle in and make 1~5 of them my touch stones for re-re-reading over time. This last bit is because I have a leaky brain, and I need to refresh it from time-to-time.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > For me, for a new field, I never know which is the "best" book. Solution for that is pretty simple for very many fields: Google: - best books on <field X> - best books on <field X> reddit Read a few lists from sites, especially those frequented by people in that field. See which books tend to appear often in those lists. There, you have quite probably just identified the very best books for the <field X> the human race has to offer.
    - ci5er 10y ago
      Well, sure. Those are the conclusions of people who have already formed their own mental structures. Somehow. That part is not shared. Or maybe they haven't read the books available themselves; there's a shocking number of humans willing to publish their conclusions based on ... sometimes nothing. ("You'll love this book! It's the best! Trust me!") I find that (for me) that the process of forming my own mental structures from the fire-hose to be useful. Partly because what a beginner needs and what an expert recommends often don't line up. Experts have forgotten what it's like to be a beginner.
amelius 10y ago
I'd like to see some research on how much redundant and unnecessary information is in typical books. I have the feeling that the essence of most books can be simplified to the size of, say, an average blog post. Can't we make reading a lot more efficient than it is right now?
- 300 10y ago
  I love your thought, and I tend to agree. There's way too much redundant and unnecessary information in typical books. That's why I think is better to read the best books on the topic more times, than few other average books repeating the same stuff in different words.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Fortunately - and this is something I see many smart people around me not realizing - we live in the day and age where it's trivial to identify and get the very best books humanity has produced about any given topic. That is, as long as you can read English.
    - Paul_S 10y ago
      How, please tell me. I'll pay you for that list. Do I have to sacrifice my firstborn for this?
      - ashark 10y ago
        For most technical, scientific, and mathematic topics, it's usually very easy to find the next best book to read with a google search or two. Starting on or strengthening long-forgotten Calculus? Probably get Spivak. Et c. This might get tougher as you approach a field's state-of-the-art, but by then "what to read next" will often come from a journal, not a book. Literature and verse? Harold Bloom's western canon list, whatever its faults, is pretty damn good and could keep one busy for a lifetime. If you want to mix in more works by e.g. women or more asian works or whatever, there are very good lists for that, too: http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/whatbooks.html http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/whatbooks.html (above includes Bloom's list) Want to learn science and math from classics? The list from How to Read a Book should help, and St. John's College's reading list is public: https://www.sjc.edu https://www.sjc.edu For a given topic, there's often a subreddit with a decent reading list in the FAQ. Which topic(s) are you having trouble with?
ianaphysicist 10y ago
The recommendation to take notes is helpful. I prefer to make my notes directly in the book. This has the added bonus of making a book's value much clearer to me when it comes time to cull.
quinndupont 10y ago
This person is either reading the lightest self-help type of books, or not really "reading" these books. I'm an academic, and my only job is to read books (and articles, etc), and I do my job at least 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I don't even read this many books. My advice for getting genuinely intelligent about a topic: read hard books, intensively, and leave the buffet-stats-counter stuff to those who just want to impress.
- 300 10y ago
  After reading ~10 different authors on self-help, you realize they're all saying the same thing. So no, your assumption is not true. Yes, I did read a lot of light self-help books in the beginning, but their number in total is less than ~40. It's totally not important how many books you read, but their quality, we agree about that :) That's why I mentioned it's better to read more times the same book, than more books on the same topic once.
  - soperj 10y ago
    So over 10% is self-help books.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- peter303 10y ago
  One book every five days is both fairly remarkable yet not overly demanding for an intellectual. If books were my only source of reading, I would read that much too. But I read journals, newspapers and blogs too.
  - brudgers 10y ago
    I agree that reading a book a week is not impossible. However, the author mentions reading ~1 hour per day. That's also doable for books that can be consumed at ~60 pages per hour, and for some topics (and some fiction) that's also not impossible. But for challenging books, particularly technical books and 'literature', 60 pages per hour is probably 2x-5x too optimistic.
chegra 10y ago
It would be interesting to see the list of actual books read.
- Paul_S 10y ago
  If you go to goodreads you can find thousands of people reading ~80 books a year with their lists publicly available. If you want to see what software engineers read just click on a popular software book and keep clicking on profiles that have read it until you find one with enough books.
mayermail1977 10y ago
Interesting. The first point resonates with the famous quote made by Bruce Lee. "I fear not the man who has practiced 10000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10000 times."
- johnnydoe9 10y ago
  That works for the kicks but not the book on a single topic though IMO, not only would reading the same book more than a couple times be boring but you wouldn't learn a whole lot.
aestetix 10y ago
It sounds to me like the author of this post is going for quantity over quality. In the realm of book-reading, that's almost always a losing proposition. Here's an approach that has worked better for me: pick a complex question and try to answer it. For example, "Why did the Great Depression happen?" It turns out there isn't actually a simple answer (that everyone can agree on).
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Quantity can actually help you here - for complex questions, you want to get a feel of the answer-space first, instead of picking a single point on it and exploring it thoroughly.
WheelsAtLarge 10y ago
