14 ms·

Read Fewer Books

107 points by wormold 6y ago

OnWriting 6y ago
> ...answer to the question of why we read, there is only one response that will ever be encompassing and ambitious enough: we read in order to know everything Anecdotally, there's a large amount of people who will read a book wholly for the purpose of being able to say they've read it. Whether it's a sense of elitism, vanity or bits of both -- it's strikingly obvious when you ask deeper questions about a book and they can only respond with basic one sentences you could infer from the synopsis. I believe the above has been amplified due to the false dichotomy of information technology vs good ol' books.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  > it's strikingly obvious when you ask deeper questions about a book and they can only respond with basic one sentences you could infer from the synopsis. When I watch movies with some people they will be "I think I didn't see this one before". And then half way in, they are like "oh I remember this, I did watch it after all". Some people are just forgetful.
- watwut 6y ago
  They might just not remember. I used to read the same book many times and still have fun, because when I fully immersed myself and enjoyed it, I often ended up not remember a lot. I still enjoyed the experience of reading.
haffi112 6y ago
A book is a somewhat large time investment. Often it is worth it but often it isn't. The main problem is the sheer amount of books out there. Deciding what to read next is a non-trivial decision problem. Currently I'm basing my decisions on ratings, recommendations from friends and book clubs. It would be nice if sites like Goodreads kept statistics on ratings for second/third/... reading (maybe they do?). Such information could help readers identify books that are exceptional regarding second/third/... reading.
- Konohamaru 6y ago
  > A book is a somewhat large time investment. Often it is worth it but often it isn't. But everyone has time for reddit/hn/facebook. Sometimes for hours at a day. :} I posit that the real problem is that books (especially fiction novels) are engaging but not hypnotic. It's easy to scroll HN because it's literally hypnotic and thus no thinking required. That's why they're called newsFEEDs. You're being spoon-fed news. But books demand that you think, and you can't ignore previous plot developments without becoming disoriented. If you want to read more books, the first three steps are to: 1. Admit you have a problem. The problem is NOT that you have a hard time reading but that you're hypnotized for hours a day. 2. Realize that total abstinence is the solution. If you had the willpower to restrict yourself to 30min a day, you wouldn't be here. You are one of those people too susceptible to hypnosis. 3. Don't punish yourself. Five minutes a day is far better than nothing. 10 minutes is better than five minutes, etc....
  - abnercoimbre 6y ago
    You certainly spoke to me in a blunt and frank manner, just like the username would suggest. Thanks!
  - johnfn 6y ago
    Hypnosis is a lovely metaphor to describe the not-quite-mindful state that I often browse HN in. I’ve been trying to think of a good way to frame that for a while - thanks!
  - closeparen 6y ago
    >2. Realize that total abstinence is the solution. If you had the willpower to restrict yourself to 30min a day, you wouldn't be here. You are one of those people too susceptible to hypnosis. Unfortunately, people who have actually figured out how to do this are not here on the internet to tell you how.
- thetechimist 6y ago
  Whatever the intent of Goodreads initially, once Amazon bought it, it became a subtle funnel to drive sales of books, ideally through Amazon. While there are options there for libraries and many other booksellers, no one should believe for a minute that Bezos is interested in helping Goodreads be a contemplative site that fosters multiple readings of a small number of deeper reads. The reviews can be helpful, but “tracking” ones books (or simple exercise, etc) is just a Silicon Valley middleman insertion into our otherwise simple lives so they can profit... somehow. Many people at struggle to read books, probably because of smartphones and “internet reading”, but the reality is that this article is spot-on about our modern curse of information overload which gets combined with anxiety. We evolved the internet from our prior librarian mentality. And while it’s perfectly fine to have libraries, book stores, catalogues of information, and encyclopedias, this article is correct that our personal lives could be improved by removing our click-happy ways from not only our web surfing habits, but from some of our book reading habits. Personally, being an avid reader, I found it a relief to delete my Goodreads account some time ago. I also got rid of a number of books on hand, dwindling down to only 12, not counting some reference books. I initially exported my “to read” Goodreads shelf into a spreadsheet, but eventually deleted it (and the 300+ books I had on the list). Not because it was unlikely I would ever read through them all, but because I also had come to some similar conclusions as the author of this article.
quincunx 6y ago
Please forgive me the pretentiousness of what I'm about to share, but this is so great: "You complain that in your part of the world there is a scant supply of books. But it is quality, rather than quantity, that matters; a limited list of reading benefits; a varied assortment serves only for delight. He who would arrive at the appointed end must follow a single road and not wander through many ways. What you suggest is not travelling; it is mere tramping." - Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, #45 This is such a powerful idea to me, from about 2000 years ago, that reading everything is like drifting aimlessly never arriving anywhere; it's just so recognizable.
- metaphor 6y ago
  Voltaire's perspective[1] struck me as more compelling: > To-day people complain of a surfeit: but it is not for readers to complain; the remedy is easy; nothing forces them to read. It is not any the more for authors to complain. Those who make the crowd must not cry that they are being crushed. Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! and if one read profitably, one would see the deplorable follies to which the common people offer themselves as prey every day. [1] https://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volbooks.html https://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volbooks.html
  - sifar 6y ago
    >> Those who make the crowd must not cry that they are being crushed Nice. Can be said about the social media/tech companies/leaders.
the-dude 6y ago
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_einstein_133807 https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_einstein_133807
- pjmorris 6y ago
  Thanks for this. I've begun a collection of quotes on not reading, to balance out my much larger collection of books. A couple quotes: "Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works....Everywhere means nowhere. " - Seneca "How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press -- The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus, we may see terrorists described as heroes, or secret matters pertaining to one's nation's defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "Everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era. People also have the right not to know and it's a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls [stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk.] A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harvard commencement address
  - the-dude 6y ago
    My pleasure. The last sentence from the Solzhenitsyn quote seems awfully relevant today.
- cafard 6y ago
  A simple solution: don't read books that do not require that you use your own brain while reading them.
TheUndead96 6y ago
The School of Life infuriates me for many reasons, but I will restrain myself and talk just about this specific post. Perhaps the small libraries of historic figures has more to do with the availability of books than it does their minimalism. I agree that people should not be reading every new self-help or business book that gets published. The majority of new books are bad. History acts as a great filter, which is why focussing on old books is a strong heuristic to find good books. I also agree with Nassim Taleb, who says that you should try to read the works from people who have actually done something (opposed to modern pseudo-philosophers like Alain de Botton, who is just trying to capitalise on the religion-shaped hole in western morality). I am not a religion apologist, but his videos and lectures are structured exactly the same way as sermons. He even feigns a false pastor modesty. Ugh I am beginning to rant now. As a civilisation I still believe that we are not reading enough. I can feel my reading habit eroded and tugged by modern media. I feel fulfilled after reading in a way that YouTube or Netflix cannot provide.
- paganel 6y ago
