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I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately - there seems to be more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much self-help a

by dawg- 6y ago

I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately - there seems to be more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much self-help and "motivation porn" focuses on reading books, as if it's a magical activity that will unlock the best version of oneself. It's part of the new aspirational message - imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, and reading books. The people pushing that message get lots of eyeballs on their content because too many people have come to see reading as a lofty, obscure activity only fully accessible to the morally (and therefore financially) superior. It's almost like reading has been elevated to a kind of rare alchemy, whereby you can unlock secret cheat codes to life. The feeling that you're in rareified air to actually read books. I think anyone who regularly reads books for pleasure should easily see through this - reading is just a hobby. It's a fun, intellectually challenging, infinitely variable hobby with a very long and distinguished history. But ultimately you could learn just as much about yourself and the world by doing pottery, woodworking, kayaking, knitting or whatever else you like to do with your spare time. Making it into such a self-serious pursuit kills most of the joy (and value, for that matter). Let's try to make reading commonplace, something we almost take for granted. Of course I read books, you read books, we all read books. Everybody poops, and everybody reads books. Wouldn't that be great? In that world, a Youtube commercial or Medium article promising that you can unlock secret lamborghinis on the moon by reading exactly 18.75 books a week would suddenly be absurdly transparent in setting off everyone's bullshit meters. The question "read any good books lately?" could take on less of a challenging air and more conversational, the way so many people can casually drop 10 quotes from their favorite Netflix show they've been binge watching during their commute to work. Longform reading is magic because it's rarer than ever - it's an art now, according to people like this author. That's why we have so much performative reading, a cheap replacement for the real thing. I'd rather reading be boring and commonplace, something we do as easily as breathing.