I would add that it's important to put what you read into action. Also, summarizing what you read makes you think about what you read. Your less likely to forget. I learnt this after many forgotten books.
internaut 10y ago
If you aren't worried about the quantity of books you're getting through, and want a challenge, read The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. The closest approximation might be Jorge Luis Borges with Tolkien with a dash of Neal Stephenson and Murakami. At first I thought: I know what this is. Then I thought. Wait... something's wrong here. Then I thought. There is no way that is in the text. Can't be. This was just the point where the rollercoaster is beginning the climb. If you like complex and strange things, then this is for you.
jyriand 10y ago
300 books in 4 years, basically it's one book per week if my math is correct. But still it seems like some kind of consumerism, where the main goal is to scrape together as much information as possible, hoping that you can use some of it in the future.
- marketanarchist 10y ago
  More than that, 300 / 52 / 4 = 1.44 books/week.
dankohn1 10y ago
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” - George R.R. Martin quotes
- agumonkey 10y ago
  "and my characters only live halves"
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
  G.R.R.M. writes well, and I'm a long-time paying customer, but that phrase is advertising bullshit. The reader doesn't 'live' squat, he reads about someone else's life. Watching cooking shows doesn't feed anyone.
  - chillwaves 10y ago
    Does it have to be "advertising bullshit"? Maybe GRRM sees reading differently than you do? For someone who has devoted their life to writing, that is a sensible perspective.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      There's an interesting thread in Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (second book of the Three Body Problem trilogy (yes, I know I'm being boring constantly recommending them here but these are really good books)). I actually wonder whether it's a real thing. A short (minor) spoiler follows. One of the protagonists is married to a writer. He follows her advice about writing, and in the process of developing a character he manages to, well, instantiate a pretty much living version of that character in his own mind - a version that grows and thinks independently of its creator. He eventually gets emotionally involved with his imaginary creation, and later learns that it's something that happens to good writers, and that his wife has such a character "living" with her too. What I wonder is whether it's really the case that good writers actually develop their characters to the point of them turning pretty much into tulpas? A kind of background thread in their brains, with separate micro-consciousness.
- 10y ago
amitkakkar2010 10y ago
Great. You learn a lot after reading books good work.
PetoU 10y ago
imho usually the best books, are those complex ones, which I read for 4 months. Because after every page, 15 new questions arise, where settling them takes time, and then internalization of that wisdom takes time as well. And I don't even mention, that best books get better after re-reading. In this light, 300 books in 4 years, seems quite a lot...
- 300 10y ago
  This is very true for some types of books. For example, I am not able to read Dostoyevsky or Carlyle fast. For some sort of books, I even feel like I need a nap after 30 mins of reading, as I feel that my brain gets tired :)
juvoni 10y ago
I've read around 250 books in 4 years. I agree with a lot of the author's takeaways. I'll try to add some of the lessons I've gotten out of it, that don't appear on his list. In addition, I post my book reviews at http://juvoni.com/books http://juvoni.com/books - Understand what a book is going to attempt to communicate before you read it, either by checking the table of contents, going through a summary, reading reviews or reading the back or inner cover of a book. http://juvoni.com/book/how-to-read-a-book http://juvoni.com/book/how-to-read-a-book - You can read multiple books at a time and not get the narrative scrambled by doing context specific reading by time or location. For example only reading book A while in transit, reading book B before bedtime and only reading book C on weekends. The context specific memory will be attached to when and where you habitually read that specific book. http://juvoni.com/reading-multiple-books http://juvoni.com/reading-multiple-books - Not all book recommendations are made equal, even from friends. I use a concept called 'Book Purgatory', where book recommendations go to await judgment on whether they are worthy of your time and attention to read. I do not commit to reading any recommendation. It is only after I give it a review based on what I want or need from a book and the quality of it's reviews do I consider getting it. http://juvoni.com/book-purgatory http://juvoni.com/book-purgatory - Reading a lot of books when you have a full lifestyle is difficult, it's in you're best interest to stay organized and have a pre-defined list of books you want to read, and intend to read after you are finished and actively track the books you are currently reading. http://juvoni.com/trello-book-reading-management http://juvoni.com/trello-book-reading-management - Identify your learning styles and device preferences and find books that are a good balance of right medium and comfortable preference. For example, I have a hard time reading history books but find them easier over audible, I also prefer to read books with diagrams as physical rather than e-books. http://juvoni.com/print-ebook-audiobook http://juvoni.com/print-ebook-audiobook - Understand why you read. http://juvoni.com/discovering-love-reading-read-read-smarter http://juvoni.com/discovering-love-reading-read-read-smarter
hemantv 10y ago
For me personally how do you get list of best books. We have just too much books but finding out good ones is difficult process.
koga-ninja 10y ago
300 books in 4 years is pretty good. My reading speed is 60 pages an hour with comprehension, though I can Zoom through with less. Nothing like a NASA astronaut though.
jdswain 10y ago
I'm actually trying to read less and do more. So instead of reading about compilers I'm building some. It feels like a slower way of learning sometimes, but it's exposed lots of places where I thought I knew how things work but I actually didn't. It has also taught me more than reading alone would. The downside is that I find it harder to get time for building. It's easy enough to read at night in bed, but harder to concentrate on writing code.
pmoriarty 10y ago
We ought to only read the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief. Franz Kafka