  > I am not a religion apologists, but his videos and lectures are structured exactly the same way as sermons. He even feigns a false pastor modesty I highly recommend Jacques Ellul's "Les nouveaux possédés." (translated in English as "The New Demons" [1]) an analysis written back in 1973 describing this exact process you're describing, i.e. modern stuff (rock stars among others) trying to fill the hole of the disappearing religion. Ever since I've read the book I cannot attend a big music concert or a crowded football match without thinking about it (before this pandemic started, of course). [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1362676.The_New_Demons https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1362676.The_New_Demons
  - andi999 6y ago
    Nowadays I am thinking that the 'we are more popular than jesus' quote is actually deeper than it was probably intended.
  - arvinsim 6y ago
    Sport is not so much a modern relaxation as a new religion; and is more serious and unsmiling even than most new religions. - G. K. Chesterton
martin_a 6y ago
All those "Oh, I have read sooooo many books this year!"-thing is just another elitist posture. It's pretty much like the minimalists who run around and tell people that they only own a MBP and an iPhone XPro+ (or whatever the maxed out version is) and two potted plants. Most people will not have enough disposable income to buy a full-fletched MBP and that iPhone. You need to be rich (kind of) to be able to have a minimalist lifestyle. The same goes with reading. Most people will just try to make ends meet, juggle with bringing job, familiy, friends, sports/staying healthy under one hat and in the evening they don't want to process any more information from a book. Their everyday life is SO packed with everything, there's no time to sit back, relax and read 25 books a year. So, yeah, read two books a year and call it a day.
- voxl 6y ago
  >You need to be rich (kind of) to be able to have a minimalist lifestyle. The same goes with reading. This is the second time I've seen someone make this claim and the second time I'll refute it: Minimalism is not a rich-specific ideology. Being minimal as benefits if you're poor, including making it much easier to move. Moreover, you might be "minimalist" without choice, merely because you can't afford to buy things. You could be angry at your lack of material possessions or you could temporarily embrace the ideology to help you get to a position where you can start collecting items that make you happy. Imagine you are poor and have a broken microwave, but you've been holding on to it. Why? Are you going to fix it? Likely not (at least not well, and its a dangerous thing to get wrong). Just throw it out or sell it for parts. Just because you are poor does not mean you should hold on to things that merely take up space.
  - lmm 6y ago
    When you're poor you have to hold on to things that you might need, or that sort-of work. You keep your old phone with a broken screen because your current one might get stolen (or you might have to sell it). You keep a broken microwave because you can use it in a pinch (maybe it works if you hold the door shut, or if you angle the cord just so), or you might scavenge some parts from it, or you might have have to fix it as best you can even though that's dangerous. You can't afford the transaction costs of just selling everything.
ginko 6y ago
>To follow the depiction by Antonello da Messina, St Jerome appears to be the proud owner of about ten books in all! It's a fictional depiction some thousand years after the life of St. Jerome. How is this supposed to be an argument? From what we know St. Jerome spent much of his life traveling between ancient libraries, collecting, reading and comparing a large number of different gospels (both canonical and apocryphal). He also had access to texts which are now considered lost, like the Gospel of the Hebrews.
Timpy 6y ago
> Similarly, in the Ancient Greek world, one was meant to focus in on a close knowledge of just two books: Homer’s Odyssey and his Iliad Can anybody on HN verify if this is true? I thought the Iliad and Odyssey were only two of Homer's works, the rest of them lost. Why would the Ancient Greek focus on those two and not any of Homer's not-yet-lost works? Did the Ancient Greek person really read these as fervently as a modern religious person reads their holy book? I know classicists debate these things all the time, but it seems like the author is just riffing "shout out to people who know these classics." I'll gladly be corrected on this point, but when I read this I began to suspect the author has no idea what they're talking about.
- cthalupa 6y ago
  No. Aristotle, Herodotus, Plato, Sappho, etc. were considered important reading in their time, among others. Copying manuscripts was an extremely costly endeavor, so things that had many surviving copies could be inferred as having been regarded as important, even if we did not have any other indicators. I have no idea where the author gets this idea.
- watwut 6y ago
  Afaik, they did not even read them. They were poems to be memorized and remembered. So one person would learn it and recite it to others. That is why it is a poem and that is why it contains repetitive parts - so that it remembers easily. Also, Homer likely was not one person. The origin of the poem is not entirely clear, but speculations are that the poem is result of oral tradition written down at some point.
- goodlifeodyssey 6y ago
  > Did the Ancient Greek person really read these as fervently as a modern religious person reads their holy book? I doubt they viewed Homer like religious people view their sacred texts. However, Ancient Greek writers do quote and discuss Homer extensively. For example, Herodotus and Thucydides reference (and speculate) about Homer. Plato's dialogues refer to Homer a lot. Seneca, several hundred years later, is still quoting Homer with the assumption that his audience will know the poems quite well.
- deleted 6y ago
null_object 6y ago
I simply don't recognize the article's analysis of why we read. I read (voraciously) during my 'downtime': in bed before sleeping, sitting on the toilet, during lunchbreaks. Often the times that a lot of people are game-playing/watching youtube/scrolling FB. I'm not aspiring to "know everything" or to appear to be an "intelligent person". I think reading a lot is just a habit. It may be that I'd be better off reading less, and having more of my own thoughts. But I find it enjoyable, and after I've read a book I generally feel like it was a net gain, and not a time-suck (like the aimless surfing I can sometimes be diverted into). In any case I certainly don't identify with any need to read a few carefully curated books to "be shaped – deeply shaped in [my] capacity to live and die well". I read history, popular nature books, novels, classics, travel - so there's no pattern or attempt to 'better' myself. It's just fun and passes the time better than sitting on the john and scrolling a meaningless feed.
- enkid 6y ago
  I'm not a big fan of this article, but I don't think it's advocating reading less. Rather, it advocates rereading a few core works more. There's something to be said for knowing a few things well instead of trying to know everything, but I also think getting exposed to new ideas is important.
  - null_object 6y ago
    I think my main disagreement with the entire tenor of the article, is that it treats reading as just one more aspect of the modern obsession of 'self-improvement', whereas I read because it's fun. This doesn't mean that I never re-read a book - last year I re-read War & Peace, for instance. But I didn't do it to somehow deepen my knowledge of a 'core work' I read it again primarily because it's an immensely enjoyable narrative. I also read a book about Ants purely for the fun of it. Now I can barely remember anything other than a couple of details about soldier ants that are also suicide bombers (when defeat appears inevitable, they tighten a muscle in their abdomen that causes their thorax to burst, and spray all the attackers around them with acid) and that a whole nest of the smallest known ants would fit inside a single head of the largest known species. These two facts that I recall now can hardly count as 'deeper knowledge' or anything pretentious like that. But reading the book gave me a much greater appreciation of natural phenomena around me, and now when I see an ant's nest in the forest, I know more about what happens inside, I can discuss it with my kids and I'm more engaged and aware of my environment. But that's not why I read the book.
shannifin 6y ago
I'm not sure the article's title quite reflects its point, which is that the amount one reads is not by itself a very useful measure of anything; better to focus on what you're reading, why you're reading, and how you're reading. A better title might be: "The amount you read doesn't matter... as much as other factors" ... or something. Some random thoughts: 1) Indeed many nonfiction books are full of fluff and filler. While there's a completionist in me that wants to read every word and finish all books started, I'm now in the more useful habit of skimming and reading the few chapters that interest me. I've been intrigued to see services like Blinklist that summarize the main points, and sometimes I think even those have too much fluff. Sometimes I grab my notebook to take notes only to find there's not much to take note of. But I confess, perhaps up to 95% of the nonfiction I read is ends up being forgotten because it's just not all that useful to me (more useful is just knowing where I can find the info later if needed). (Although there are quite a few books, like Taleb's books, that have changed the way I think about and see the world, but I don't remember the details and wouldn't be great at giving a worthy summary of them; I'd just recommend the book.) 2) This topic reminds me of Mortimer Adler's book "How to Read a Book"; although I don't remember all his specific syntax, it really encouraged me to be more self-conscious about my reasons for reading.
