5 ms·

I go through periods of intensive reading, then downtimes. These both span for months. Problem is a lot of it is dreck. Some books draw out a story for 1100

I go through periods of intensive reading, then downtimes. These both span for months. Problem is a lot of it is dreck. Some books draw out a story for 1100 pages then stuff all the cool stuff in the last 200 pages. It feels dishonest. A lot of classics aren't. A lot of pulp is captivating and fast paced. I tried reading infinite jest - I had to return it. I finished fear an loathing in las vegas in a day. It's a crap shoot.

cgriswald 7y ago
It is a crapshoot. I’m fortunate in that my mother is a prolific reader. I am too, but she makes me look illiterate. She consumes a ridiculous number of books a year. Lots of it is crap. Some isn’t, and she’s always recommended those ones to me, keeping in mind my own interests. Over the years I’ve met a few others who I trust to recommend books. But most people, even professional reviewers, just don’t work for me. That said, I’ve only read a handful of books that I’ve finished and thought, “I wish I hadn’t read that.” I can usually get something out of it, whether it’s a classic, pulp, overrated, whatever. It took me many attempts to make it through Dune by Frank Herbert. Part of it I attribute to being a child for my first attempts, but part of it is the style. It’s dry, slow, and political. It’s now one my short list of favorite books. On the other hand, William Gibson’s Neuromancer has gotten about as many attempts from me, but that one I’ve never finished. Interestingly (to me anyway), I generally find the books recommended by random HN posters worthy reads, both fiction and non-fiction.
- ericol 7y ago
  I've devoured everything William Gibson's... up to a point. I really, really liked the first trilogy. The second one was also entertaining, although not as _*punk_ as the first one. I kind of enjoyed "Pattern Recognition" (mostly because it was the first in the "almost viable" trilogy. But "Spook Country" was, for me, unreadable. I don't think I made it past the 2nd chapter. Can't quite put my finger on it; but I think it is that his style changed to what I'd call hyper-realism: He would go on taking 3 pages to describe a room. Seriously, for me the book unbearable boring.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    After a while, in my opinion, he just wrote the ~same novel, again and again. There's always the tough young woman. And the wimpy guy, typically a druggie. And often, the Case equivalent. But I still like them well enough.
    - detritus 7y ago
      I had this sad realisation with the last Iain M Banks book I read - Hydrogen Sonata. It was a good book, but I felt like I'd seen its skeleton at least three or four times before.
      - mercutio2 7y ago
        I thought the Hydrogen Sonata was probably Banks’s weakest Culture novel. “Sometimes civilizations decide to Sublime! Other folks take their stuff. One ship takes it upon itself to help a younger race not get boxed out of the spoils, fails, and gets depressed. The end” Most of his other Culture books had more stuff going combined with characters I cared about.
      - mirimir 7y ago
        It's pretty common for creators -- authors, artists, bands, etc -- to become formulaic. To some extent, it's just pandering to their estimated audience. Also, they've typically been working on their first few works for years. And then, if they become popular, they're under pressure to produce more and more, faster and faster. In my opinion, it works best to just write series. You can just use mostly the same characters. Matthew Stover did that well with the Caine series. I gather that he'd been working on it for at least a few years, and had been told that it was unpublishable. So he cut out a first book, and focused on action. Then another, when it sold well enough. And then, years later, after his Star Wars gig, he published the last two. They're basically a metaplot, and collection of back stories, that probably look a lot like the initial project.
- Filligree 7y ago