102 points by 300 10y ago

I decided to read a book a day this year. So far I'm ahead at 336 and here are my counter opinions. "* It’s much better to read the best book on the topic 5 times, than to read 5 different books on the topic once." Flat out no. Unless you're a freaking machine. Reading different books covering the same topic keeps me interested more. I don't mind the repetition then because I get the warm "I know that" feeling. "* Eyes that pay read better than eyes that don’t. Eyes that pay more read better than eyes that pay less. In other words, when you pay for a book or a course, you’ll dedicate more to it, so you’ll get more value from it." Total nonsense. I'm not paying my friends or the library to borrow their books. Next you'll be telling me hardback books transfer ideas better. Well, my e-reader has a hard case. And I paid 300 quid for it. "* If you read ~1h (almost) every day, you’ll be able to read 60-80 books per year." If you use all your idle time you can read a book a day. Cooking? You mean reading and cooking. Commuting? Reading. Sitting on the toilet? You get the idea. Waiting for the kettle? Seconds add up! I agree with the rest.

300 10y ago
Thanks for your comment Paul! Kudos for a book a day, just in my honest opinion, that's an overkill. I think it's really important to have time to think and make notes about what you read. Even re-reading the same books can often give you different insights, depending on your inner state, life circumstances, etc. I respect your opinion on your points, and I'll not argue those. I shared my insights, based on my experience, and I wish I knew some of them before much earlier - it would save me a lot of time. -Jovica
- Paul_S 10y ago
  The problem complicating re-reading "the best" book is how do you know which one is the best? Reading a new one has a non-zero chance of reading a better one. A variation on the secretary problem where interviewing can have a negative cost. As for a book a day being overkill - you're right, I'm not going to keep this up next year. Normally I read ~80 books but last year I was unemployed for several months and ended up reading >200 even though I was busy looking for work (which involves a lot travel and waiting around which is when I got religious about using my deadtime rather than "killing" time with HN) and I thought fuck it, I'll give it a go at which point I got hired within a month but wanted to see if I can keep going. It's getting really busy with deadlines but I'm confident I can catch up during christmas. For people wondering: yes, I have no family.
  - 300 10y ago
    Good question. I put quite a lot of effort to explore available books on the topic, but that would take another (much longer) blog post. Good luck with your quest! If you need some inspiration for books to read, check out this great list: https://sivers.org/book https://sivers.org/book
    - Paul_S 10y ago
      Open the page, sort by "best" and see how far up you have to go before you get to a book that doesn't get a negative review. As far as I can tell no one has this figured out yet and it's a no way of proving a program will stop without running it sort of a thing - all we need now is a name for this law relating to books.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        Everything gets negative reviews - even if God Himself stepped down and put a poem on Amazon that was explicitly designed to trigger hidden backdoors in people's firmware to induce state of extreme pleasure, somebody would leave a negative review because they've only read second stanza while drunk, and decided it sucks. One has to get used to it, and learn not to flinch away from reading an occasional negative review to make sure whether it's just someone's very specific subjective opinion, or whether it can be a problem for many other readers too.
vijayr 10y ago
a book a day Wow! What kind of books are these? How long do you spend everyday reading?
- Paul_S 10y ago
  Unfortunately goodreads doesn't offer any kind of meaningful stats. I'm guessing it's 50/50 fact & fiction split but I could be wildly off. What goodreads does tell me is that 1/10 of them I rated 1 star. This is my biggest problem - I have not yet found any reliable way to find recommendations. I don't know how much time I spend reading, it's almost never exclusive reading time - it's almost always multitasking with something else. I spent at least 4 hours today and it's only mid-afternoon here. Limiting my HN time seems to work and HN is the only social media I'm on. I always have at least two books on the go and one of them is an audiobook so I can keep reading when I'm cycling, doing laundry, etc.
sotojuan 10y ago
I agree that it's really easy to find time for reading. For us in tech, just replace your HN/Reddit time with reading and you'll be surprised how much you can read!
- Paul_S 10y ago