- dorchadas 6y ago
  I'd definitely recommend How to Read a Book if you want to go into deeper reading. I haven't implemented it fully, though I'd really like to (need to buy a copy of How to Read a Book to be able to do that, so I can keep referencing it), but it's definitely made me do some short summaries of fluff books, which solidifies the concepts I needed to get out of them. It was useful for that, and I'd love to apply it in more depth.
alphadevx 6y ago
What a strange set of conclusions. The author also misses out on one important point: many of us read books for pleasure, NOT because we feel pressure to read from society. I have a large collection of physical books in my TBR pile, and not one cent of guilt about that (even their presence on my shelves makes me happy).
bonoboTP 6y ago
Well, fewer than what? I'd wager the median person reads 0 (or perhaps 1) books per year, where a book means something with more than 100 pages and at least 90% of those pages filled with text and read means read at least 90% of the words printed. To most people reading is like exercising, dieting, studying etc. They want to want to do it but don't want to do it. You must live in a bubble if you think normal people read too many books.
- dublinben 6y ago
  More people report reading a book than you'd think. But the median books read per year is still too low for this to be a problem the author thinks it is. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/26/who-doesnt-read-books-in-america/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/26/who-doesnt-...
Saint_Genet 6y ago
Aside from being unbearably pretentious, this fella doesn't seem to have heard about reading for pleasure.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  There's been a few comments in the thread like this but I think this is a deeply unhealthy understanding of pleasure. Pleasure does not mean simple, or effortlessly or easy. Genuine or deeper pleasure means acquiring understanding and develop better senses. Masturbation is pleasure, but it's no replacement for an intimate relationship. Warming up a pizza is pleasurable, but you would lose out on a lot of experiences if you never developed any taste beyond that. Exercising is a drag, but once you actually learn what your body can do, it's much more genuinely rewarding than sitting on the sofa. Reading critically, reading deeply, despite maybe being hard, is not the opposite of pleasurable once you develop the faculties for it. Which everyone can I believe.
jkingsbery 6y ago
If the author had read a few more books, he would have known that while St. Jerome is held in high regard, the Augustine is usually held as the chief intellectual of the time within the Church, and Augustine read a lot. He was incredibly well versed, for example, in the works of Cicero and Plato. In a later phase of the Church, Aquinas was also well read in a variety of sources, including Aristotle (and perhaps even Muslim writings translated into Latin). And his teacher, Albert Magnus, shows that the pre-modern mind was very much interested in the natural world. I would agree with the point that we should be selective about our reading, even as we read widely. Focusing on reading things that have stood the test of time could still keep us busy.
yuribro 6y ago
I can only assume it's implied that the type of books this is about are philosophical (in the most broad sense, including self improvement) books, and so it makes sense to talk about religious books as examples? People read for a variety of reasons, from professional books to books purely for entertainment. It also has to be said that while in those "pre-modern" times books were the most common medium, today there are many different ways to consume knowledge: newspapers, journals, blog posts and websites, graphic novels as written material, and we also have radio, tv, film, podcasts and many other types of source which serve the same role as books once did.
leokennis 6y ago
Although the article is pretty pretentious, it does resonate with a though I've had for a long time and also commented about earlier (it's not an original thought at all): Why is everything a contest these days? Who cares that I read 40 books last year, you read 120 and my neighbour read 2? Does that make us better or worse people? You can do 1000's of things in life or you can do nothing. No one asked to be brought into this world. No one will stay on this world forever. Just do whatever makes you go through your day in the most content way. Life is hard enough as it is.
- watwut 6y ago
  > Who cares that I read 40 books last year, you read 120 and my neighbour read 2? Most likely, no one, which is why opening of that character is nonsense.
sys_64738 6y ago
Reading isn't about intelligence. It's about knowledge. Knowledge expands the mind but doesn't necessarily make you more intelligent. E.g. I can read as many theoretical maths books as needed but it'll always be over my head. But if I read a C++ book then I might get a job versus reading a Java book.
- truth_be_told 6y ago
  I think your definition of "Intelligence" is much too restricted. It is "Knowledge" which leads to "Wisdom" and makes you more "Intelligent" (for a certain definition.) "Knowledge" is the pre-requisite. It is what allows you to see the inter-play and interaction between concepts and ideas leading you towards better understanding thus making you more "Intelligent".
tmaly 6y ago
I try to avoid buying anymore books. Time becomes such a precious thing in modern life. I seek to make knowledge actionable, to practice just in time learning. That is, if I need some knowledge to move forward on a task, then and only then do I turn to a book.
danidiaz 6y ago
> Strikingly, the most intelligent and thoughtful intellectual of the early church seems to have read fewer things than an average modern eight year old. To follow the depiction by Antonello da Messina, St Jerome appears to be the proud owner of about ten books in all! What is a painting from 1475 supposed to tell us about the reading habits of the real St. Jerome, patron saint of librarians? The paper "A History of Early Christian Libraries from Jesus to Jerome" by Thomas M. Tanner looks like a good source of information on the subject, but sadly it's only available from JSTOR.
loughnane 6y ago
My biggest problem with this thinking is that it seems to consider "books" a unit of measure rather than distinct objects. Surely there are those among us who use the amount of books we've read as a sort of decoration for our intellect, but that's not really the point of reading books.The point is to make the knowledge in the books a part of us so we can live a better life. For that end some books are clearly better than others. However I agree with the idea that it's impossible, and I would argue undesirable, to keep up with the "parade of new titles" put out by publishers. So if we can't keep up but reading is still worth it, then the question becomes "How do we decide what to read?". For my part I've found that the more old books I read the more I realize that many modern books are ful of old ideas with a slight (sometimes very slight) twist. So now I'm working through classics and only reading things sparingly. The criteria I've picked up is: 1. The book must have been around for at least a few generations 2. The book must have had a significant impact on how the world, or a field, is viewed 3. The book must be highly regarded by those who study it, even if they disagree with it 4. The book must deal with topics that are relevant to today (love, leadership, etc.) This naturally leads to many so-called "classics". In reading them I've found that I rarely feel my time has been wasted, I feel I have a broader perspective, and I feel I've been able to elevate a bit above the frothy front end of new pop psychology/business/hero worship titles.
- auganov 6y ago
  The problem is, if a book fulfills all your 4 criteria it's extremely unlikely its "wisdom" hasn't become common knowledge. No surprise = no information. A truly life changing book would need to have been ignored or misunderstood by the world at large. But most such books will obviously be junk so I'm not sure there's a simple way to discover the good ones.
  - cafard 6y ago
    C.S. Peirce said that plain English common sense was basically reheated Aristotle. Is there no information in Aristotle?
    - auganov 6y ago
jonstaab 6y ago
I thought this was going to be a typical HN "build things instead" thing, but I actually love their take. Looking at the world around us lately I've been realizing more and more that "it's all in Plato"; his Republic is a book I read once in high school, but it's high time to re-read it. What are some books you find your self going back to repeatedly (or want to)? My list: - Domain Driven Design - Ray Bradbury's short stories and Farenheit 451 - George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier - Descent into Hell - LotR, the Hobbit, and Narnia - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Psalms, Job, James - The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment - Wendell Berry's Essays - Winnie the Pooh - Augustine Guess you know what kind of person I am now.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  When you're done rereading The Republic (at least the governing a city-state part), please consider critiquing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572
