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I'm going to admit, if I was to buy all the books I wanted, I would be left poor and unable to feed myself. That's why a lot of thought goes into what books I b

I'm going to admit, if I was to buy all the books I wanted, I would be left poor and unable to feed myself. That's why a lot of thought goes into what books I buy. I can be seen frequently taking way too much time at bookstores perusing books often reading a few pages of a book and then making up my mind whether to buy it or not. I thought E-books and Audible would change the game and make it easier to consume books, but it still requires a lot of mental and physical bandwidth to consume a book. It's very active and requires a 'reading muscle' to get good at reading, or even listening to one (on Audible). I've tried various tools like Kindle and speed-reading apps, but they fail horribly in that they still require that reading muscle. There is no way out of this; you have to put in the work of reading a book, and the time investment (alongside cashflow to bring in steady streams of curated books for consuming).

apocalypstyx 7y ago
More and more I keep thinking about an interview with Jacques Derrida. [Standing in his home library / office space] INTERVIEWER: Did you read these? DERRIDA: No, I haven't read these. I haven't read all the books that are here. INTERVIEWER: But you've read most of them? DERRIDA: No, no. Three or four. But I read those four really, really well.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  I saw the interview, and it kinda annoys me. Close reading comes from broad reading - it's only after you've read a library of books that you get all the subtleties and references. There are all sorts of orthodoxies around reading propagated by philosophers, often ingenious ones, often trying to make some kind of backhanded point.
bpicolo 7y ago
Don't forget about libraries!
kthejoker2 7y ago
I recommend John Adairs books to everyone but The Art of Creative Thinking is a particularly good one. > Reading without reflecting has been compared to eating without digesting. ‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested’, Francis Bacon put it more accurately. One page or even one paragraph properly digested will be more fruitful than a whole volume hurriedly read. Or, as the film mogul, Sam Goldwyn, said to a hopeful author, ‘I have read part of your book all the way though.’ When you come across significant parts – the passages that speak to you – it is worth remem- bering the counsel of the Book of Common Prayer: ‘Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.’

apocalypstyx 7y ago

More and more I keep thinking about an interview with Jacques Derrida. [Standing in his home library / office space] INTERVIEWER: Did you read these? DERRIDA: No, I haven't read these. I haven't read all the books that are here. INTERVIEWER: But you've read most of them? DERRIDA: No, no. Three or four. But I read those four really, really well.

pasabagi 7y ago
I saw the interview, and it kinda annoys me. Close reading comes from broad reading - it's only after you've read a library of books that you get all the subtleties and references. There are all sorts of orthodoxies around reading propagated by philosophers, often ingenious ones, often trying to make some kind of backhanded point.

bpicolo 7y ago

Don't forget about libraries!

kthejoker2 7y ago

I recommend John Adairs books to everyone but The Art of Creative Thinking is a particularly good one. > Reading without reflecting has been compared to eating without digesting. ‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested’, Francis Bacon put it more accurately. One page or even one paragraph properly digested will be more fruitful than a whole volume hurriedly read. Or, as the film mogul, Sam Goldwyn, said to a hopeful author, ‘I have read part of your book all the way though.’ When you come across significant parts – the passages that speak to you – it is worth remem- bering the counsel of the Book of Common Prayer: ‘Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.’