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The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why
- StrictDabbler 8y agoAs I read this piece I was able to predict the direction it would go and the evidence that would be presented for each opinion. By the end I had been neither surprised nor enlightened by anything presented in it. The author likes old books, dislikes digital reading devices and audiobooks, dislikes most things written since his own birth unless they were written about the western canon or by people trained entirely in the canon, is uninterested in reading books from other cultural traditions, and is completely self-satisfied with his extensive and erudite form of intellectual provincialism. It is an infuriating piece that describes a small mind that looks large to the consciousness inside it. I would propose this alternate subtitle: "How Reading the Western Canon Allowed Me to Achieve an Entirely Unremarkable Relationship with Culture and Thought" If you haven't read the article yet I'd recommend you not bother.
- ziroshima 8y agoWhile I agree with you generally, that you take such offense to the article is bizarre. Infuriating? Really?
- newdayrising 8y agoYou sound far more motivated by bias than the author. At least he makes it pretty clear that his is an opinion.
- sanderjd 8y agoThe parent comment seems pretty clearly an opinion as well. But this is why I often end up writing "I think" and "I believe" even though people often say to avoid doing so: I'm always afraid that if I don't someone will accuse me of stating fact without evidence when I only mean to be expressing opinion.
- thisiszilff 8y agoI believe the rule is to avoid it when you're trying to persuade because by default it makes you sound less convincing.nif you're just discussing, then to hell with the rule.
- roymurdock 8y agoI like the bitter passion. Who would u recommend to read outside the unremarkable western canon?
- ekphrasis 8y agoA few tips: ”One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ”Things fall apart” by Chinua Achebe, ”Wide Sargasso sea” by Jean Rhys, poetry by Anna Achmatova, ”My life in the bush of ghosts” by Amos Tutuola, ”A personal matter” by Kenzaburo Oe, ”Woman in the dunes” by Kobo Abe, ”The grass is singing" by Doris Lessing.
- 1123581321 8y agoMost of these are contemporary works in, or in response to, western literature.
- komali2 8y agoSimilar thoughts here. Furthermore, the author's writing style is annoyingly old fashioned and unnecessarily long. >Like the man—the fellow with the name Solomon, writing under the pen name Ecclesiastes—said, “Of the making of many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh Why not just "Solomon, writing under the pen name 'Ecclesiastes', said..."? > I recall some years ago a politician whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history who listed reading among his hobbies, along with fly-fishing and jogging. What was the point of this? Why not just "reading is my hobby"? > But for the road to acquiring the body of unspecialized knowledge that sometimes goes by the name of general culture, sometimes known as the pursuit of wisdom, no map, no blueprint, no plan, no shortcut exists, nor, as I hope to make plain, could it. Had to read this 3 times to parse the grammar.
- Jtsummers 8y ago> > I recall some years ago a politician whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history who listed reading among his hobbies, along with fly-fishing and jogging. > What was the point of this? Why not just "reading is my hobby"? The point was that he considered reading a "hobby" as much as breathing for himself. You have to include the rest of that paragraph though to see it: > I recall some years ago a politician whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history who listed reading among his hobbies, along with fly-fishing and jogging. Reading happens to be my hobby, too, along with peristalsis and respiration.
- sanderjd 8y agoI don't really want to pile on, but the irritating part is "whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history". It's still irritating in the context of the paragraph you quoted.
- Jtsummers 8y ago> “I may be a man of fairly wide reading, but I retain nothing.” Retention of everything one reads, along with being mentally impossible, would only crowd and ultimately cramp one’s mind. From later in the article. I took the "whose name is now as lost" as a forward reference to the later concept. Reading so much that specific facts are lost (like who he was quoting) while retaining the understanding of the quote itself.
- ACow_Adonis 8y agoI for one read the whole thing and find it enjoyable. I do not agree with his position on western literature, and he is clearly deliberately writing for people who already have some level of understanding of western literature and his Jewish heritage, but style wise I found it quite respectable, if not moderately haughty...
- bloat 8y agoI don't know how restricting yourself to the western canon makes you small minded. The western canon is, of course, huge and enormously varied. In any case, I didn't get the impression he was restricting himself. He describes going into book shops picking up any book he happened to light upon. My feeling was that he had decided not to beat himself up if these books did not encompass everything in the entire world. After all, isn't that the central premise - life is short? Your alternative subtitle is unnecessarily mean-spirited. I don't believe he was claiming to be in any way remarkable, in the end he was simply describing how he loves books.
- unstuckdev 8y agoConceits creep in if you only read one perspective. Think about all the people who think Western culture is the source of all civilization because they only read things that affirm that view. Any given culture's canon is big in volume, but small in context.
- colonelpopcorn 8y agoStill, I imagine it's better to read your culture's canon of thought only than none at all. Obviously you're not going to get a diverse perspective on life that way, but you might get a perspective that isn't totally informed by id or media.
- ycombinete 8y agoNot only that, but the “Western Canon”, is most certainly not written by one culture.