- timwaagh 6y ago
  LotR, Harry Potter and The Game. But usually I read things once and only once like the article describes.
- georgefrick 6y ago
  - F-451 - The Winter of Our Discontent - Man's Search For Meaning
  - jonstaab 6y ago
    I love Steinbeck, but I had never heard of The Winter of Our Discontent, thanks!
cafard 6y ago
Someone who photographed my work area might manage to get six books into the picture, one a coffee-table book brought out so that I could sign some papers on it out on the porch. I have more than six books, and coffee-table books do not make up a large fraction. St. Jerome presumably had more than ten books. Knowing the Aeneid well may have been all that one needed to get out of Eton or Harrow in the 18th Century. But if you look at what the literate actually read, they read a good deal. The founders of the US read a fair bit of Roman, Greek, and English history.
watwut 6y ago
I find the first paragraph to be a strawman of reality. Most people these days dont read books and I cant really recall competitive approach to reading among my social circles. Maybe author lives in different bubble, I dont know. Also, I read Homer’s Odyssey and while it was fun and interesting, I dont think I found that to be "perfect repository" of pretty much anything. It is story, made up story with surprisingly good characters, but I dont think it taught me everything I want to know. Anyway, lately I enjoyed history and memoirs or biographies of lesser players. The primary thing they are giving me is awareness that real world history has great variety in and and real world people are not as simple as Odyssey make it to be. For example, the point of view of non warrior Jew dying or surviving WWII makes you look at warrior honor code much differently. And so does Hitlers biography and so does Rosa Park biography or so does description of expansion or details of how civil war came to be. I am not saying that everyone must read the same books as me. But claim that few of them are all there is to know is just wrong. When you read just one resource, you know everything and everything looks uncomplicated and simple. When you start to draw on multiple resources, that is when things start to get interesting and complex. And that is also when things start to be easier to remember.
leafboi 6y ago
The thing with reading is that the main point is often buried beneath realms of text. A movie can deliver the same concept in two hours when a book typically takes several days. Another thing with reading is that there's no logical reason why the content you're reading is better than television. If TV can have crap so can books. I have found that reading builds biases better than television. The reason is that reading takes much more effort than television and oftentimes the more effort you spend on something the more bias towards it you develop. I've found that in general if you want to have a larger breadth of knowledge... youtube videos are actually awesome at distilling concepts and getting to the main point. I'm saying this as someone who use to and still actively reads books.
katsume3 6y ago
The Internet has changed how I assimilate knowledge. It has wired my brain to pay attention to soundbites, rather than lofty tomes. This is why I am the proud owner of a large list of various short proverbs & idioms that I have gathered over the years via social media. I only collect the ones that help me in some way and discard anything that doesn't resonate with me. One example is this phrase by Lao Tzu A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_journey_of_a_thousand_miles_begins_with_a_single_step https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_journey_of_a_thousand_miles_... In every book, you can find little kernels of truth and can distill many larger points made in a book, down to helpful and short gems of wisdom. For me this is how I can take a shortcut and avoid reading ridiculous amounts of books! Does anyone else do this?
- Loughla 6y ago
  Do you find that boiling everything down to a soundbite or small phrase helps you improve your critical thinking and logical reasoning skills? Or do you find it is valuable just for the dopamine hit and feel-goods of cementing your already established worldviews and perspectives? The reason I read books is because the author's perspectives are, often, wildly different from mine. Because of this difference, it helps me understand other people, and understand my own actions. I feel like taking everything down to one-liners and ignoring "anything that doesn't resonate" is just avoiding the real work of thinking about yourself and your place in society. For example - Lao Tzu's perspectives about technology and how to balance external desires with my own personal views on how to integrate technology into my life have been immensely helpful in raising a family - I'm not sure I would've gotten that with just soundbites.
  - katsume3 6y ago
    > is just avoiding the real work of thinking about yourself and your place in society Well sometimes idioms / proverbs can contradict each other. Take for example the Russian proverb If you try chasing two rabbits, you will end up catching none Does this mean I have to be singularly focused on one task all the time, and not multitask? Hardly. There are other quotes which challenge that proverb and inspire us to be multitaskers and 'do all the things' at the same time. As I stated: my brain can't cope with a lofty tome, and prefers soundbites. It's how I'm wired, and I leverage that. I also integrate these proverbs into family life and use them as a guide, no different than reading loads of books. But horses for courses; if reading loads of books suits you, then do it!
vikramkr 6y ago
The minimalist attitude to reading in medicine was a disaster. For centuries "doctors" only studied the classic texts (inaccuracies and all) and reading widely or seeking new medical knowledge was discouraged or made illegal. Medicine was correspondingly stagnant. The history of mankind isn't a straight line of progress, but if you're pointing to the past to show why we should be doing things differently today, you better make a way more convincing case than the one presented here about why that aspect of the past was better. At least try to argue the scholarship of the days past was better than the scholarship of today (not an easy argument to make). Otherwise, its just like an argument for a paleo diet - why would I want to adopt a diet for health reasons based on an idea that said diet was consumed by people that lived short, brutal lives?
r0s 6y ago
I can heartily recommend skipping books from the "school of life" and any of their publications. I was gifted one on relationships, which is a topic I read often. I can say it was unfocused, terrible advice that seems like the author's rants about their own frustration with modern love conventions. Reactionary and sneaky with appeals to religion sprinkled throughout. No useful information, plenty of hand-wringing about how things were in the old days.
paultopia 6y ago
What total nonsense. Of course medieval scholars had fewer books; books were much more expensive. Gutenberg hadn't come along yet (or, when Jerome was around, had just barely come along). Perhaps if the author of this post had read some history or economics they wouldn't have wasted the time of the people who had read that blog post.
mcguire 6y ago
Tl;dr: "Reading was held to be extremely important, but the number of new books one read was entirely by the by. This wasn’t principally an economic point. Books were very expensive of course, but this wasn’t really the issue. What mattered was to read a few books very well, not squander one’s attention promiscuously on a great number of volumes." Reading deeply and critically is important; to do otherwise is to just let the words wash over you without leaving an impression. Reading promiscuously was regarded as bad historically not because it squandered attention but because most books were considered full of lies and the majority of readers couldn't be trusted to separate the truth from falsehood. On the other hand, if your dozen books are made up of Ayn Rand, Malcolm Gladwell, and Seth Godin, you may find that your worldview is as limited as any medieval scholastic.
blain_the_train 6y ago
I got a headstart by not reading this article.
wwright 6y ago
Click Fewer Links
gmadsen 6y ago
Not sure if the school of life produces anything of value, but this article certainly put a sour taste in my mouth. It philosophizes about a non existent problem and gives un needed advice.
deleted 6y ago
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JdeBP 6y ago
I've seen a number of religious cults dressed up as bookshops in my life, and this, with all of its expensive "counselling", "therapy", and "classes", looks to me like another one.
brian_herman__ 6y ago
It would be ironic if the next post was Read Fewer Blogs.
friendlybus 6y ago
Can't say I agree at all. The self-improvement crowd emphasize interest and small daily gains, not maximization of everything. Some people don't read to know everything, some read to know something. Which can be a lot. Not a big fan of school of life's work.