criddell 6y ago
> imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, and reading books I was immediately reminded of Lambo Tai. I still think it's a parody of something... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv1RJTHf5fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv1RJTHf5fk
- dawg- 6y ago
  Yup, that's who I had in mind. He is a sort of patron saint of this cultural trend, I think
tines 6y ago
> But ultimately you could learn just as much about yourself and the world by doing pottery, woodworking, kayaking, knitting or whatever else you like to do with your spare time. I agree with the rest of your post, but this sentence is a hard disagree. Books let you live a version of the lives of other more intelligent people from almost any point in history. How can pottery and kayaking do that?
- gen_greyface 6y ago
  Doing pottery and kayaking is a better choice for me than reading someone do pottery and kayaking. Edit: and not everything can be learnt from books
  - codersteve 6y ago
    That's really taking it out of context.
  - Ma8ee 6y ago
    But I can’t lead armies in battles or travel under the sea or challenge a rival to a swords duel. In such cases I’m accepting the reading as substitute.
    - nwienert 6y ago
      Sports are often pretty close to battle, and you can learn fencing. Most great writers about swordsmanship could never have written about it without having used them for years... I have a whole long piece I want to write about this some day but physical experience is about 100x richer than reading. If you read about the best restaurant in some place, and tell me it, your ability to convince me it’s good is very weak. Whereas someone who ate at a hundred places in that cuisine could write a book about it. They could convince me only because they have first hand knowledge. It’s funny in that way: the best writing comes from people who experienced the most, and yet people get attached to reading as the best way to learn!
      - 6y ago
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
Is reading good for you because other forms of entertainment have gotten worse? I suspect reading is so great because time spent reading is not time spent toiling away on social media or other shallow distractions. The same reason tea is good for you simply because it's not soda. Or do successful people tend to read because successful people don't tend to get dragged into shallow activities. The reading didn't make them successful- the reading is a side affect of already having that trait. I dislike the article's take on reading for pleasure with a goofy emoji. It mentions reading to broaden your world and make connections between disparate things. Reading for pleasure also accomplishes this.
- dawg- 6y ago
  Do "successful" people in fact read more? It might be true, it certainly sounds good. But I don't know if we can so easily make that assumption. I recall a section of "The Millionaire Next Door" where most of the people interviewed chalked up their success to some combination of "Luck" and "Hard Work". Education was a bit lower on the list, and I don't remember anything about reading in one's spare time.
  - paganel 6y ago
    > Do "successful" people in fact read more? It might be true, it certainly sounds good. There are also people like myself for whom "success" means getting to read everything that we want. Well, not everything, because at some point in life one gets to acknowledge that death is a thing that actually happens and that will interrupt said reading, but other than that reading and the thought that there will always be interesting books for us to read is one of the main thing that keeps us (as I think I'm not the only one thinking like that) feeling alive.
- Bakary 6y ago
  Reading is vague. It could mean anything, and can absolutely be shallow. Successful people just have a portion of their life that produces something valuable to others. You can be a celebrated boxer while not even knowing how to read. Taleb once mentioned the story of a futures trader who made a killing with green lumber while thinking it was literally lumber painted green. The trader didn't know the first thing about the product itself, but they knew and could perform the actions that really mattered to the goal of trading. Many professions require reading to be successful, but it's more the case that getting the necessary information would not be realistically possible without reading at some point. People in that position don't read for its own sake in their work life (whether they read for pleasure is another story), they go find the information they need in the format it exists in. This is then confused as "reading makes you successful" but it is as trivial a statement as "having the right information makes you successful"
j7ake 6y ago
The worst is some arbitrary goal of reading X books per year. That clearly optimises for short, easy to read books (eg New York Times Best Sellers) and avoids more technical and difficult books (eg Art of Computer Programming)
- Moncefmd 6y ago
  That criticism is warranted but I feel that having a "goal" of books to read is a very useful tool to develop the habit of reading in people that never read. As for the type of people that do not typically read, I would encourage them to read what they would love reading (even if its NYT Best sellers) until they love reading.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  The worst is the obsession with min/maxing books and disdain for fiction around here as easy and plebeian.
- matthewfcarlson 6y ago
  I love to read and always have since I was a kid. Over the years I’d just fallen out of the habit, similar to how I don’t watch movies much anymore. I set a goal to read a large number of books since I’d slowly collected a long list and just went in order. If I wasn’t enjoying a book as much as I thought I would, back to the library it went. I found it quite helpful to have a goal in mind. I will agree with you that the temptation was there just to read fluff. I think having the list effectively mitigated that. The only downside is that many books reference other books so the list would just expand exponentially. Am I magically able to access the secrets of universe just because I read a lot? No. But when people ask me “read any good books lately” I can talk about the new Brandon Sanderson book, neuroscience of aging, or the art of non violent communication and the interesting parallels between all three of them. Reading does make you more interesting but so does watching Sundance film festival movies or listening to obscure podcasts. Anything off the beaten path is interesting by definition.
- jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 6y ago
  Setting a goal, even if arbitrary, is positive if an increased in the measured activity is positive. I think we'll all agree that, in most cases, reading more is a positive outcome. Instead of "read X books" think "run Y miles", do you still feel it's "the worst"? > That clearly optimises for short, easy to read books (eg New York Times Best Sellers) and avoids more technical and difficult books (eg Art of Computer Programming) Some will "cheat", but most won't. Even if you cheat, is reading 15 short, bad books better or worse than reading 0?
dougmwne 6y ago
I've been thinking about the halo around books on and off for years. I think whatever special value books used to represent in our society from before the internet is long gone. I remember the pre-internet times when the information world you had access to was small. You could consume silly low-information things on the tv or radio or you could read a book on the topic, which had a much higher information density and chance of being correct. There was no one you could talk with about a detailed topic unless you had maybe built up a professional circle you met with regularly, so a book was your only opportunity to "converse" with an expert. If you paid thousands of dollars, you could take a class on the topic and have an knowledgeable person take you on a basic guided tour of some of the good books on the topic. You would never have been able to get Warren Buffet's detailed thoughts on the economy without reading his book. In the post-internet world, information is cheap and plentiful. Endless hours of talks and interviews by major thinkers are available to all. With a quick Google, you can find people discussing any topic under the sun. Micro-niche content on all topics are being produced for YouTube, the likes of which you would have never seen on the Discovery Channel. Dozens of free courses are available on all major topics and you can cherry pick just the pieces you are most interested in. Most information can be just-in-time delivered to you at just the moment you need it. Books are not obsolete in this environment, but just another one of the dozens of formats through which you could consume detailed information on a topic. And finally, our collective societal values change slowly in comparison to the pace of technological change. Books were far and away the best way to access information for so long that it has a sticky association with class, intelligence, wealth and wit. But really, if you are getting all your information from books, you are an anachronism and definitively behind the curve. Sometimes I think of Raphael's School of Athens and think that the conversions I've been privy to for the past 10 years on HN must far surpass anything they might have said to each other.
- dawg- 6y ago
