5 ms·

It wasn't just 99 - it was thousands. The books on the list are just the best. :-)

bosie 16y ago
thousands? if your average book has 300 pages, and you read 30 pages per hour, you would need to read for 10000 hours, doing it for 8 hours a day you need 1250 days. that's without repeating anything of course. am i wrong? in what timespan did you read those thousands of books?
- dagw 16y ago
  I'm not the original poster, but I've found that most 300 page business books contain 10-20 pages of useful info and 280-290 pages of fluff and filler. I generally skim through the average business book in an hour or 2, including the time to make notes of all the potentially useful advice I find. It's rare to find a business book worth carefully reading cover to cover.
  - joshkaufman 16y ago
    That's exactly what I do, only I've practiced enough to cut the time per book to 10-20 minutes, depending on complexity. Reading for information extraction vs. word-for-word is much more efficient, and if you practice, your comprehension and retention is just as high. It's not uncommon for me to go to the library or B&N and read a stack of 20-30 books in a few hours. I've been reading business books for six years, and easily read 200-400 books a year. Here's a post I wrote on effective non-fiction reading techniques, for more info on the approach: http://personalmba.com/10-days-to-faster-reading/ http://personalmba.com/10-days-to-faster-reading/
    - sunkan 16y ago
      Wow! Has anyone else achieved this level of efficiency in their reading? -- 10-20 minutes per book? -- 20 to 30 books in a few hours. I am a bit skeptical, but maybe it is doable. I am curios to know if anyone else on HN can read/comprehend a non-fiction business book in less than 30 mins. I went ahead and ordered '10 days to faster reading'.
      - johnwatson11218 16y ago
        Just this morning I had the idea that since so many books are appearing in electronic format it won't be long before lots of the text has been tagged. I'm reading an enjoyable book about sleep right now. In many places the author goes into personal stories that led to a particular discovery. I thought 'wouldn't it be nice to be able to have those parts filtered for me by my Kindle software?'. I could see things getting to the point to where you could have the option to generate an executive summary from any popular book that tries to hit the main points. Then you drill down as you want more information. Books could function almost like mini-wikis at that point but with a narrative or order that you use to drive through it.
        jacques_chester 16y ago
        1. Get out your kindle 2. buy a copy of Neuromancer 3. search for the part where Case tells his Ono-Sendai to "sift this shit. 2 minute precis" 4. Be amazed once again that a guy with a typewriter predicted what you're doing.
        crasshopper 16y ago
        What about MS Word's AutoSummarize feature?
      - phlux 16y ago
        @JohnWatson Serendipity! I was thinking the same thing -- though I was thinking more along the lines of Quora posts. This is a feature I have posted about and asked for on Reddit actually; the ability to tag information to topic and quality etc. This would really apply to quora best though, as the information is already sorted in one dimenstion: quora topics. I'd like to be able to assemble and curate information from sources like quora and get them into a more of a how-to; infact I posted a question along these lines on quora, with little response. (http://www.quora.com/Would-Quora-users-like-an-entrepreneurship-how-to-section http://www.quora.com/Would-Quora-users-like-an-entrepreneurs...) However - I predict that this will be a golden goose of social search. A question is asked within a particular topic, experts respond - then the best answers to the most popular questions within a topic, and tagged by the audience, are assembled into cliff-notes of information on that topic.
    - nightski 16y ago
      Wow, and you actually find these books valuable? Any book I read that I truly learn something from usually takes weeks or months to get through. Call me slow but it just takes time for real information to sink in for me. Sure I understand the words, but to fully absorb the knowledge takes time. Reading 200-400 books a year - how do you ever get the chance to absorb any of that information? If you can really learn valuable information from a book in 10-20 minutes than I am jealous. Maybe business books are just different than technical/science oriented ones.
      - joshkaufman 16y ago
        Business texts and technical books are very different. I read math/science/programming books as well - I'm currently working through Probability Theory: The Logic of Science by E.T. Jaynes. There's no way I could grok that book in 20 minutes. 10-20 minutes won't cut it for deep technical material, particularly if the book is designed to teach via working through examples. If you're reading a workbook, then take the time to work through the examples. Choose your workbooks carefully, since they require a more significant time investment. Most non-fiction books, however, are written around a few simple, straightforward concepts - you can identify them in a few minutes. A few more minutes identifying examples, relationships to other concepts, and counter-examples / edge cases, and you've extracted 90% of the value of the text. Almost every non-fiction book fits this model. It pays to tailor your reading approach to what you're reading. As to value - in general, most business books are marginally valuable in isolation. Once you read many of them, however, very useful patterns begin to emerge. Recognizing and using those patterns provides the value.
        crasshopper 16y ago
        On the other hand, the more you get used to reading math, the more possible it becomes for your eye to skim through math stuff. I'm at the point where I can sometimes skim through arXiv papers and understand the gist. (Does it work the same for books with code in them? Legit coders can skim and understand?)
        AlexC04 16y ago
    - gcb 16y ago
      So, should I assume i can read your book in 20min? Or did you filled it with fluff and filler? :)
      - joshkaufman 16y ago
        Quite the opposite, actually - I tried to write a fluff-free business book. I think that's why readers are finding it useful. If you can read it in 20 minutes, I'll be impressed. :-)
  - crasshopper 16y ago
    That's a great point and unfortunately it does not work that way with math books. Well, fortunately in that the signal-to-noise ratio is high. Unfortunately in that one must be very selective about what one chooses to invest time into reading.
thebigredjay 16y ago
I like the idea of reading ridiculous amounts of things more than reading one thing ridiculous amounts of times.