107 points by wormold 6y ago

> ...answer to the question of why we read, there is only one response that will ever be encompassing and ambitious enough: we read in order to know everything Anecdotally, there's a large amount of people who will read a book wholly for the purpose of being able to say they've read it. Whether it's a sense of elitism, vanity or bits of both -- it's strikingly obvious when you ask deeper questions about a book and they can only respond with basic one sentences you could infer from the synopsis. I believe the above has been amplified due to the false dichotomy of information technology vs good ol' books.

im3w1l 6y ago
> it's strikingly obvious when you ask deeper questions about a book and they can only respond with basic one sentences you could infer from the synopsis. When I watch movies with some people they will be "I think I didn't see this one before". And then half way in, they are like "oh I remember this, I did watch it after all". Some people are just forgetful.
watwut 6y ago
They might just not remember. I used to read the same book many times and still have fun, because when I fully immersed myself and enjoyed it, I often ended up not remember a lot. I still enjoyed the experience of reading.

haffi112 6y ago

A book is a somewhat large time investment. Often it is worth it but often it isn't. The main problem is the sheer amount of books out there. Deciding what to read next is a non-trivial decision problem. Currently I'm basing my decisions on ratings, recommendations from friends and book clubs. It would be nice if sites like Goodreads kept statistics on ratings for second/third/... reading (maybe they do?). Such information could help readers identify books that are exceptional regarding second/third/... reading.

Konohamaru 6y ago
> A book is a somewhat large time investment. Often it is worth it but often it isn't. But everyone has time for reddit/hn/facebook. Sometimes for hours at a day. :} I posit that the real problem is that books (especially fiction novels) are engaging but not hypnotic. It's easy to scroll HN because it's literally hypnotic and thus no thinking required. That's why they're called newsFEEDs. You're being spoon-fed news. But books demand that you think, and you can't ignore previous plot developments without becoming disoriented. If you want to read more books, the first three steps are to: 1. Admit you have a problem. The problem is NOT that you have a hard time reading but that you're hypnotized for hours a day. 2. Realize that total abstinence is the solution. If you had the willpower to restrict yourself to 30min a day, you wouldn't be here. You are one of those people too susceptible to hypnosis. 3. Don't punish yourself. Five minutes a day is far better than nothing. 10 minutes is better than five minutes, etc....
- abnercoimbre 6y ago
  You certainly spoke to me in a blunt and frank manner, just like the username would suggest. Thanks!
- johnfn 6y ago
  Hypnosis is a lovely metaphor to describe the not-quite-mindful state that I often browse HN in. I’ve been trying to think of a good way to frame that for a while - thanks!
- closeparen 6y ago
  >2. Realize that total abstinence is the solution. If you had the willpower to restrict yourself to 30min a day, you wouldn't be here. You are one of those people too susceptible to hypnosis. Unfortunately, people who have actually figured out how to do this are not here on the internet to tell you how.
thetechimist 6y ago
Whatever the intent of Goodreads initially, once Amazon bought it, it became a subtle funnel to drive sales of books, ideally through Amazon. While there are options there for libraries and many other booksellers, no one should believe for a minute that Bezos is interested in helping Goodreads be a contemplative site that fosters multiple readings of a small number of deeper reads. The reviews can be helpful, but “tracking” ones books (or simple exercise, etc) is just a Silicon Valley middleman insertion into our otherwise simple lives so they can profit... somehow. Many people at struggle to read books, probably because of smartphones and “internet reading”, but the reality is that this article is spot-on about our modern curse of information overload which gets combined with anxiety. We evolved the internet from our prior librarian mentality. And while it’s perfectly fine to have libraries, book stores, catalogues of information, and encyclopedias, this article is correct that our personal lives could be improved by removing our click-happy ways from not only our web surfing habits, but from some of our book reading habits. Personally, being an avid reader, I found it a relief to delete my Goodreads account some time ago. I also got rid of a number of books on hand, dwindling down to only 12, not counting some reference books. I initially exported my “to read” Goodreads shelf into a spreadsheet, but eventually deleted it (and the 300+ books I had on the list). Not because it was unlikely I would ever read through them all, but because I also had come to some similar conclusions as the author of this article.

quincunx 6y ago

Please forgive me the pretentiousness of what I'm about to share, but this is so great: "You complain that in your part of the world there is a scant supply of books. But it is quality, rather than quantity, that matters; a limited list of reading benefits; a varied assortment serves only for delight. He who would arrive at the appointed end must follow a single road and not wander through many ways. What you suggest is not travelling; it is mere tramping." - Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, #45 This is such a powerful idea to me, from about 2000 years ago, that reading everything is like drifting aimlessly never arriving anywhere; it's just so recognizable.

metaphor 6y ago
Voltaire's perspective[1] struck me as more compelling: > To-day people complain of a surfeit: but it is not for readers to complain; the remedy is easy; nothing forces them to read. It is not any the more for authors to complain. Those who make the crowd must not cry that they are being crushed. Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! and if one read profitably, one would see the deplorable follies to which the common people offer themselves as prey every day. [1] https://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volbooks.html https://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volbooks.html
- sifar 6y ago
  >> Those who make the crowd must not cry that they are being crushed Nice. Can be said about the social media/tech companies/leaders.

the-dude 6y ago

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_einstein_133807 https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_einstein_133807

pjmorris 6y ago
Thanks for this. I've begun a collection of quotes on not reading, to balance out my much larger collection of books. A couple quotes: "Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works....Everywhere means nowhere. " - Seneca "How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press -- The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus, we may see terrorists described as heroes, or secret matters pertaining to one's nation's defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "Everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era. People also have the right not to know and it's a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls [stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk.] A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harvard commencement address
- the-dude 6y ago
  My pleasure. The last sentence from the Solzhenitsyn quote seems awfully relevant today.
cafard 6y ago
A simple solution: don't read books that do not require that you use your own brain while reading them.

TheUndead96 6y ago

The School of Life infuriates me for many reasons, but I will restrain myself and talk just about this specific post. Perhaps the small libraries of historic figures has more to do with the availability of books than it does their minimalism. I agree that people should not be reading every new self-help or business book that gets published. The majority of new books are bad. History acts as a great filter, which is why focussing on old books is a strong heuristic to find good books. I also agree with Nassim Taleb, who says that you should try to read the works from people who have actually done something (opposed to modern pseudo-philosophers like Alain de Botton, who is just trying to capitalise on the religion-shaped hole in western morality). I am not a religion apologist, but his videos and lectures are structured exactly the same way as sermons. He even feigns a false pastor modesty. Ugh I am beginning to rant now. As a civilisation I still believe that we are not reading enough. I can feel my reading habit eroded and tugged by modern media. I feel fulfilled after reading in a way that YouTube or Netflix cannot provide.