  There is definitely a ton of value to be had from learning on the internet. Watching a 2 hour 92nd street Y debate on Youtube can be just as enlightening as reading a great book. But I still think books have a certain staying power due to their format. The rigor of longform reading is still something special. I know I am prone to over-quoting from Thoreau, but as he said, "What is taken as argument in the auditorium is too often later found to be rhetoric in the study."
dominotw 6y ago
> I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately >imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, and reading books. This is bill gates, warren buffet. He says this is his secret, who am I to question someone who has actually done it. https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Summer-Books-2020 https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Summer-Books-202... "Whether you’re looking for a distraction or just spending a lot more time at home, you can’t beat reading a book. "
- dawg- 6y ago
  I don't see Bill Gates attributing reading to his success at all. This is just a blog post saying he likes to read when he's bored around the house?
  - dominotw 6y ago
    > I don't see Bill Gates attributing reading to his success at all. He did many many times. "Every book teaches me something new or helps me see things differently. I was lucky to have parents who encouraged me to read. Reading fuels a sense of curiosity about the world, which I think helped drive me forward in my career and in the work that I do now with my foundation." https://time.com/4786837/bill-gates-books-reading/ https://time.com/4786837/bill-gates-books-reading/
    - DennisP 6y ago
      He also talks about it in the Netflix documentary Inside Bill's Brain. Warren Buffett famously said to some students, "Read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it." Charlie Munger is as much of a reader as Buffett. He's especially fond of biographies, according to the book The Joy of Compounding. His children call him "a book with legs." https://fs.blog/2013/05/the-buffett-formula/ https://fs.blog/2013/05/the-buffett-formula/ From googling these guys just now, I found there are a lot of other examples. Mark Cuban is one, crediting a lot of his early success to reading and saying he still reads over three hours a day: https://blogmaverick.com/2011/04/07/shark-tank-success-motivation/ https://blogmaverick.com/2011/04/07/shark-tank-success-motiv...
mejutoco 6y ago
I love books, and wish for the world you describe. To me books are a sort of alchemy, indeed (I would not use the word hobby, but I see what you mean. And I love pottery). It is serious business, learning the alphabet, putting oneself or others to sleep, enjoying fiction or getting an insight into a technical problem. There will always be someone who wants the credit without the effort (I read x books a month, look at me) — the looks without the substance — and yes, it is annoying, but at least we have books :)
- dawg- 6y ago
  > at least we have books :) Agree! I admittedly put on my "critic hat" writing that post so maybe it came off a bit contrarian. But you're absolutely right. If it's a choice between dealing with some shallowness, or not having books in the public consciousness at all? I'll gladly tolerate the self-help crowd slightly overselling the promise of reading.
blondin 6y ago
oh you don't say! same goes for writing.
Balgair 6y ago
One thing about reading is the ROI aspect. Internet comments take ~5 minutes to write, 30s to read (6x ROI). Blog posts are ~4 hours to write, 10m to read (24x). Magazine articles are ~3 months to write, 30m to read (960x). Books are ~5 years to write, 8h to read (1300x). Obviously, books are one of the best reading ROIs. Now, of course, you've got to balance the book quality, your interests, the thesis, the author's biases, etc. But as a rule of thumb, books are good investments of time. I think that's why they are this 'rare alchemy'. It's not that you unlock cheat codes to life, it's that they offer some of the best kismet to doing so.
- milansm 6y ago
  What ROI? There are tweets more information dense than articles, articles more valuable than books.
  - DiggyJohnson 6y ago
    Are you sure you're making a relative argument, and not just a statement about the existence of a counter-example?
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  Internet comments have room for your current thought. Is there any reason to think that your current thought is in some way less informed by your experiences than a book is? Blog posts give you 4 hours to write, backed by years of life experience, probably based on things you've had on your mind for a while. Magazine articles pay you to write what the audience/advertisers want to see. They've got to be a net negative, convincing someone to write when they didn't necessarily want to, to say something they didn't necessarily want to say. Books are an item for a CV or resume, and a status symbol. Sure there are respected textbooks, but there are a lot of worse books out there than respected textbooks. Look at "Why we sleep" recently - years to write, torn apart by one blog post. Look at bestseller lists rigged by false purchases. Look at tech books where writing a book on a language or tech stack is almost more of a status grab, or at worst a "teach myself $thing by writing a book about it" than a long standing tome. (Also, 8 hours to read a book??)
jodrellblank 6y ago
Have employer/employee relationships always been so squeezed, so antagonistic, that the aspirational message included "living off dividends from your stonks" and "leanFIRE" because the only thing worth aspiring to is getting out from wage slavery? It can't be a healthy economy when so much of the public discussion is how unpleasant work is, and not because the work itself is bad, but because the management/expectations/timekeeping/etc. is? Medical staff, obviously in COVID times, basically any retail worker, basically any callcenter worker, anyone in an Enterprise company as per the film Office Space, people working anything from agriculture to factory work to Amazon warehouses, to delivery drivers timed for the amount of seconds they can step out of the van at each stop, to developers hating on unreasonable expectations of delivery time and price, to takeovers and downsizing leaving fewer people with more work, to individual craftspeople expected to compete on price with mass manufacture, to ridiculous job hopping advice (change jobs every 18 months, never don't be applying for jobs!) to decreases in loyalty and trust. The aspirational messages have shifted from "thank God you have food for the day" to "own a home" to "get a stable job" to "a gold watch for long service and a pension" to "flip houses for money or rental income" to "desperately try to get rich quick and get out". And then what else is there but escapism with Lamborghinis and stories?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  Work was always unpleasant and undesirable. The concept of "wage slavery" was coined back in ancient Greece (i.e. the people who had to work for a living were not considered really free). The Puritanian work ethics, which consider work to be a virtue and something of innate value, are more a weird quirk of some Western countries rather than an universal stance. Basically, through all times and places, most people dreamt of being wealthy, so that their needs would be met and they wouldn't have to work. BTW now this dream is monetized in the form of various national lotteries.
fenderbluesjr 6y ago
I see your point and I think the messaging about books is often a bit wishy washy, however I really do think books are a different beast. I read a lot of biographies of legendary figures. Whether its Stalin, Oppenheimer, Teddy Roosevelt or Robert Moses, they are nearly always big readers. They tend to treat it quite seriously too. Not a few books per year, but 50-100+.. Teddy Roosevelt had 4 hours~ of his days' schedule blocked off for reading particular books, during an election campaign! For me (and I believe, for them too), reading is serious business and the rewards really are great. This is not 'curl up by the fire with a nice story' and I will suddenly incur some magical benefits. Rather there are some things that are not easily achieved otherwise. Books allow you to efficiently deep dive and when you dedicate lots of hours to it, you can really make staggering progress. Reading all of the books on a particular topic becomes an achievable task. I could spend some hours scouring the internet trying to learn about a particular topic, or I could blast through a 200-300 page book on the topic. When you start treating books as your primary source of learning about new topics, and you build up a sort of grit for getting through books, you become a bit of an information processing machine and it is a bit magical. I nearly always have a stack of books on my desk now and I just plow through them one after another. I would never absorb so much useful information reading articles on the internet or watching videos. Books are #1 for efficiency.. Right now I'm primarily reading Shirer's The Rise And Fall of The Third Reich.. It's a massive book (1100+ pages) and will take me over 2 weeks. It's hard to imagine how I could possibly get this much information on the same topic any other way. Try and find some documentary series? Follow my nose on wikipedia clicking around? Crap options, mostly. If I do this with two or three more books, by almost any measure, I have become somebody who knows a lot about WW2 and nazi germany. Now follow process with many other topics..