  I have a strategically placed book at the office. Every time I go to get tea and I'm waiting for it to brew or waiting for the meeting to start I read a few pages. It sounds ridiculous but I'm confident I'll finish that book within a year - purely by adding up the brewing/waiting time.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Personally, books are why I don't mind having ~40 minute commute one-way to work in the city. I use public transport and read books. Of course, I try to read some more at other times too, but at least I have a guaranteed minimum of 5-6 hours of reading time each week. I'd be utterly mad if I had to commute that long by a non-self-driving car though.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
> " It’s much better to read the best book on the topic 5 times, than to read 5 different books on the topic once."* I think the author has a point. Maybe re-reading a book 5 times is not better than 5 different books, but re-reading it at least once is still a good investment. First, it turns out one doesn't remember all that much from the book after the first read. Second - and more important - when you're re-reading the book, you benefit from having the overall big picture in your head already, so you can re-evaluate earlier parts of the book using your knowledge about the whole.
kartan 10y ago
> "* It’s much better to read the best book on the topic 5 times, than to read 5 different books on the topic once." I agree that it is expressed in a too strong way for me. I will probably say that it is better to read twice the best 5 books in a topic that to read 10 on that same topic. Variety helps, but repetition is also good for retaining ideas. And for me the "best" books are the ones that present that ideas more clearly. The value of re-reading probably depends on how good is your memory and varies for each individual. I like the combination of re-reading with reading more on the same topic to get knowledge.
- 300 10y ago
  True. I should have explained it better, and say that I didn't mean it literally. As you said, repetition is good to retain ideas. Also, I was able to get different ideas and insights from the same books, just based on my inner personal state, and my life circumstances at that point in time.
nathan_f77 10y ago
That sounds impossible to me. How can you possibly read one book every day, unless they're extremely short? I could imagine this being true if you dedicate something like 8-12 hours per day, but how do you have time for that?
- ashark 10y ago
  Hardy Boys/Goosebumps/Boxcar Children? That's about the most advanced literature I can imagine achieving 1/day with.
- Paul_S 10y ago
  That's what I thought too but no, it's totally doable (I am doing it after all) and the average page count according to goodreads is 357. I have no family, I work a 9-5 at a multinational and my only other hobby is bouldering. I use every spare moment to read. If you added up all your spare time every day you'd be surprised (clearly). It's not evenly distributed - I usually catch up over the weekend when I have loads of free time (2 days). Also it doesn't take 8 hours to read a book (at least not every one, fiction is pretty quick). Not even an audiobook (which are slower even when you speed them up x2.5)! Even if it took 8 hours on average (which might be right, I never actually tried to measure this) you could still read 9 books a week with 72 hours: ( (24 * 7) week - 40 work - (8 * 7) sleep ) / 8 hr/book = 9 books
  - kayoone 10y ago
    How about cooking, laundry, daily hygiene etc. It would be really hard reading all the time while doing that.
dxhdr 10y ago
Best 3 books out of the lot that you can recommend? Thanks!
- Paul_S 10y ago
  I'm happy to share. - "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books I-II" - "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, books III-IV" - "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, books V-VII" Even though these are genuinely the best books I've read this year and genuinely world-view altering that might be not what you're after. Here are 3 good books I'm happy to recommend instead: - "Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945" by Tony Judt - "A History of Future Cities" by Daniel Brook - "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space" by Carl Sagan (if you already read Pale Blue Dot which I appear to be late to the party on try "Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective" by Thomas Sowell) And if you're after fiction instead: - "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera - "The Cunning Man" by Robertson Davies - "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck That's a nice round 10 recommendations so let me have a bonus one for year 2015: - "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" You will never read the news the same way.
  - pas 10y ago
    Have you read Pinker: The Blank Slate, and Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty? And "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" by Samuel P. Huntington? Also, Gleick: Chaos? Oh, and for fiction the James S. A. Corey: The Expanse series, veeeery easy to read, normally funny, and quite clever.
    - Paul_S 10y ago
      Thanks, no. I'll start with "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" as it's the most controversial one (spread of reviews) and if I like it I'll keep going.
      - 10y ago