  You should try Greg Egan's books, if you like SF at all. I think a good introduction would be Schild's Ladder or Axiomatic, but my personal favorite is the Clockwork Rocket trilogy and Dichromatic. The latter two are conceptually related. If you know about metric signatures, you'll be able to tell how. If not, well, you will.
  - gjm11 7y ago
    Correction: Dichronauts, not Dichromatic. (DuckDuckGo is smart enough to find the right book; Google kinda-sorta is -- it's the first image search result but doesn't otherwise appear in the first page of results, at least for me; Amazon's search isn't.)
    - Filligree 7y ago
      Right, of course. I blame gboard.
  - AgentME 7y ago
    Seconding Greg Egan. I'd highly recommend Permutation City and Diaspora by him. The books explore mind uploading from lots of interesting angles.
  - cgriswald 7y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion. Very appreciated!
coldtea 7y ago
There are so many true classics, and so many non-fiction classics, and so many great pulp and genre, that just sticking to awarded works, respected top-X lists, gives you enough books to last 2-3 lifetimes of reading 2 books per week (that's still less than 10K books in total). Plus following the thread of an author you like gives you easily 3-10 books of them, and 10-20 books of similar style you know you enjoy of those who inspired them/succeeded them. It's hardly a "crap shot", except if you buy random books...
alexhutcheson 7y ago
The key is to just put it down and move on to another book if you’re not enjoying it. Many people have a completist attitude towards reading - they continue to slog through to the end of a book once they’ve started, even if they don’t like it. They’ll make slow progress, and it blocks them from picking up a new book. Cut your losses early - your total reading throughput will be much higher, and most nonfiction books aren’t worth reading all the way to the end anyway.
- celticninja 7y ago
  I used to power through books I didn't like, just to finish them in case they were redeemed somehow. Then I realized, too many books too little time. I dropped Neal Stephenson's Anathem because of this, although I have read every other one of his books and cover to cover. It just didn't click and I didn't fancy re-reading it when it did finally click.
  - TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
    I did this with the much lauded sci-fi “Three body problem”. First half was good, then it took a dive for me and haven’t picked up up 3/4s of the way through.
- bigred100 7y ago
  Books aren’t about enjoyment. They’re about suffering and talking about Montaigne at a party. That’s why I forced myself to read 800 pages of Babur complaining about melons.
  - _nalply 7y ago
    You live only once.
- _nalply 7y ago
  A trick if I decide that a book is not worth my time: I open Wikipedia and read the summary. However once it happened that I changed my mind and continued the book because I found a part of the summary interesting. Usually I take care not to read a lot about a book before starting, because it would be a pity if I learnt about an explanation before figuring it out by myself. So it is a real switch for me, and then I read Wikipedia slowly, ready to stop midsentence if I want to resume the book.
vadansky 7y ago
Same situation, and actually Infinite Jest also started a half a year long drought that was only broken by the Three Body Problem trilogy. Agree with the cut your losses strategy.
gregmac 7y ago
I find a similar thing happens with a lot of the non-fiction I've read (or tried to read): it's something that could have been a really good few-dozen-page essay, but as a couple hundred page book it's just protracted and repetitive. As a result, for certain topics I can never bring myself to actually start reading. I have several books that have been on my shelf in this state for years now.
equalunique 7y ago
I recommend Infinite Jest on Audible. There are advantages to it being an audiobook, one being that since you aren't holding the pages, you won't see it coming when a chapter ends. This prevents you from rushing to complete sections, rather, you just go along for a ride while the story is told, not knowing where/when it'll end up.
- kabdib 7y ago
  +1, and you don't have to worry about having three bookmarks placed correctly :-)