herbertl 6y ago
I definitely appreciate this. Your point reminds me of what Beeple once said about art and creative work: "Looking at creativity as something that’s much less precious will help you stick with it long-term. Along with that, people around you will be a lot more supportive if you’re a bit more flexible and a bit less douchey about it. Like you’re not so pretentious in terms of, 'I’m an artist, I need to blah blah blah.' If you take it down a notch and just look at it as something you have to do today, just like taking a dump or eating supper, then it will be more sustainable in the long run." https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/3/21046790/beeple-mike-winkelmann-interview-everyday-post-apocalyptic-baby-yoda-zuckerberg https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/3/21046790/beeple-mike-winke...
Moodles 6y ago
Reminds me of the xkcd about older generations always complaining about younger generations no matter what, but with technology reversed. “Look at them reading! How sad! A completely linear storyline! Never changes with a re-do, not even a bit. Sitting there, in silence! No social interaction. That can’t be good for their brains. Why don’t they play video games instead?”
matthewh806 6y ago
This is a great comment that really hits the nail on the head for me about how I feel when I see articles like this. I'm not going to deny that reading more effectively & efficiently can be desirable in certain technical reading where the aim is to absorb, digest & learn the material. But in the general sense its kind of the antithesis of why I would read anything. I don't want to knock off as many paper backs as quickly as I can so that I can rattle off a meaningless number and increase my cultural capital. I also find it weird and slightly creepy that people elevate book reading to this almost infinite pedestal. If people get more enjoyment and fulfilment out of playing video games, for example, then that's an equally valid use of time. More so if they're not interested in reading. For me it comes down to if you enjoy reading in and of itself as a hobby then you'll hopefully find time to do it and be enriched because of it. But just trying to force yourself to blitz through as "effectively" as possible loses the magic. Especially when you consider how much time and thought the very best writers put into every single construction.
lmarcos 6y ago
> reading is just a hobby. It's a fun, intellectually challenging, infinitely variable hobby with a very long and distinguished history. But ultimately you could learn just as much about yourself and the world by doing pottery, woodworking, kayaking, knitting or whatever else you like to do with your spare time. Making it into such a self-serious pursuit kills most of the joy (and value, for that matter) Definitely, but reading is easier :)
ssivark 6y ago
Note similarities with the discourse about getting a full night’s sleep, and eating healthier :-) I think all of these sometimes play the role of “premium mediocre” virtue signaling.
jasonv 6y ago
I agree and disagree, and disagree because in the world we live in, we read more words than ever, but reading books -- things that people craft over time, sometimes with facts and references, and that are stable enough elements in the world that we can have long, thoughtful, referenced reviews and discussions about -- probably less so than in the past. We don't "review" and discuss blog posts for years on end, the way you can read and discuss books, and books from other countries, in other languages, from previous centuries. I joke that most parties devolve into a discussion about "what have you watched lately?" and where that discussion used to include movies and films, people at parties mostly talk about TV shows. So books, for those who are still fitting them into their lifestyle, even after work and family and internet, are slightly more rarefied than they used to be. Moreso than we probably need.
tmarice 6y ago
> Longform reading is magic because it's rarer than ever - it's an art now, according to people like this author. Adler wrote "How to Read a Book" (which this article is about) originally in 1940, I wouldn't call that "now". HTRAB is a bit dry and over-analytical, but it's definitely practical. It enumerates all questions that you should ask yourself while reading analytically, and while this may sound like an overkill, unless you're paying attention, you'll likely skip some of the steps. I read many great books only to find that they completely evaporated from my head in a week or two. Isn't it a waste of time to spend months reading Brothers Karamazov, and not be changed by that experience? Reading for entertainment and information already is easy as breathing for most people, but for reading for understanding to be as easy as breathing, you need to deliberately practice it. While Adler's advice is valid, it lacks another important component, and that's discussion. A good book club (reading the great books, not whatever's on top of the NYT bestseller list) will change the entire experience and increase knowledge retention.
ceilingcorner 6y ago
Reading is not a hobby. It is the foundation of civilization as we know it. The issue is with the dearth of actual quality reading that goes on today, when everyone congratulates themselves for reading Harry Potter.
jogjayr 6y ago
> It's almost like reading has been elevated to a kind of rare alchemy, whereby you can unlock secret cheat codes to life I owe my career and livelihood to my ability to study, learn and retain information, and manipulate words and abstract symbols. In other words, to reading. Reading well, and quickly, is a magic superpower with practical benefits.
kiba 6y ago
Reading books for fun is OK, but very few people read book strategically.
pjfin123 6y ago
I think I've learned a lot more from Wikipedia rabbit holes than a lot of books I've read.
hinkley 6y ago
If I had to make a bald faced guess? Now that everyone is 'on to' the Skinner Box aspects of Facebook, people are finding other dopamine buttons to push. Getting people amped up about things they're gonna do feels good (so good, in fact, they forget to do them).
phobosanomaly 6y ago
There are two kinds of reading. Reading that is hard and reading that is easy. Nobody who reads 100 books a year (or even 50 as the author cops to) is reading anything particularly difficult. It's either fluff self-help, or fiction that vacuums your attention in, or a medium article by some MBA blown up to 250 pages by a publisher, or something you should be listening to as an audiobook on your commute. Look at what the author of the article is reading! Come on, this stuff is embarrassingly easy. It sure as hell ain't Knuth. I'm an advocate of reading about 6-8 books per-year, and it is miserable. About 300 pages into a nonfiction technical book and I'm pacing around the kitchen island, djent in the headphones cranked up to 1,000, jaw clenched on my nicotine gum, 12 cups of coffee playing chicken with my guts, muttering to myself, scribbling nonsensical notes in the margin. Miserable. It sucks. I absolutely hate it. I don't understand 30% of the goddamn thing. But, I learn a hell of a lot. So, I strongly distrust anyone who brags about reading, and I listen closely to anyone who bitches and moans and complains, but slogs their way through a small number of serious, technical, nonfiction books per-year. The difference between reading SICP and reading Simon Sinek is immeasurable.
- ohduran 6y ago
  I wish people bragged about reading ONE book. "Heard that you read a lot, what are you reading lately?", "Well, I've been at it with The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the last five years, highly recommended".
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    If you're into that kind of thing, I highly recommend William T. Vollmann's Imperial.
xtiansimon 6y ago
> "...interesting trend in our discourse..." > "...more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much ... "motivation porn"..." > "..aspirational message - imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini.." > "...too many people have come to see reading as a lofty..." > "reading is just a hobby" > "Making it into such a self-serious pursuit kills most of the joy." > "...you read books, we all read books. Everybody poops, and everybody reads books." WHAT?? This comment is apoplectic with contradictory statements and false beliefs. What could possibly be accomplished by it? It's an unapologetic rant on reading and writing on, of all places, one of the most text focused news and discussion sites on internet. Sheesh! Clearly, for some people reading is not just for entertainment, or 'joy'. And, clearly, for some of these people, their joy is also writing about reading (hence the OP). I do agree on one thing suggested by the response, though not said directly. Reading and Writing may converge into a bizarre infinite loop. If you find this maddening, rage inducing, then consider yourself warned! There is one book which you must not read. Dare I say it's name? YES! I DARE! Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter [1]. It is not an easy read for the shitter. You may even need the assistance of this MIT Open CourseWare video series on YouTube [2] about the book. Read this book at your own PERIL! Extreme brain expansion may occur. WHEW. (Now I'm going to site quietly and meditate.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWZ2Bz0tS-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWZ2Bz0tS-s