somberi 10y ago

May I ask how you get the time and how you are able to read a book under a day?

webreac 10y ago
When I was student in french "classes preparatoires" (between 19 and 20yo), my binom was fond of books. He read between 2 and 3 books per day when most pupils had difficulties to cope with workload.
- steveeq1 10y ago
  What does "binom" mean? Is that a typo? I tried looking it up online, but don't see anything.
  - antoineaugusti 10y ago
    It means someone you work with. A binôme in French is a group of 2
  - Pamar 10y ago
    See also this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_(polynomial) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_(polynomial)
ci5er 10y ago
At only a book a week, you'll easily hit > 200 in 4 years. No need to complete one in a day. Except for technical text books, most books can be "got through" in well under 4 hours. For most people, if they simply read instead of zoning out in front of the TV, (or being obsessed with social media!), that will yield >20 hours/week!

stared 10y ago

> It’s much better to read the best book on the topic 5 times, than to read 5 different books on the topic once. Rather than being an obvious truth, for me it is a grave mistake. I rarely read a book a few times (but also: I am very slow (careful!) reader), and go back if I want to quote something verbatim, or lookup a number/reference. In book reading I prefer quality than quantity. But what is crucial, rarely there is a single, obvious "best book". At the same time, reading only a single book leaves false impression that everything is known, there are no controversies, no different looks or approaches, etc.

ci5er 10y ago
For me, for a new field, I never know which is the "best" book. And whichever it is - it's not complete; there are additional nuggets to be found, maybe in the corner of a minor chapter, in many/most of them. I will read ~100 to just get a feel for the lay of the land. This is because I don't know what I don't know and certainly don't know enough to pick the best! And then go back and re-read (with more directedness) 10~20 of them, and then settle in and make 1~5 of them my touch stones for re-re-reading over time. This last bit is because I have a leaky brain, and I need to refresh it from time-to-time.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > For me, for a new field, I never know which is the "best" book. Solution for that is pretty simple for very many fields: Google: - best books on <field X> - best books on <field X> reddit Read a few lists from sites, especially those frequented by people in that field. See which books tend to appear often in those lists. There, you have quite probably just identified the very best books for the <field X> the human race has to offer.
  - ci5er 10y ago
    Well, sure. Those are the conclusions of people who have already formed their own mental structures. Somehow. That part is not shared. Or maybe they haven't read the books available themselves; there's a shocking number of humans willing to publish their conclusions based on ... sometimes nothing. ("You'll love this book! It's the best! Trust me!") I find that (for me) that the process of forming my own mental structures from the fire-hose to be useful. Partly because what a beginner needs and what an expert recommends often don't line up. Experts have forgotten what it's like to be a beginner.

amelius 10y ago

I'd like to see some research on how much redundant and unnecessary information is in typical books. I have the feeling that the essence of most books can be simplified to the size of, say, an average blog post. Can't we make reading a lot more efficient than it is right now?