bosie 16y ago

thousands? if your average book has 300 pages, and you read 30 pages per hour, you would need to read for 10000 hours, doing it for 8 hours a day you need 1250 days. that's without repeating anything of course. am i wrong? in what timespan did you read those thousands of books?

dagw 16y ago
I'm not the original poster, but I've found that most 300 page business books contain 10-20 pages of useful info and 280-290 pages of fluff and filler. I generally skim through the average business book in an hour or 2, including the time to make notes of all the potentially useful advice I find. It's rare to find a business book worth carefully reading cover to cover.
- joshkaufman 16y ago
  That's exactly what I do, only I've practiced enough to cut the time per book to 10-20 minutes, depending on complexity. Reading for information extraction vs. word-for-word is much more efficient, and if you practice, your comprehension and retention is just as high. It's not uncommon for me to go to the library or B&N and read a stack of 20-30 books in a few hours. I've been reading business books for six years, and easily read 200-400 books a year. Here's a post I wrote on effective non-fiction reading techniques, for more info on the approach: http://personalmba.com/10-days-to-faster-reading/ http://personalmba.com/10-days-to-faster-reading/
  - sunkan 16y ago
    Wow! Has anyone else achieved this level of efficiency in their reading? -- 10-20 minutes per book? -- 20 to 30 books in a few hours. I am a bit skeptical, but maybe it is doable. I am curios to know if anyone else on HN can read/comprehend a non-fiction business book in less than 30 mins. I went ahead and ordered '10 days to faster reading'.
    - johnwatson11218 16y ago
      Just this morning I had the idea that since so many books are appearing in electronic format it won't be long before lots of the text has been tagged. I'm reading an enjoyable book about sleep right now. In many places the author goes into personal stories that led to a particular discovery. I thought 'wouldn't it be nice to be able to have those parts filtered for me by my Kindle software?'. I could see things getting to the point to where you could have the option to generate an executive summary from any popular book that tries to hit the main points. Then you drill down as you want more information. Books could function almost like mini-wikis at that point but with a narrative or order that you use to drive through it.
      - jacques_chester 16y ago
        1. Get out your kindle 2. buy a copy of Neuromancer 3. search for the part where Case tells his Ono-Sendai to "sift this shit. 2 minute precis" 4. Be amazed once again that a guy with a typewriter predicted what you're doing.
      - crasshopper 16y ago
        What about MS Word's AutoSummarize feature?
    - phlux 16y ago
      @JohnWatson Serendipity! I was thinking the same thing -- though I was thinking more along the lines of Quora posts. This is a feature I have posted about and asked for on Reddit actually; the ability to tag information to topic and quality etc. This would really apply to quora best though, as the information is already sorted in one dimenstion: quora topics. I'd like to be able to assemble and curate information from sources like quora and get them into a more of a how-to; infact I posted a question along these lines on quora, with little response. (http://www.quora.com/Would-Quora-users-like-an-entrepreneurship-how-to-section http://www.quora.com/Would-Quora-users-like-an-entrepreneurs...) However - I predict that this will be a golden goose of social search. A question is asked within a particular topic, experts respond - then the best answers to the most popular questions within a topic, and tagged by the audience, are assembled into cliff-notes of information on that topic.
  - nightski 16y ago
    Wow, and you actually find these books valuable? Any book I read that I truly learn something from usually takes weeks or months to get through. Call me slow but it just takes time for real information to sink in for me. Sure I understand the words, but to fully absorb the knowledge takes time. Reading 200-400 books a year - how do you ever get the chance to absorb any of that information? If you can really learn valuable information from a book in 10-20 minutes than I am jealous. Maybe business books are just different than technical/science oriented ones.
    - joshkaufman 16y ago
      Business texts and technical books are very different. I read math/science/programming books as well - I'm currently working through Probability Theory: The Logic of Science by E.T. Jaynes. There's no way I could grok that book in 20 minutes. 10-20 minutes won't cut it for deep technical material, particularly if the book is designed to teach via working through examples. If you're reading a workbook, then take the time to work through the examples. Choose your workbooks carefully, since they require a more significant time investment. Most non-fiction books, however, are written around a few simple, straightforward concepts - you can identify them in a few minutes. A few more minutes identifying examples, relationships to other concepts, and counter-examples / edge cases, and you've extracted 90% of the value of the text. Almost every non-fiction book fits this model. It pays to tailor your reading approach to what you're reading. As to value - in general, most business books are marginally valuable in isolation. Once you read many of them, however, very useful patterns begin to emerge. Recognizing and using those patterns provides the value.
      - crasshopper 16y ago
        On the other hand, the more you get used to reading math, the more possible it becomes for your eye to skim through math stuff. I'm at the point where I can sometimes skim through arXiv papers and understand the gist. (Does it work the same for books with code in them? Legit coders can skim and understand?)
        AlexC04 16y ago
  - gcb 16y ago
    So, should I assume i can read your book in 20min? Or did you filled it with fluff and filler? :)
    - joshkaufman 16y ago
      Quite the opposite, actually - I tried to write a fluff-free business book. I think that's why readers are finding it useful. If you can read it in 20 minutes, I'll be impressed. :-)
- crasshopper 16y ago
  That's a great point and unfortunately it does not work that way with math books. Well, fortunately in that the signal-to-noise ratio is high. Unfortunately in that one must be very selective about what one chooses to invest time into reading.

thebigredjay 16y ago

I like the idea of reading ridiculous amounts of things more than reading one thing ridiculous amounts of times.