by dawg- 6y ago

criddell 6y ago

> imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, and reading books I was immediately reminded of Lambo Tai. I still think it's a parody of something... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv1RJTHf5fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv1RJTHf5fk

dawg- 6y ago
Yup, that's who I had in mind. He is a sort of patron saint of this cultural trend, I think

tines 6y ago

> But ultimately you could learn just as much about yourself and the world by doing pottery, woodworking, kayaking, knitting or whatever else you like to do with your spare time. I agree with the rest of your post, but this sentence is a hard disagree. Books let you live a version of the lives of other more intelligent people from almost any point in history. How can pottery and kayaking do that?

gen_greyface 6y ago
Doing pottery and kayaking is a better choice for me than reading someone do pottery and kayaking. Edit: and not everything can be learnt from books
- codersteve 6y ago
  That's really taking it out of context.
- Ma8ee 6y ago
  But I can’t lead armies in battles or travel under the sea or challenge a rival to a swords duel. In such cases I’m accepting the reading as substitute.
  - nwienert 6y ago
    Sports are often pretty close to battle, and you can learn fencing. Most great writers about swordsmanship could never have written about it without having used them for years... I have a whole long piece I want to write about this some day but physical experience is about 100x richer than reading. If you read about the best restaurant in some place, and tell me it, your ability to convince me it’s good is very weak. Whereas someone who ate at a hundred places in that cuisine could write a book about it. They could convince me only because they have first hand knowledge. It’s funny in that way: the best writing comes from people who experienced the most, and yet people get attached to reading as the best way to learn!
    - 6y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

Is reading good for you because other forms of entertainment have gotten worse? I suspect reading is so great because time spent reading is not time spent toiling away on social media or other shallow distractions. The same reason tea is good for you simply because it's not soda. Or do successful people tend to read because successful people don't tend to get dragged into shallow activities. The reading didn't make them successful- the reading is a side affect of already having that trait. I dislike the article's take on reading for pleasure with a goofy emoji. It mentions reading to broaden your world and make connections between disparate things. Reading for pleasure also accomplishes this.

dawg- 6y ago
Do "successful" people in fact read more? It might be true, it certainly sounds good. But I don't know if we can so easily make that assumption. I recall a section of "The Millionaire Next Door" where most of the people interviewed chalked up their success to some combination of "Luck" and "Hard Work". Education was a bit lower on the list, and I don't remember anything about reading in one's spare time.
- paganel 6y ago
  > Do "successful" people in fact read more? It might be true, it certainly sounds good. There are also people like myself for whom "success" means getting to read everything that we want. Well, not everything, because at some point in life one gets to acknowledge that death is a thing that actually happens and that will interrupt said reading, but other than that reading and the thought that there will always be interesting books for us to read is one of the main thing that keeps us (as I think I'm not the only one thinking like that) feeling alive.
Bakary 6y ago
Reading is vague. It could mean anything, and can absolutely be shallow. Successful people just have a portion of their life that produces something valuable to others. You can be a celebrated boxer while not even knowing how to read. Taleb once mentioned the story of a futures trader who made a killing with green lumber while thinking it was literally lumber painted green. The trader didn't know the first thing about the product itself, but they knew and could perform the actions that really mattered to the goal of trading. Many professions require reading to be successful, but it's more the case that getting the necessary information would not be realistically possible without reading at some point. People in that position don't read for its own sake in their work life (whether they read for pleasure is another story), they go find the information they need in the format it exists in. This is then confused as "reading makes you successful" but it is as trivial a statement as "having the right information makes you successful"

j7ake 6y ago

The worst is some arbitrary goal of reading X books per year. That clearly optimises for short, easy to read books (eg New York Times Best Sellers) and avoids more technical and difficult books (eg Art of Computer Programming)

Moncefmd 6y ago
That criticism is warranted but I feel that having a "goal" of books to read is a very useful tool to develop the habit of reading in people that never read. As for the type of people that do not typically read, I would encourage them to read what they would love reading (even if its NYT Best sellers) until they love reading.
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
The worst is the obsession with min/maxing books and disdain for fiction around here as easy and plebeian.
matthewfcarlson 6y ago
I love to read and always have since I was a kid. Over the years I’d just fallen out of the habit, similar to how I don’t watch movies much anymore. I set a goal to read a large number of books since I’d slowly collected a long list and just went in order. If I wasn’t enjoying a book as much as I thought I would, back to the library it went. I found it quite helpful to have a goal in mind. I will agree with you that the temptation was there just to read fluff. I think having the list effectively mitigated that. The only downside is that many books reference other books so the list would just expand exponentially. Am I magically able to access the secrets of universe just because I read a lot? No. But when people ask me “read any good books lately” I can talk about the new Brandon Sanderson book, neuroscience of aging, or the art of non violent communication and the interesting parallels between all three of them. Reading does make you more interesting but so does watching Sundance film festival movies or listening to obscure podcasts. Anything off the beaten path is interesting by definition.
jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 6y ago
Setting a goal, even if arbitrary, is positive if an increased in the measured activity is positive. I think we'll all agree that, in most cases, reading more is a positive outcome. Instead of "read X books" think "run Y miles", do you still feel it's "the worst"? > That clearly optimises for short, easy to read books (eg New York Times Best Sellers) and avoids more technical and difficult books (eg Art of Computer Programming) Some will "cheat", but most won't. Even if you cheat, is reading 15 short, bad books better or worse than reading 0?