300 10y ago
I love your thought, and I tend to agree. There's way too much redundant and unnecessary information in typical books. That's why I think is better to read the best books on the topic more times, than few other average books repeating the same stuff in different words.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Fortunately - and this is something I see many smart people around me not realizing - we live in the day and age where it's trivial to identify and get the very best books humanity has produced about any given topic. That is, as long as you can read English.
  - Paul_S 10y ago
    How, please tell me. I'll pay you for that list. Do I have to sacrifice my firstborn for this?
    - ashark 10y ago
      For most technical, scientific, and mathematic topics, it's usually very easy to find the next best book to read with a google search or two. Starting on or strengthening long-forgotten Calculus? Probably get Spivak. Et c. This might get tougher as you approach a field's state-of-the-art, but by then "what to read next" will often come from a journal, not a book. Literature and verse? Harold Bloom's western canon list, whatever its faults, is pretty damn good and could keep one busy for a lifetime. If you want to mix in more works by e.g. women or more asian works or whatever, there are very good lists for that, too: http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/whatbooks.html http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/whatbooks.html (above includes Bloom's list) Want to learn science and math from classics? The list from How to Read a Book should help, and St. John's College's reading list is public: https://www.sjc.edu https://www.sjc.edu For a given topic, there's often a subreddit with a decent reading list in the FAQ. Which topic(s) are you having trouble with?

ianaphysicist 10y ago

The recommendation to take notes is helpful. I prefer to make my notes directly in the book. This has the added bonus of making a book's value much clearer to me when it comes time to cull.

quinndupont 10y ago

This person is either reading the lightest self-help type of books, or not really "reading" these books. I'm an academic, and my only job is to read books (and articles, etc), and I do my job at least 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I don't even read this many books. My advice for getting genuinely intelligent about a topic: read hard books, intensively, and leave the buffet-stats-counter stuff to those who just want to impress.

300 10y ago
After reading ~10 different authors on self-help, you realize they're all saying the same thing. So no, your assumption is not true. Yes, I did read a lot of light self-help books in the beginning, but their number in total is less than ~40. It's totally not important how many books you read, but their quality, we agree about that :) That's why I mentioned it's better to read more times the same book, than more books on the same topic once.
- soperj 10y ago
  So over 10% is self-help books.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
peter303 10y ago
One book every five days is both fairly remarkable yet not overly demanding for an intellectual. If books were my only source of reading, I would read that much too. But I read journals, newspapers and blogs too.
- brudgers 10y ago
  I agree that reading a book a week is not impossible. However, the author mentions reading ~1 hour per day. That's also doable for books that can be consumed at ~60 pages per hour, and for some topics (and some fiction) that's also not impossible. But for challenging books, particularly technical books and 'literature', 60 pages per hour is probably 2x-5x too optimistic.

chegra 10y ago

It would be interesting to see the list of actual books read.

Paul_S 10y ago
If you go to goodreads you can find thousands of people reading ~80 books a year with their lists publicly available. If you want to see what software engineers read just click on a popular software book and keep clicking on profiles that have read it until you find one with enough books.

mayermail1977 10y ago

Interesting. The first point resonates with the famous quote made by Bruce Lee. "I fear not the man who has practiced 10000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10000 times."

johnnydoe9 10y ago
That works for the kicks but not the book on a single topic though IMO, not only would reading the same book more than a couple times be boring but you wouldn't learn a whole lot.

aestetix 10y ago

It sounds to me like the author of this post is going for quantity over quality. In the realm of book-reading, that's almost always a losing proposition. Here's an approach that has worked better for me: pick a complex question and try to answer it. For example, "Why did the Great Depression happen?" It turns out there isn't actually a simple answer (that everyone can agree on).

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Quantity can actually help you here - for complex questions, you want to get a feel of the answer-space first, instead of picking a single point on it and exploring it thoroughly.

WheelsAtLarge 10y ago

I would add that it's important to put what you read into action. Also, summarizing what you read makes you think about what you read. Your less likely to forget. I learnt this after many forgotten books.

internaut 10y ago

If you aren't worried about the quantity of books you're getting through, and want a challenge, read The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. The closest approximation might be Jorge Luis Borges with Tolkien with a dash of Neal Stephenson and Murakami. At first I thought: I know what this is. Then I thought. Wait... something's wrong here. Then I thought. There is no way that is in the text. Can't be. This was just the point where the rollercoaster is beginning the climb. If you like complex and strange things, then this is for you.

jyriand 10y ago

300 books in 4 years, basically it's one book per week if my math is correct. But still it seems like some kind of consumerism, where the main goal is to scrape together as much information as possible, hoping that you can use some of it in the future.

marketanarchist 10y ago
More than that, 300 / 52 / 4 = 1.44 books/week.