paganel 6y ago
> I am not a religion apologists, but his videos and lectures are structured exactly the same way as sermons. He even feigns a false pastor modesty I highly recommend Jacques Ellul's "Les nouveaux possédés." (translated in English as "The New Demons" [1]) an analysis written back in 1973 describing this exact process you're describing, i.e. modern stuff (rock stars among others) trying to fill the hole of the disappearing religion. Ever since I've read the book I cannot attend a big music concert or a crowded football match without thinking about it (before this pandemic started, of course). [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1362676.The_New_Demons https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1362676.The_New_Demons
- andi999 6y ago
  Nowadays I am thinking that the 'we are more popular than jesus' quote is actually deeper than it was probably intended.
- arvinsim 6y ago
  Sport is not so much a modern relaxation as a new religion; and is more serious and unsmiling even than most new religions. - G. K. Chesterton

martin_a 6y ago

All those "Oh, I have read sooooo many books this year!"-thing is just another elitist posture. It's pretty much like the minimalists who run around and tell people that they only own a MBP and an iPhone XPro+ (or whatever the maxed out version is) and two potted plants. Most people will not have enough disposable income to buy a full-fletched MBP and that iPhone. You need to be rich (kind of) to be able to have a minimalist lifestyle. The same goes with reading. Most people will just try to make ends meet, juggle with bringing job, familiy, friends, sports/staying healthy under one hat and in the evening they don't want to process any more information from a book. Their everyday life is SO packed with everything, there's no time to sit back, relax and read 25 books a year. So, yeah, read two books a year and call it a day.

voxl 6y ago
>You need to be rich (kind of) to be able to have a minimalist lifestyle. The same goes with reading. This is the second time I've seen someone make this claim and the second time I'll refute it: Minimalism is not a rich-specific ideology. Being minimal as benefits if you're poor, including making it much easier to move. Moreover, you might be "minimalist" without choice, merely because you can't afford to buy things. You could be angry at your lack of material possessions or you could temporarily embrace the ideology to help you get to a position where you can start collecting items that make you happy. Imagine you are poor and have a broken microwave, but you've been holding on to it. Why? Are you going to fix it? Likely not (at least not well, and its a dangerous thing to get wrong). Just throw it out or sell it for parts. Just because you are poor does not mean you should hold on to things that merely take up space.
- lmm 6y ago
  When you're poor you have to hold on to things that you might need, or that sort-of work. You keep your old phone with a broken screen because your current one might get stolen (or you might have to sell it). You keep a broken microwave because you can use it in a pinch (maybe it works if you hold the door shut, or if you angle the cord just so), or you might scavenge some parts from it, or you might have have to fix it as best you can even though that's dangerous. You can't afford the transaction costs of just selling everything.

ginko 6y ago

>To follow the depiction by Antonello da Messina, St Jerome appears to be the proud owner of about ten books in all! It's a fictional depiction some thousand years after the life of St. Jerome. How is this supposed to be an argument? From what we know St. Jerome spent much of his life traveling between ancient libraries, collecting, reading and comparing a large number of different gospels (both canonical and apocryphal). He also had access to texts which are now considered lost, like the Gospel of the Hebrews.

Timpy 6y ago

> Similarly, in the Ancient Greek world, one was meant to focus in on a close knowledge of just two books: Homer’s Odyssey and his Iliad Can anybody on HN verify if this is true? I thought the Iliad and Odyssey were only two of Homer's works, the rest of them lost. Why would the Ancient Greek focus on those two and not any of Homer's not-yet-lost works? Did the Ancient Greek person really read these as fervently as a modern religious person reads their holy book? I know classicists debate these things all the time, but it seems like the author is just riffing "shout out to people who know these classics." I'll gladly be corrected on this point, but when I read this I began to suspect the author has no idea what they're talking about.

cthalupa 6y ago
No. Aristotle, Herodotus, Plato, Sappho, etc. were considered important reading in their time, among others. Copying manuscripts was an extremely costly endeavor, so things that had many surviving copies could be inferred as having been regarded as important, even if we did not have any other indicators. I have no idea where the author gets this idea.
watwut 6y ago
Afaik, they did not even read them. They were poems to be memorized and remembered. So one person would learn it and recite it to others. That is why it is a poem and that is why it contains repetitive parts - so that it remembers easily. Also, Homer likely was not one person. The origin of the poem is not entirely clear, but speculations are that the poem is result of oral tradition written down at some point.
goodlifeodyssey 6y ago
> Did the Ancient Greek person really read these as fervently as a modern religious person reads their holy book? I doubt they viewed Homer like religious people view their sacred texts. However, Ancient Greek writers do quote and discuss Homer extensively. For example, Herodotus and Thucydides reference (and speculate) about Homer. Plato's dialogues refer to Homer a lot. Seneca, several hundred years later, is still quoting Homer with the assumption that his audience will know the poems quite well.
deleted 6y ago

null_object 6y ago

I simply don't recognize the article's analysis of why we read. I read (voraciously) during my 'downtime': in bed before sleeping, sitting on the toilet, during lunchbreaks. Often the times that a lot of people are game-playing/watching youtube/scrolling FB. I'm not aspiring to "know everything" or to appear to be an "intelligent person". I think reading a lot is just a habit. It may be that I'd be better off reading less, and having more of my own thoughts. But I find it enjoyable, and after I've read a book I generally feel like it was a net gain, and not a time-suck (like the aimless surfing I can sometimes be diverted into). In any case I certainly don't identify with any need to read a few carefully curated books to "be shaped – deeply shaped in [my] capacity to live and die well". I read history, popular nature books, novels, classics, travel - so there's no pattern or attempt to 'better' myself. It's just fun and passes the time better than sitting on the john and scrolling a meaningless feed.

enkid 6y ago
I'm not a big fan of this article, but I don't think it's advocating reading less. Rather, it advocates rereading a few core works more. There's something to be said for knowing a few things well instead of trying to know everything, but I also think getting exposed to new ideas is important.
- null_object 6y ago
  I think my main disagreement with the entire tenor of the article, is that it treats reading as just one more aspect of the modern obsession of 'self-improvement', whereas I read because it's fun. This doesn't mean that I never re-read a book - last year I re-read War & Peace, for instance. But I didn't do it to somehow deepen my knowledge of a 'core work' I read it again primarily because it's an immensely enjoyable narrative. I also read a book about Ants purely for the fun of it. Now I can barely remember anything other than a couple of details about soldier ants that are also suicide bombers (when defeat appears inevitable, they tighten a muscle in their abdomen that causes their thorax to burst, and spray all the attackers around them with acid) and that a whole nest of the smallest known ants would fit inside a single head of the largest known species. These two facts that I recall now can hardly count as 'deeper knowledge' or anything pretentious like that. But reading the book gave me a much greater appreciation of natural phenomena around me, and now when I see an ant's nest in the forest, I know more about what happens inside, I can discuss it with my kids and I'm more engaged and aware of my environment. But that's not why I read the book.

shannifin 6y ago

I'm not sure the article's title quite reflects its point, which is that the amount one reads is not by itself a very useful measure of anything; better to focus on what you're reading, why you're reading, and how you're reading. A better title might be: "The amount you read doesn't matter... as much as other factors" ... or something. Some random thoughts: 1) Indeed many nonfiction books are full of fluff and filler. While there's a completionist in me that wants to read every word and finish all books started, I'm now in the more useful habit of skimming and reading the few chapters that interest me. I've been intrigued to see services like Blinklist that summarize the main points, and sometimes I think even those have too much fluff. Sometimes I grab my notebook to take notes only to find there's not much to take note of. But I confess, perhaps up to 95% of the nonfiction I read is ends up being forgotten because it's just not all that useful to me (more useful is just knowing where I can find the info later if needed). (Although there are quite a few books, like Taleb's books, that have changed the way I think about and see the world, but I don't remember the details and wouldn't be great at giving a worthy summary of them; I'd just recommend the book.) 2) This topic reminds me of Mortimer Adler's book "How to Read a Book"; although I don't remember all his specific syntax, it really encouraged me to be more self-conscious about my reasons for reading.