dougmwne 6y ago

I've been thinking about the halo around books on and off for years. I think whatever special value books used to represent in our society from before the internet is long gone. I remember the pre-internet times when the information world you had access to was small. You could consume silly low-information things on the tv or radio or you could read a book on the topic, which had a much higher information density and chance of being correct. There was no one you could talk with about a detailed topic unless you had maybe built up a professional circle you met with regularly, so a book was your only opportunity to "converse" with an expert. If you paid thousands of dollars, you could take a class on the topic and have an knowledgeable person take you on a basic guided tour of some of the good books on the topic. You would never have been able to get Warren Buffet's detailed thoughts on the economy without reading his book. In the post-internet world, information is cheap and plentiful. Endless hours of talks and interviews by major thinkers are available to all. With a quick Google, you can find people discussing any topic under the sun. Micro-niche content on all topics are being produced for YouTube, the likes of which you would have never seen on the Discovery Channel. Dozens of free courses are available on all major topics and you can cherry pick just the pieces you are most interested in. Most information can be just-in-time delivered to you at just the moment you need it. Books are not obsolete in this environment, but just another one of the dozens of formats through which you could consume detailed information on a topic. And finally, our collective societal values change slowly in comparison to the pace of technological change. Books were far and away the best way to access information for so long that it has a sticky association with class, intelligence, wealth and wit. But really, if you are getting all your information from books, you are an anachronism and definitively behind the curve. Sometimes I think of Raphael's School of Athens and think that the conversions I've been privy to for the past 10 years on HN must far surpass anything they might have said to each other.

dawg- 6y ago
There is definitely a ton of value to be had from learning on the internet. Watching a 2 hour 92nd street Y debate on Youtube can be just as enlightening as reading a great book. But I still think books have a certain staying power due to their format. The rigor of longform reading is still something special. I know I am prone to over-quoting from Thoreau, but as he said, "What is taken as argument in the auditorium is too often later found to be rhetoric in the study."

dominotw 6y ago

> I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately >imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, and reading books. This is bill gates, warren buffet. He says this is his secret, who am I to question someone who has actually done it. https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Summer-Books-2020 https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Summer-Books-202... "Whether you’re looking for a distraction or just spending a lot more time at home, you can’t beat reading a book. "

dawg- 6y ago
I don't see Bill Gates attributing reading to his success at all. This is just a blog post saying he likes to read when he's bored around the house?
- dominotw 6y ago
  > I don't see Bill Gates attributing reading to his success at all. He did many many times. "Every book teaches me something new or helps me see things differently. I was lucky to have parents who encouraged me to read. Reading fuels a sense of curiosity about the world, which I think helped drive me forward in my career and in the work that I do now with my foundation." https://time.com/4786837/bill-gates-books-reading/ https://time.com/4786837/bill-gates-books-reading/
  - DennisP 6y ago
    He also talks about it in the Netflix documentary Inside Bill's Brain. Warren Buffett famously said to some students, "Read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it." Charlie Munger is as much of a reader as Buffett. He's especially fond of biographies, according to the book The Joy of Compounding. His children call him "a book with legs." https://fs.blog/2013/05/the-buffett-formula/ https://fs.blog/2013/05/the-buffett-formula/ From googling these guys just now, I found there are a lot of other examples. Mark Cuban is one, crediting a lot of his early success to reading and saying he still reads over three hours a day: https://blogmaverick.com/2011/04/07/shark-tank-success-motivation/ https://blogmaverick.com/2011/04/07/shark-tank-success-motiv...

mejutoco 6y ago

I love books, and wish for the world you describe. To me books are a sort of alchemy, indeed (I would not use the word hobby, but I see what you mean. And I love pottery). It is serious business, learning the alphabet, putting oneself or others to sleep, enjoying fiction or getting an insight into a technical problem. There will always be someone who wants the credit without the effort (I read x books a month, look at me) — the looks without the substance — and yes, it is annoying, but at least we have books :)

dawg- 6y ago
> at least we have books :) Agree! I admittedly put on my "critic hat" writing that post so maybe it came off a bit contrarian. But you're absolutely right. If it's a choice between dealing with some shallowness, or not having books in the public consciousness at all? I'll gladly tolerate the self-help crowd slightly overselling the promise of reading.

blondin 6y ago

oh you don't say! same goes for writing.

Balgair 6y ago

One thing about reading is the ROI aspect. Internet comments take ~5 minutes to write, 30s to read (6x ROI). Blog posts are ~4 hours to write, 10m to read (24x). Magazine articles are ~3 months to write, 30m to read (960x). Books are ~5 years to write, 8h to read (1300x). Obviously, books are one of the best reading ROIs. Now, of course, you've got to balance the book quality, your interests, the thesis, the author's biases, etc. But as a rule of thumb, books are good investments of time. I think that's why they are this 'rare alchemy'. It's not that you unlock cheat codes to life, it's that they offer some of the best kismet to doing so.