dankohn1 10y ago

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” - George R.R. Martin quotes

agumonkey 10y ago
"and my characters only live halves"
B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
G.R.R.M. writes well, and I'm a long-time paying customer, but that phrase is advertising bullshit. The reader doesn't 'live' squat, he reads about someone else's life. Watching cooking shows doesn't feed anyone.
- chillwaves 10y ago
  Does it have to be "advertising bullshit"? Maybe GRRM sees reading differently than you do? For someone who has devoted their life to writing, that is a sensible perspective.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    There's an interesting thread in Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (second book of the Three Body Problem trilogy (yes, I know I'm being boring constantly recommending them here but these are really good books)). I actually wonder whether it's a real thing. A short (minor) spoiler follows. One of the protagonists is married to a writer. He follows her advice about writing, and in the process of developing a character he manages to, well, instantiate a pretty much living version of that character in his own mind - a version that grows and thinks independently of its creator. He eventually gets emotionally involved with his imaginary creation, and later learns that it's something that happens to good writers, and that his wife has such a character "living" with her too. What I wonder is whether it's really the case that good writers actually develop their characters to the point of them turning pretty much into tulpas? A kind of background thread in their brains, with separate micro-consciousness.
10y ago

amitkakkar2010 10y ago

Great. You learn a lot after reading books good work.

PetoU 10y ago

imho usually the best books, are those complex ones, which I read for 4 months. Because after every page, 15 new questions arise, where settling them takes time, and then internalization of that wisdom takes time as well. And I don't even mention, that best books get better after re-reading. In this light, 300 books in 4 years, seems quite a lot...

300 10y ago
This is very true for some types of books. For example, I am not able to read Dostoyevsky or Carlyle fast. For some sort of books, I even feel like I need a nap after 30 mins of reading, as I feel that my brain gets tired :)

juvoni 10y ago

I've read around 250 books in 4 years. I agree with a lot of the author's takeaways. I'll try to add some of the lessons I've gotten out of it, that don't appear on his list. In addition, I post my book reviews at http://juvoni.com/books http://juvoni.com/books - Understand what a book is going to attempt to communicate before you read it, either by checking the table of contents, going through a summary, reading reviews or reading the back or inner cover of a book. http://juvoni.com/book/how-to-read-a-book http://juvoni.com/book/how-to-read-a-book - You can read multiple books at a time and not get the narrative scrambled by doing context specific reading by time or location. For example only reading book A while in transit, reading book B before bedtime and only reading book C on weekends. The context specific memory will be attached to when and where you habitually read that specific book. http://juvoni.com/reading-multiple-books http://juvoni.com/reading-multiple-books - Not all book recommendations are made equal, even from friends. I use a concept called 'Book Purgatory', where book recommendations go to await judgment on whether they are worthy of your time and attention to read. I do not commit to reading any recommendation. It is only after I give it a review based on what I want or need from a book and the quality of it's reviews do I consider getting it. http://juvoni.com/book-purgatory http://juvoni.com/book-purgatory - Reading a lot of books when you have a full lifestyle is difficult, it's in you're best interest to stay organized and have a pre-defined list of books you want to read, and intend to read after you are finished and actively track the books you are currently reading. http://juvoni.com/trello-book-reading-management http://juvoni.com/trello-book-reading-management - Identify your learning styles and device preferences and find books that are a good balance of right medium and comfortable preference. For example, I have a hard time reading history books but find them easier over audible, I also prefer to read books with diagrams as physical rather than e-books. http://juvoni.com/print-ebook-audiobook http://juvoni.com/print-ebook-audiobook - Understand why you read. http://juvoni.com/discovering-love-reading-read-read-smarter http://juvoni.com/discovering-love-reading-read-read-smarter

hemantv 10y ago

For me personally how do you get list of best books. We have just too much books but finding out good ones is difficult process.

koga-ninja 10y ago

300 books in 4 years is pretty good. My reading speed is 60 pages an hour with comprehension, though I can Zoom through with less. Nothing like a NASA astronaut though.

jdswain 10y ago

I'm actually trying to read less and do more. So instead of reading about compilers I'm building some. It feels like a slower way of learning sometimes, but it's exposed lots of places where I thought I knew how things work but I actually didn't. It has also taught me more than reading alone would. The downside is that I find it harder to get time for building. It's easy enough to read at night in bed, but harder to concentrate on writing code.

pmoriarty 10y ago

We ought to only read the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief. Franz Kafka