dorchadas 6y ago
I'd definitely recommend How to Read a Book if you want to go into deeper reading. I haven't implemented it fully, though I'd really like to (need to buy a copy of How to Read a Book to be able to do that, so I can keep referencing it), but it's definitely made me do some short summaries of fluff books, which solidifies the concepts I needed to get out of them. It was useful for that, and I'd love to apply it in more depth.

alphadevx 6y ago

What a strange set of conclusions. The author also misses out on one important point: many of us read books for pleasure, NOT because we feel pressure to read from society. I have a large collection of physical books in my TBR pile, and not one cent of guilt about that (even their presence on my shelves makes me happy).

bonoboTP 6y ago

Well, fewer than what? I'd wager the median person reads 0 (or perhaps 1) books per year, where a book means something with more than 100 pages and at least 90% of those pages filled with text and read means read at least 90% of the words printed. To most people reading is like exercising, dieting, studying etc. They want to want to do it but don't want to do it. You must live in a bubble if you think normal people read too many books.

dublinben 6y ago
More people report reading a book than you'd think. But the median books read per year is still too low for this to be a problem the author thinks it is. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/26/who-doesnt-read-books-in-america/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/26/who-doesnt-...

Saint_Genet 6y ago

Aside from being unbearably pretentious, this fella doesn't seem to have heard about reading for pleasure.

Barrin92 6y ago
There's been a few comments in the thread like this but I think this is a deeply unhealthy understanding of pleasure. Pleasure does not mean simple, or effortlessly or easy. Genuine or deeper pleasure means acquiring understanding and develop better senses. Masturbation is pleasure, but it's no replacement for an intimate relationship. Warming up a pizza is pleasurable, but you would lose out on a lot of experiences if you never developed any taste beyond that. Exercising is a drag, but once you actually learn what your body can do, it's much more genuinely rewarding than sitting on the sofa. Reading critically, reading deeply, despite maybe being hard, is not the opposite of pleasurable once you develop the faculties for it. Which everyone can I believe.

jkingsbery 6y ago

If the author had read a few more books, he would have known that while St. Jerome is held in high regard, the Augustine is usually held as the chief intellectual of the time within the Church, and Augustine read a lot. He was incredibly well versed, for example, in the works of Cicero and Plato. In a later phase of the Church, Aquinas was also well read in a variety of sources, including Aristotle (and perhaps even Muslim writings translated into Latin). And his teacher, Albert Magnus, shows that the pre-modern mind was very much interested in the natural world. I would agree with the point that we should be selective about our reading, even as we read widely. Focusing on reading things that have stood the test of time could still keep us busy.

yuribro 6y ago

I can only assume it's implied that the type of books this is about are philosophical (in the most broad sense, including self improvement) books, and so it makes sense to talk about religious books as examples? People read for a variety of reasons, from professional books to books purely for entertainment. It also has to be said that while in those "pre-modern" times books were the most common medium, today there are many different ways to consume knowledge: newspapers, journals, blog posts and websites, graphic novels as written material, and we also have radio, tv, film, podcasts and many other types of source which serve the same role as books once did.

leokennis 6y ago

Although the article is pretty pretentious, it does resonate with a though I've had for a long time and also commented about earlier (it's not an original thought at all): Why is everything a contest these days? Who cares that I read 40 books last year, you read 120 and my neighbour read 2? Does that make us better or worse people? You can do 1000's of things in life or you can do nothing. No one asked to be brought into this world. No one will stay on this world forever. Just do whatever makes you go through your day in the most content way. Life is hard enough as it is.

watwut 6y ago
> Who cares that I read 40 books last year, you read 120 and my neighbour read 2? Most likely, no one, which is why opening of that character is nonsense.

sys_64738 6y ago

Reading isn't about intelligence. It's about knowledge. Knowledge expands the mind but doesn't necessarily make you more intelligent. E.g. I can read as many theoretical maths books as needed but it'll always be over my head. But if I read a C++ book then I might get a job versus reading a Java book.

truth_be_told 6y ago
I think your definition of "Intelligence" is much too restricted. It is "Knowledge" which leads to "Wisdom" and makes you more "Intelligent" (for a certain definition.) "Knowledge" is the pre-requisite. It is what allows you to see the inter-play and interaction between concepts and ideas leading you towards better understanding thus making you more "Intelligent".

tmaly 6y ago

I try to avoid buying anymore books. Time becomes such a precious thing in modern life. I seek to make knowledge actionable, to practice just in time learning. That is, if I need some knowledge to move forward on a task, then and only then do I turn to a book.

danidiaz 6y ago

> Strikingly, the most intelligent and thoughtful intellectual of the early church seems to have read fewer things than an average modern eight year old. To follow the depiction by Antonello da Messina, St Jerome appears to be the proud owner of about ten books in all! What is a painting from 1475 supposed to tell us about the reading habits of the real St. Jerome, patron saint of librarians? The paper "A History of Early Christian Libraries from Jesus to Jerome" by Thomas M. Tanner looks like a good source of information on the subject, but sadly it's only available from JSTOR.

loughnane 6y ago

My biggest problem with this thinking is that it seems to consider "books" a unit of measure rather than distinct objects. Surely there are those among us who use the amount of books we've read as a sort of decoration for our intellect, but that's not really the point of reading books.The point is to make the knowledge in the books a part of us so we can live a better life. For that end some books are clearly better than others. However I agree with the idea that it's impossible, and I would argue undesirable, to keep up with the "parade of new titles" put out by publishers. So if we can't keep up but reading is still worth it, then the question becomes "How do we decide what to read?". For my part I've found that the more old books I read the more I realize that many modern books are ful of old ideas with a slight (sometimes very slight) twist. So now I'm working through classics and only reading things sparingly. The criteria I've picked up is: 1. The book must have been around for at least a few generations 2. The book must have had a significant impact on how the world, or a field, is viewed 3. The book must be highly regarded by those who study it, even if they disagree with it 4. The book must deal with topics that are relevant to today (love, leadership, etc.) This naturally leads to many so-called "classics". In reading them I've found that I rarely feel my time has been wasted, I feel I have a broader perspective, and I feel I've been able to elevate a bit above the frothy front end of new pop psychology/business/hero worship titles.

auganov 6y ago
The problem is, if a book fulfills all your 4 criteria it's extremely unlikely its "wisdom" hasn't become common knowledge. No surprise = no information. A truly life changing book would need to have been ignored or misunderstood by the world at large. But most such books will obviously be junk so I'm not sure there's a simple way to discover the good ones.
- cafard 6y ago
  C.S. Peirce said that plain English common sense was basically reheated Aristotle. Is there no information in Aristotle?
  - auganov 6y ago

jonstaab 6y ago

I thought this was going to be a typical HN "build things instead" thing, but I actually love their take. Looking at the world around us lately I've been realizing more and more that "it's all in Plato"; his Republic is a book I read once in high school, but it's high time to re-read it. What are some books you find your self going back to repeatedly (or want to)? My list: - Domain Driven Design - Ray Bradbury's short stories and Farenheit 451 - George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier - Descent into Hell - LotR, the Hobbit, and Narnia - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Psalms, Job, James - The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment - Wendell Berry's Essays - Winnie the Pooh - Augustine Guess you know what kind of person I am now.