milansm 6y ago
What ROI? There are tweets more information dense than articles, articles more valuable than books.
- DiggyJohnson 6y ago
  Are you sure you're making a relative argument, and not just a statement about the existence of a counter-example?
jodrellblank 6y ago
Internet comments have room for your current thought. Is there any reason to think that your current thought is in some way less informed by your experiences than a book is? Blog posts give you 4 hours to write, backed by years of life experience, probably based on things you've had on your mind for a while. Magazine articles pay you to write what the audience/advertisers want to see. They've got to be a net negative, convincing someone to write when they didn't necessarily want to, to say something they didn't necessarily want to say. Books are an item for a CV or resume, and a status symbol. Sure there are respected textbooks, but there are a lot of worse books out there than respected textbooks. Look at "Why we sleep" recently - years to write, torn apart by one blog post. Look at bestseller lists rigged by false purchases. Look at tech books where writing a book on a language or tech stack is almost more of a status grab, or at worst a "teach myself $thing by writing a book about it" than a long standing tome. (Also, 8 hours to read a book??)

jodrellblank 6y ago

Have employer/employee relationships always been so squeezed, so antagonistic, that the aspirational message included "living off dividends from your stonks" and "leanFIRE" because the only thing worth aspiring to is getting out from wage slavery? It can't be a healthy economy when so much of the public discussion is how unpleasant work is, and not because the work itself is bad, but because the management/expectations/timekeeping/etc. is? Medical staff, obviously in COVID times, basically any retail worker, basically any callcenter worker, anyone in an Enterprise company as per the film Office Space, people working anything from agriculture to factory work to Amazon warehouses, to delivery drivers timed for the amount of seconds they can step out of the van at each stop, to developers hating on unreasonable expectations of delivery time and price, to takeovers and downsizing leaving fewer people with more work, to individual craftspeople expected to compete on price with mass manufacture, to ridiculous job hopping advice (change jobs every 18 months, never don't be applying for jobs!) to decreases in loyalty and trust. The aspirational messages have shifted from "thank God you have food for the day" to "own a home" to "get a stable job" to "a gold watch for long service and a pension" to "flip houses for money or rental income" to "desperately try to get rich quick and get out". And then what else is there but escapism with Lamborghinis and stories?

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burntoutfire 6y ago
Work was always unpleasant and undesirable. The concept of "wage slavery" was coined back in ancient Greece (i.e. the people who had to work for a living were not considered really free). The Puritanian work ethics, which consider work to be a virtue and something of innate value, are more a weird quirk of some Western countries rather than an universal stance. Basically, through all times and places, most people dreamt of being wealthy, so that their needs would be met and they wouldn't have to work. BTW now this dream is monetized in the form of various national lotteries.

fenderbluesjr 6y ago

I see your point and I think the messaging about books is often a bit wishy washy, however I really do think books are a different beast. I read a lot of biographies of legendary figures. Whether its Stalin, Oppenheimer, Teddy Roosevelt or Robert Moses, they are nearly always big readers. They tend to treat it quite seriously too. Not a few books per year, but 50-100+.. Teddy Roosevelt had 4 hours~ of his days' schedule blocked off for reading particular books, during an election campaign! For me (and I believe, for them too), reading is serious business and the rewards really are great. This is not 'curl up by the fire with a nice story' and I will suddenly incur some magical benefits. Rather there are some things that are not easily achieved otherwise. Books allow you to efficiently deep dive and when you dedicate lots of hours to it, you can really make staggering progress. Reading all of the books on a particular topic becomes an achievable task. I could spend some hours scouring the internet trying to learn about a particular topic, or I could blast through a 200-300 page book on the topic. When you start treating books as your primary source of learning about new topics, and you build up a sort of grit for getting through books, you become a bit of an information processing machine and it is a bit magical. I nearly always have a stack of books on my desk now and I just plow through them one after another. I would never absorb so much useful information reading articles on the internet or watching videos. Books are #1 for efficiency.. Right now I'm primarily reading Shirer's The Rise And Fall of The Third Reich.. It's a massive book (1100+ pages) and will take me over 2 weeks. It's hard to imagine how I could possibly get this much information on the same topic any other way. Try and find some documentary series? Follow my nose on wikipedia clicking around? Crap options, mostly. If I do this with two or three more books, by almost any measure, I have become somebody who knows a lot about WW2 and nazi germany. Now follow process with many other topics..

herbertl 6y ago

I definitely appreciate this. Your point reminds me of what Beeple once said about art and creative work: "Looking at creativity as something that’s much less precious will help you stick with it long-term. Along with that, people around you will be a lot more supportive if you’re a bit more flexible and a bit less douchey about it. Like you’re not so pretentious in terms of, 'I’m an artist, I need to blah blah blah.' If you take it down a notch and just look at it as something you have to do today, just like taking a dump or eating supper, then it will be more sustainable in the long run." https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/3/21046790/beeple-mike-winkelmann-interview-everyday-post-apocalyptic-baby-yoda-zuckerberg https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/3/21046790/beeple-mike-winke...

Moodles 6y ago

Reminds me of the xkcd about older generations always complaining about younger generations no matter what, but with technology reversed. “Look at them reading! How sad! A completely linear storyline! Never changes with a re-do, not even a bit. Sitting there, in silence! No social interaction. That can’t be good for their brains. Why don’t they play video games instead?”

matthewh806 6y ago

This is a great comment that really hits the nail on the head for me about how I feel when I see articles like this. I'm not going to deny that reading more effectively & efficiently can be desirable in certain technical reading where the aim is to absorb, digest & learn the material. But in the general sense its kind of the antithesis of why I would read anything. I don't want to knock off as many paper backs as quickly as I can so that I can rattle off a meaningless number and increase my cultural capital. I also find it weird and slightly creepy that people elevate book reading to this almost infinite pedestal. If people get more enjoyment and fulfilment out of playing video games, for example, then that's an equally valid use of time. More so if they're not interested in reading. For me it comes down to if you enjoy reading in and of itself as a hobby then you'll hopefully find time to do it and be enriched because of it. But just trying to force yourself to blitz through as "effectively" as possible loses the magic. Especially when you consider how much time and thought the very best writers put into every single construction.