cgriswald 7y ago

It is a crapshoot. I’m fortunate in that my mother is a prolific reader. I am too, but she makes me look illiterate. She consumes a ridiculous number of books a year. Lots of it is crap. Some isn’t, and she’s always recommended those ones to me, keeping in mind my own interests. Over the years I’ve met a few others who I trust to recommend books. But most people, even professional reviewers, just don’t work for me. That said, I’ve only read a handful of books that I’ve finished and thought, “I wish I hadn’t read that.” I can usually get something out of it, whether it’s a classic, pulp, overrated, whatever. It took me many attempts to make it through Dune by Frank Herbert. Part of it I attribute to being a child for my first attempts, but part of it is the style. It’s dry, slow, and political. It’s now one my short list of favorite books. On the other hand, William Gibson’s Neuromancer has gotten about as many attempts from me, but that one I’ve never finished. Interestingly (to me anyway), I generally find the books recommended by random HN posters worthy reads, both fiction and non-fiction.

ericol 7y ago
I've devoured everything William Gibson's... up to a point. I really, really liked the first trilogy. The second one was also entertaining, although not as _*punk_ as the first one. I kind of enjoyed "Pattern Recognition" (mostly because it was the first in the "almost viable" trilogy. But "Spook Country" was, for me, unreadable. I don't think I made it past the 2nd chapter. Can't quite put my finger on it; but I think it is that his style changed to what I'd call hyper-realism: He would go on taking 3 pages to describe a room. Seriously, for me the book unbearable boring.
- mirimir 7y ago
  After a while, in my opinion, he just wrote the ~same novel, again and again. There's always the tough young woman. And the wimpy guy, typically a druggie. And often, the Case equivalent. But I still like them well enough.
  - detritus 7y ago
    I had this sad realisation with the last Iain M Banks book I read - Hydrogen Sonata. It was a good book, but I felt like I'd seen its skeleton at least three or four times before.
    - mercutio2 7y ago
      I thought the Hydrogen Sonata was probably Banks’s weakest Culture novel. “Sometimes civilizations decide to Sublime! Other folks take their stuff. One ship takes it upon itself to help a younger race not get boxed out of the spoils, fails, and gets depressed. The end” Most of his other Culture books had more stuff going combined with characters I cared about.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      It's pretty common for creators -- authors, artists, bands, etc -- to become formulaic. To some extent, it's just pandering to their estimated audience. Also, they've typically been working on their first few works for years. And then, if they become popular, they're under pressure to produce more and more, faster and faster. In my opinion, it works best to just write series. You can just use mostly the same characters. Matthew Stover did that well with the Caine series. I gather that he'd been working on it for at least a few years, and had been told that it was unpublishable. So he cut out a first book, and focused on action. Then another, when it sold well enough. And then, years later, after his Star Wars gig, he published the last two. They're basically a metaplot, and collection of back stories, that probably look a lot like the initial project.
Filligree 7y ago
You should try Greg Egan's books, if you like SF at all. I think a good introduction would be Schild's Ladder or Axiomatic, but my personal favorite is the Clockwork Rocket trilogy and Dichromatic. The latter two are conceptually related. If you know about metric signatures, you'll be able to tell how. If not, well, you will.
- gjm11 7y ago
  Correction: Dichronauts, not Dichromatic. (DuckDuckGo is smart enough to find the right book; Google kinda-sorta is -- it's the first image search result but doesn't otherwise appear in the first page of results, at least for me; Amazon's search isn't.)
  - Filligree 7y ago
    Right, of course. I blame gboard.
- AgentME 7y ago
  Seconding Greg Egan. I'd highly recommend Permutation City and Diaspora by him. The books explore mind uploading from lots of interesting angles.
- cgriswald 7y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion. Very appreciated!

coldtea 7y ago

There are so many true classics, and so many non-fiction classics, and so many great pulp and genre, that just sticking to awarded works, respected top-X lists, gives you enough books to last 2-3 lifetimes of reading 2 books per week (that's still less than 10K books in total). Plus following the thread of an author you like gives you easily 3-10 books of them, and 10-20 books of similar style you know you enjoy of those who inspired them/succeeded them. It's hardly a "crap shot", except if you buy random books...

alexhutcheson 7y ago

The key is to just put it down and move on to another book if you’re not enjoying it. Many people have a completist attitude towards reading - they continue to slog through to the end of a book once they’ve started, even if they don’t like it. They’ll make slow progress, and it blocks them from picking up a new book. Cut your losses early - your total reading throughput will be much higher, and most nonfiction books aren’t worth reading all the way to the end anyway.

celticninja 7y ago
I used to power through books I didn't like, just to finish them in case they were redeemed somehow. Then I realized, too many books too little time. I dropped Neal Stephenson's Anathem because of this, although I have read every other one of his books and cover to cover. It just didn't click and I didn't fancy re-reading it when it did finally click.
- TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
  I did this with the much lauded sci-fi “Three body problem”. First half was good, then it took a dive for me and haven’t picked up up 3/4s of the way through.
bigred100 7y ago
Books aren’t about enjoyment. They’re about suffering and talking about Montaigne at a party. That’s why I forced myself to read 800 pages of Babur complaining about melons.
- _nalply 7y ago
  You live only once.
_nalply 7y ago
A trick if I decide that a book is not worth my time: I open Wikipedia and read the summary. However once it happened that I changed my mind and continued the book because I found a part of the summary interesting. Usually I take care not to read a lot about a book before starting, because it would be a pity if I learnt about an explanation before figuring it out by myself. So it is a real switch for me, and then I read Wikipedia slowly, ready to stop midsentence if I want to resume the book.

vadansky 7y ago

Same situation, and actually Infinite Jest also started a half a year long drought that was only broken by the Three Body Problem trilogy. Agree with the cut your losses strategy.

gregmac 7y ago

I find a similar thing happens with a lot of the non-fiction I've read (or tried to read): it's something that could have been a really good few-dozen-page essay, but as a couple hundred page book it's just protracted and repetitive. As a result, for certain topics I can never bring myself to actually start reading. I have several books that have been on my shelf in this state for years now.

equalunique 7y ago

I recommend Infinite Jest on Audible. There are advantages to it being an audiobook, one being that since you aren't holding the pages, you won't see it coming when a chapter ends. This prevents you from rushing to complete sections, rather, you just go along for a ride while the story is told, not knowing where/when it'll end up.

kabdib 7y ago
+1, and you don't have to worry about having three bookmarks placed correctly :-)