082349872349872 6y ago
When you're done rereading The Republic (at least the governing a city-state part), please consider critiquing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572
timwaagh 6y ago
LotR, Harry Potter and The Game. But usually I read things once and only once like the article describes.
georgefrick 6y ago
- F-451 - The Winter of Our Discontent - Man's Search For Meaning
- jonstaab 6y ago
  I love Steinbeck, but I had never heard of The Winter of Our Discontent, thanks!

cafard 6y ago

Someone who photographed my work area might manage to get six books into the picture, one a coffee-table book brought out so that I could sign some papers on it out on the porch. I have more than six books, and coffee-table books do not make up a large fraction. St. Jerome presumably had more than ten books. Knowing the Aeneid well may have been all that one needed to get out of Eton or Harrow in the 18th Century. But if you look at what the literate actually read, they read a good deal. The founders of the US read a fair bit of Roman, Greek, and English history.

watwut 6y ago

I find the first paragraph to be a strawman of reality. Most people these days dont read books and I cant really recall competitive approach to reading among my social circles. Maybe author lives in different bubble, I dont know. Also, I read Homer’s Odyssey and while it was fun and interesting, I dont think I found that to be "perfect repository" of pretty much anything. It is story, made up story with surprisingly good characters, but I dont think it taught me everything I want to know. Anyway, lately I enjoyed history and memoirs or biographies of lesser players. The primary thing they are giving me is awareness that real world history has great variety in and and real world people are not as simple as Odyssey make it to be. For example, the point of view of non warrior Jew dying or surviving WWII makes you look at warrior honor code much differently. And so does Hitlers biography and so does Rosa Park biography or so does description of expansion or details of how civil war came to be. I am not saying that everyone must read the same books as me. But claim that few of them are all there is to know is just wrong. When you read just one resource, you know everything and everything looks uncomplicated and simple. When you start to draw on multiple resources, that is when things start to get interesting and complex. And that is also when things start to be easier to remember.

leafboi 6y ago

The thing with reading is that the main point is often buried beneath realms of text. A movie can deliver the same concept in two hours when a book typically takes several days. Another thing with reading is that there's no logical reason why the content you're reading is better than television. If TV can have crap so can books. I have found that reading builds biases better than television. The reason is that reading takes much more effort than television and oftentimes the more effort you spend on something the more bias towards it you develop. I've found that in general if you want to have a larger breadth of knowledge... youtube videos are actually awesome at distilling concepts and getting to the main point. I'm saying this as someone who use to and still actively reads books.

katsume3 6y ago

The Internet has changed how I assimilate knowledge. It has wired my brain to pay attention to soundbites, rather than lofty tomes. This is why I am the proud owner of a large list of various short proverbs & idioms that I have gathered over the years via social media. I only collect the ones that help me in some way and discard anything that doesn't resonate with me. One example is this phrase by Lao Tzu A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_journey_of_a_thousand_miles_begins_with_a_single_step https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_journey_of_a_thousand_miles_... In every book, you can find little kernels of truth and can distill many larger points made in a book, down to helpful and short gems of wisdom. For me this is how I can take a shortcut and avoid reading ridiculous amounts of books! Does anyone else do this?

Loughla 6y ago
Do you find that boiling everything down to a soundbite or small phrase helps you improve your critical thinking and logical reasoning skills? Or do you find it is valuable just for the dopamine hit and feel-goods of cementing your already established worldviews and perspectives? The reason I read books is because the author's perspectives are, often, wildly different from mine. Because of this difference, it helps me understand other people, and understand my own actions. I feel like taking everything down to one-liners and ignoring "anything that doesn't resonate" is just avoiding the real work of thinking about yourself and your place in society. For example - Lao Tzu's perspectives about technology and how to balance external desires with my own personal views on how to integrate technology into my life have been immensely helpful in raising a family - I'm not sure I would've gotten that with just soundbites.
- katsume3 6y ago
  > is just avoiding the real work of thinking about yourself and your place in society Well sometimes idioms / proverbs can contradict each other. Take for example the Russian proverb If you try chasing two rabbits, you will end up catching none Does this mean I have to be singularly focused on one task all the time, and not multitask? Hardly. There are other quotes which challenge that proverb and inspire us to be multitaskers and 'do all the things' at the same time. As I stated: my brain can't cope with a lofty tome, and prefers soundbites. It's how I'm wired, and I leverage that. I also integrate these proverbs into family life and use them as a guide, no different than reading loads of books. But horses for courses; if reading loads of books suits you, then do it!

vikramkr 6y ago

The minimalist attitude to reading in medicine was a disaster. For centuries "doctors" only studied the classic texts (inaccuracies and all) and reading widely or seeking new medical knowledge was discouraged or made illegal. Medicine was correspondingly stagnant. The history of mankind isn't a straight line of progress, but if you're pointing to the past to show why we should be doing things differently today, you better make a way more convincing case than the one presented here about why that aspect of the past was better. At least try to argue the scholarship of the days past was better than the scholarship of today (not an easy argument to make). Otherwise, its just like an argument for a paleo diet - why would I want to adopt a diet for health reasons based on an idea that said diet was consumed by people that lived short, brutal lives?

r0s 6y ago

I can heartily recommend skipping books from the "school of life" and any of their publications. I was gifted one on relationships, which is a topic I read often. I can say it was unfocused, terrible advice that seems like the author's rants about their own frustration with modern love conventions. Reactionary and sneaky with appeals to religion sprinkled throughout. No useful information, plenty of hand-wringing about how things were in the old days.

paultopia 6y ago

What total nonsense. Of course medieval scholars had fewer books; books were much more expensive. Gutenberg hadn't come along yet (or, when Jerome was around, had just barely come along). Perhaps if the author of this post had read some history or economics they wouldn't have wasted the time of the people who had read that blog post.

mcguire 6y ago

Tl;dr: "Reading was held to be extremely important, but the number of new books one read was entirely by the by. This wasn’t principally an economic point. Books were very expensive of course, but this wasn’t really the issue. What mattered was to read a few books very well, not squander one’s attention promiscuously on a great number of volumes." Reading deeply and critically is important; to do otherwise is to just let the words wash over you without leaving an impression. Reading promiscuously was regarded as bad historically not because it squandered attention but because most books were considered full of lies and the majority of readers couldn't be trusted to separate the truth from falsehood. On the other hand, if your dozen books are made up of Ayn Rand, Malcolm Gladwell, and Seth Godin, you may find that your worldview is as limited as any medieval scholastic.

blain_the_train 6y ago

I got a headstart by not reading this article.

wwright 6y ago

Click Fewer Links

gmadsen 6y ago

Not sure if the school of life produces anything of value, but this article certainly put a sour taste in my mouth. It philosophizes about a non existent problem and gives un needed advice.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

JdeBP 6y ago

I've seen a number of religious cults dressed up as bookshops in my life, and this, with all of its expensive "counselling", "therapy", and "classes", looks to me like another one.

brian_herman__ 6y ago

It would be ironic if the next post was Read Fewer Blogs.

friendlybus 6y ago

Can't say I agree at all. The self-improvement crowd emphasize interest and small daily gains, not maximization of everything. Some people don't read to know everything, some read to know something. Which can be a lot. Not a big fan of school of life's work.