lmarcos 6y ago

> reading is just a hobby. It's a fun, intellectually challenging, infinitely variable hobby with a very long and distinguished history. But ultimately you could learn just as much about yourself and the world by doing pottery, woodworking, kayaking, knitting or whatever else you like to do with your spare time. Making it into such a self-serious pursuit kills most of the joy (and value, for that matter) Definitely, but reading is easier :)

ssivark 6y ago

Note similarities with the discourse about getting a full night’s sleep, and eating healthier :-) I think all of these sometimes play the role of “premium mediocre” virtue signaling.

jasonv 6y ago

I agree and disagree, and disagree because in the world we live in, we read more words than ever, but reading books -- things that people craft over time, sometimes with facts and references, and that are stable enough elements in the world that we can have long, thoughtful, referenced reviews and discussions about -- probably less so than in the past. We don't "review" and discuss blog posts for years on end, the way you can read and discuss books, and books from other countries, in other languages, from previous centuries. I joke that most parties devolve into a discussion about "what have you watched lately?" and where that discussion used to include movies and films, people at parties mostly talk about TV shows. So books, for those who are still fitting them into their lifestyle, even after work and family and internet, are slightly more rarefied than they used to be. Moreso than we probably need.

tmarice 6y ago

> Longform reading is magic because it's rarer than ever - it's an art now, according to people like this author. Adler wrote "How to Read a Book" (which this article is about) originally in 1940, I wouldn't call that "now". HTRAB is a bit dry and over-analytical, but it's definitely practical. It enumerates all questions that you should ask yourself while reading analytically, and while this may sound like an overkill, unless you're paying attention, you'll likely skip some of the steps. I read many great books only to find that they completely evaporated from my head in a week or two. Isn't it a waste of time to spend months reading Brothers Karamazov, and not be changed by that experience? Reading for entertainment and information already is easy as breathing for most people, but for reading for understanding to be as easy as breathing, you need to deliberately practice it. While Adler's advice is valid, it lacks another important component, and that's discussion. A good book club (reading the great books, not whatever's on top of the NYT bestseller list) will change the entire experience and increase knowledge retention.

ceilingcorner 6y ago

Reading is not a hobby. It is the foundation of civilization as we know it. The issue is with the dearth of actual quality reading that goes on today, when everyone congratulates themselves for reading Harry Potter.

jogjayr 6y ago

> It's almost like reading has been elevated to a kind of rare alchemy, whereby you can unlock secret cheat codes to life I owe my career and livelihood to my ability to study, learn and retain information, and manipulate words and abstract symbols. In other words, to reading. Reading well, and quickly, is a magic superpower with practical benefits.

kiba 6y ago

Reading books for fun is OK, but very few people read book strategically.

pjfin123 6y ago

I think I've learned a lot more from Wikipedia rabbit holes than a lot of books I've read.

hinkley 6y ago

If I had to make a bald faced guess? Now that everyone is 'on to' the Skinner Box aspects of Facebook, people are finding other dopamine buttons to push. Getting people amped up about things they're gonna do feels good (so good, in fact, they forget to do them).

phobosanomaly 6y ago

There are two kinds of reading. Reading that is hard and reading that is easy. Nobody who reads 100 books a year (or even 50 as the author cops to) is reading anything particularly difficult. It's either fluff self-help, or fiction that vacuums your attention in, or a medium article by some MBA blown up to 250 pages by a publisher, or something you should be listening to as an audiobook on your commute. Look at what the author of the article is reading! Come on, this stuff is embarrassingly easy. It sure as hell ain't Knuth. I'm an advocate of reading about 6-8 books per-year, and it is miserable. About 300 pages into a nonfiction technical book and I'm pacing around the kitchen island, djent in the headphones cranked up to 1,000, jaw clenched on my nicotine gum, 12 cups of coffee playing chicken with my guts, muttering to myself, scribbling nonsensical notes in the margin. Miserable. It sucks. I absolutely hate it. I don't understand 30% of the goddamn thing. But, I learn a hell of a lot. So, I strongly distrust anyone who brags about reading, and I listen closely to anyone who bitches and moans and complains, but slogs their way through a small number of serious, technical, nonfiction books per-year. The difference between reading SICP and reading Simon Sinek is immeasurable.

ohduran 6y ago
I wish people bragged about reading ONE book. "Heard that you read a lot, what are you reading lately?", "Well, I've been at it with The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the last five years, highly recommended".
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  If you're into that kind of thing, I highly recommend William T. Vollmann's Imperial.

xtiansimon 6y ago

> "...interesting trend in our discourse..." > "...more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much ... "motivation porn"..." > "..aspirational message - imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini.." > "...too many people have come to see reading as a lofty..." > "reading is just a hobby" > "Making it into such a self-serious pursuit kills most of the joy." > "...you read books, we all read books. Everybody poops, and everybody reads books." WHAT?? This comment is apoplectic with contradictory statements and false beliefs. What could possibly be accomplished by it? It's an unapologetic rant on reading and writing on, of all places, one of the most text focused news and discussion sites on internet. Sheesh! Clearly, for some people reading is not just for entertainment, or 'joy'. And, clearly, for some of these people, their joy is also writing about reading (hence the OP). I do agree on one thing suggested by the response, though not said directly. Reading and Writing may converge into a bizarre infinite loop. If you find this maddening, rage inducing, then consider yourself warned! There is one book which you must not read. Dare I say it's name? YES! I DARE! Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter [1]. It is not an easy read for the shitter. You may even need the assistance of this MIT Open CourseWare video series on YouTube [2] about the book. Read this book at your own PERIL! Extreme brain expansion may occur. WHEW. (Now I'm going to site quietly and meditate.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWZ2Bz0tS-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWZ2Bz0tS-s