- ffwacom 8y agoOo la la, someone’s getting laid in college
- LearnerHerzog 8y agoExactly my thoughts. The article is nothing but pretentious.
- atypicaluser 8y agoYou missed the point of the article entirely. The Bookish Life--obviously this will discuss a life built around books. Yeah, yeah, anyone could guess how it would end, i.e. there's little fortune in it. How to Read and Why--interest. Purely so. You read slow because of your interest, you read because of your interest. Just as a foodie eats a dessert slowly because of his interest, he eats because of his interest. That a book-ie and a foodie would prefer one set of books or foods over another or over all others doesn't make the person less of a lover of their books or foods. That a foodie might prefer chopsticks over silverware, fingers or tortillas doesn't make their palate any less exquisite. Tell me--would you consider Isaac Newton and Fyoder Dostoevsky small-minded because they tended to keep their reading Euro-centric as well? And would I be right to charge anyone who hasn't the faintest interest in the Dalit literature of India or Japan, or in Mariama Bâ's So Long a Letter, or in the depths of Borges' poetry, etc., to be merely provincial? Or am I just being smug regarding my reading habits? I recommend you re-read the piece with a little less hostility.
- Emma_Goldman 8y ago1) There is plenty of evidence to suggest that people find it easier to navigate and remember from the printed page. 2) Yes we should all seek to learn about other cultures and expand our horizons. But that hardly makes all of Western thought 'small' and 'provincial'. You are simply aping the view you are complaining about, only in the diametrically opposite direction. Seriously learning about how the great minds of the past understood their world is, often, just as good a way of expanding our horizons, as reading from other cultures in the present. We are stretched by space and time. Finally, I don't think you're taking seriously the limits that language places on our breadth of reading. Very few professional intellectual historians - let alone everyone else - know enough of the European languages to engage with anything but a small part of 'Western' thought. I agree that we should strive to read more in non-Western languages, but it's very tough going.
- simonebrunozzi 8y agoAnd your comment, instead, is incredibly helpful for me, because it saved me a few minutes of my life. Thanks for this. It reminds me that years ago I tried (unsuccessfully) to launch a "TL;DR" service for Hacker News articles. This is a small test I ran: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11193792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11193792
- person_of_color 8y agoIs there a way to quantify the positive benefits of reading? I would like to track it just like any other variable (body fat, resting heart rate, etc.)
- TheDong 8y agoThe benefit of many things is neither well understood nor objectively measurable. How do you track the value of friends? The value of meditation? Heck, how do you track the value (negative or positive) you get from reading this site? Each of those things affects your mental state in some way, but we have no good way to directly track mental state. We can track the effect of a good mental state by observing that one is more productive, or marks higher on a happiness scale, but those are second-order effects and there will always be many confounding factors. We still can't evaluate intelligence nor longevity well enough to track any changes in those regards, and that is likely the area you would need to evaluate for tracking the impact of reading. If reading makes you feel more content or more knowledgeable about subjects, or if anecdotally things you read seem helpful in conversation or in life, that's probably as good as you'll get. I personally think that attempting to track and optimize even the most minute details of life is ultimately detrimental, but that's a rant for another time.
- person_of_color 8y agoTracking mental state - that's a good idea!
- gone35 8y agoCrudely, I guess you could sort of track the "Bayesian surprise" you get by reading a book by measuring changes in skin conductance --essentially tracking how many "frissons" you get while reading maybe? (I really don't know tho...)
- tapanjk 8y ago> How can one know if a book is interesting until one has read it; memorable until time has or has not lodged it in one’s memory; rereadable until the decades pass and one feels the need to read it again and enjoys it all the more on doing so? Well, 'interesting' is an opinion that an individual forms after having experienced something. In other words, there is no way for someone to not ever read an 'uninteresting' book. They must first read, to find out.
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- farazzz 8y ago“If an interesting book exists but there is no one to read it, is it interesting at all?”
- ggillas 8y agoThe best reading breakthrough I had was to eliminate my need to complete a book. If I've lost the plot, I throw the book away. If I've got the advice author's gist, I move on. It's allowed me to enjoy reading fiction again, get to the books I need in the moment, and move faster through my reading list.
- elboru 8y agoI learned to do that not too long ago, I started reading Asimov’s Fundation trilogy, but I struggled picking the book from my desk every single time, I was supposed to love it, everyone loves Asimov, so I had to love it too, but I just couldn’t, I felt guilty. Then I realized that the point of reading a novel was to enjoy it, if I was not enjoying it then I was just reading in a pretentious way. Since then I only keep reading if I like what I’m reading or if it will help me in any way.
- Nav_Panel 8y agoHonestly... I grew up reading Asimov, but I didn't read Foundation until my 20s, and I was... underwhelmed. I still adore his short stories (I often re-read them and discover something new), and I have fond memories of his Robot Detective novels and the standalone book "The Gods Themselves". But I also didn't love Foundation. So, don't feel bad.
- Emma_Goldman 8y agoSome of the ideas in Asimov are compelling. But he's not a great prose stylist.
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- chrisdhoover 8y agoMe too, it took me a long time to realize that not all books were good for me or to my liking. When I realized it was ok to put a book down and pick up another I was released from a weird guilt. I also think we teach literature and history in the wrong direction. I’d start a literature course with contemporary works and work back in time. Same with history
- burtonator 8y agoOK.. .shameless self plug. https://getpolarized.io/ https://getpolarized.io/ We announced it here the other day but we specifically designed it for people very very serious about reading. For me I put all my books in it and everything is manageable, I can go back to them, see what I've read, keep all my notes in one place, etc.
- stepvhen 8y agoPerhaps I missed it, but i didn't see anything about physical copies, i.e. it seems this is focused (exclusively?) for the ditigal reader. Is that the case?
- internet555 8y agoThat was a pretty good essay but some of the words were too big and I didn’t know them
- jl6 8y agoWestern education drills into us the mantra that reading books is virtuous. It certainly is something that children need to learn how to do, like eating and sleeping. But like eating and sleeping there are limits to the benefit you will get from reading books, and I don’t think this is widely recognised. The prevailing opinion still seems to be that reading is unreservedly Good For You. Why do I say that? Because reading is ultimately a form of consumption. The quality and quantity of that reading matters, just like it does for eating and sleeping. Someone who spends all day reading isn’t necessarily in any better position than someone who spends all day playing video games. Don’t get me wrong, I do love and recommend reading books - but the right amount of the right stuff.
- Bizi1 8y ago"Nietzsche said that life without music is a mistake. I would agree, adding that it is no less a mistake without books." Oh, how I agree. And also with you jl6. It is some kind of consumption and the quality of it matter, for sure and timing. Reading the "right" books for you age or understanding of the world.
- j9461701 8y agoThis is something I really agree with. Both myself and my father read very often, but we read utter schlock. We are no more intellectually improving ourselves than someone watching an action movie. To think otherwise is empty self-flattering of the worst sort. Also, at least for academic subjects, I've found doing problems is much more informative than spending the same amount of time reading the text. You can study as much python as you want, but until you sit down to write a program - you have on idea where you are.
- Emma_Goldman 8y agoThere is a big difference between 'reading for pleasure and self-education', and 'reading for a specific purpose'. I agree that one can do too much of the former but I'm not so sure about the latter. There's plenty of academics and writers, of all stripes, who would not be able to do what they do if they did not spend most of their time reading.
- eksemplar 8y agoI think the premise that you can’t obtain a list to be cultivated is extremely wrong. That’s exactly what happens in a danish gymnasium, where the content is meant to enlighten as much as educate, and the difference between choosing the “regular” humanism route takes you so much further than one of the technical routes. I know because I took the technical route and I married into a family who took the humanities. I’ve spent years catching up on philosophy, art, history, psychology and culturally important fiction, and I’m still not really part of the cultivated conversation when they really go at it. I don’t mind, they can’t talk math or engineering or even business management, but they’re all very similar because they followed a list. I’ve often wondered why there aren’t any easily available lists on the internet, because it’s really just the works you’d go through in your four-five year path, that’s shared among all humanities. Obviously there is a difference between reading platon on your own and reading it in a curated environment where you can discuss its meaning with your teacher and your peers, but don’t tell me those teachers couldn’t compile you a list. I think the real issue is that we killed blogs. A route to cultivation isn’t going to pop-up in a Facebook discussion, and if it is, then it won’t be searchable. And teachers or members of the humanities in general, seem to be much less likely to have an online jourbal which covers their professional life than people in tech. I read a news paper with a books section, and you’ll see this exact issue covered often in regards to new works, but those articles are only available on print or in an online archive you have to pay to access or even search in. So the lists are absolutely there, we just can’t access them outside of our educational system or closed discussions had by the people who wouldn’t need the list.
- shanehoban 8y agoIf you were to create a list based on your readings, I'd be very interested in having a copy.
- eksemplar 8y agoWith my rant, maybe I should, though the majority of it would be Danish works as I’m Danish. Until that I can recommend Bill Gates lists, it’s a really great resource for modern international works. Some of the recommendations in gates notes are very humanitarian, but others, like Sapiens, have made it into the book shelf of most cultivated people I know and I only read it because it was recommended in gates notes.
- mcguire 8y ago"This is the first of your three free articles for the month. "READ WITHOUT LIMITS" Irony, thy name is this website.
- eatonphil 8y agoI wrote (what I consider to be) a slightly more accessible post last month on the same topic after I really picked up reading books four years ago. My argument is that reading is a must for profressionals to learn and remember the ability to distinguish biases, trends, novelty, etc. Furthermore, I don't recommend "literature" as a starting point but must-read books in your field. It can be easier to start because the material is closer and because it doesn't feel like reading was a waste of time. Afterward diversifying to economics, psychology, domestic and foreign history, management, etc. and fiction become easier to make time for and easier to see the benefits. http://notes.eatonphil.com/why-and-how-to-read-books.html http://notes.eatonphil.com/why-and-how-to-read-books.html