5 ms·

Reading the question I was in disbelief: what a miserable way to experience literature (even non-fiction). Just read the book! Enjoy it! What possible goal coul

by OskarS 4y ago

Reading the question I was in disbelief: what a miserable way to experience literature (even non-fiction). Just read the book! Enjoy it! What possible goal could be fulfilled by this kind of incessant note-taking? Really brilliant people, the kind of people that can take different ideas from different sources and synthesize them into new things, they don’t read books in this way. They just read them. If they do take notes, it’s to check something with some other source or if it’s something they want to remember. They don’t make “120 notes about the most interesting ideas” or whatever. That just sounds like some kind of obsessive dedication to a note-taking system, not a way to actually learn anything, let alone as a good way to experience culture.

rsanek 4y ago
Always funny to read sweeping generalizations about "really brilliant people"
quickthrower2 4y ago
As someone without a photographic memory I am quite interested in trying a note taking system like this to increase my enjoyment of reading, and long term benefit of it.
Parzival99 4y ago
"Really brilliant people, the kind of people that can take different ideas from different sources and synthesize them into new things, they don’t read books in this way. They just read them. If they do take notes, it’s to check something with some other source or if it’s something they want to remember." Ah yes, let me take a note of that and remember to mimic these "really brilliant people" who all operate in one way. I think my own view is not too far off yours, oops, but the way you wrote it as a statement of fact (which is really like 4 propositions in one) made me chuckle.
- foldedcornice 4y ago
  To add an example of a brilliant person who operated in a different way via heavy note-taking, philosopher Mortimer J. Adler advocated for note-taking for books that are important to study, after doing an initial read deliberately without note-taking (called "superficial reading"). He wrote a book about it—"How to Read a Book," published in 1940—which was summarized by the Farnam Street blog: https://fs.blog/how-to-read-a-book/ https://fs.blog/how-to-read-a-book/
szundi 4y ago
Lot of comments are mocking this one, but it has a point. These people make connections in their heads while reading. They don’t just read but gaze away sometimes and play games in their heads about these ideas. They vet it. Thinking about them in connection with other stuff just come up in their minds. Notes are to not to forget to follow up something for them mostly. Taking lots of notes are inefficient and diverts you from doing the stuff above. I think.
- larve 4y ago
  That is the point of the article indeed. Think about the book and come up with your own ideas, then write those down and put them into the context of your other ideas. (I read almost exclusively programming/product/art related non-fiction). I am someone who “thinks while writing”. Taking notes while reading a book (I usually write into the book margins) allows me to clarify what I think the author is saying, start bringing in some of my ideas and juxtapose them, reformulate some important points. It is the opposite of taking away from the book reading experience: it makes it oh so more vivid. This also applies to articles on the web and my twitter stream. Seeing how fallible my memory is, I envy people who can recall what they were thinking even just yesterday when reading a complex piece of literature, let alone retrace the complex arguments I make to myself (and the reified author) when reading.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  counterpoint - if taking notes by hand, the reading and then rewriting of an idea is far superior in terms of my ability to recall the fact/idea/etc in the long run. Taking notes can be miserable but it improves my recall 100x.
  - causality0 4y ago
    Taking notes can be miserable but it improves my recall 100x. Exactly. Taking notes is great if you have a goal in mind, like incorporating ideas into your own writing or quickly grasping a complex system you're learning about. It doesn't make sense to apply to everything you read unless you don't read for pleasure at all.
huntoa 4y ago
From an interview with Jim Keller: "I know people that read books, and they are really worried if they're going to remember them. They spend all this time highlighting and analyzing. I read for interest, right? [...] I meditate regularly, and then I think about what I'm thinking about, which is sometimes related to what I'm reading. Then if it's interesting, it gets incorporated. But your brain is this kind of weird thing - you don't actually have access to all the ideas and thoughts and things you've read, but your personality seems to be well informed by it, and I trust that process. So I don't worry if I can't remember somebody's name [in a book], because their idea may have changed, and who I was and I don't remember what book it came from. I don't care about that stuff." - https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-with-jim-keller-laziest-person-at-tesla https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-...
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  That's an interesting view and - I suspect - surprisingly correct. We're shaped by unconscious gestalt understandings, not by small details.
- celeritascelery 4y ago
  "I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
  - legutierr 4y ago
    Sound about right. But still, you remembered that quote somehow.
    - evolvingstuff 4y ago
      May have looked it up.
  - BeetleB 4y ago
    I used to believe that my reading shaped me despite me forgetting 90% of what I read, but I no longer believe it. Or at least, I have no good reason to believe it - it seems more wishful thinking. I've even had experiences where I was profoundly affected by some interesting material, only to later realize that I had encountered that material (in a different book) less than a year prior. I hadn't ignored the material the first time, and had been affected by it then as well. I'm pretty sure it didn't shape me at all. Whether to take notes or not depends on the purpose of reading nonfiction. When I read biographies, I'd like to get the bigger picture rather than the details - so if I do take notes, they are very sparse (e.g. summarizing the major points - perhaps 1-3 pages worth). With some other books I copy quotes of insightful points (e.g. reading The Demon Haunted World, I was struck by how critical he is of the behavior of many skeptics, and noted the irony that many skeptics had recommended the book). But when it comes to potentially useful self help books: There's really no point in reading them if you don't take serious notes. They don't make for great reading, and may actually have useful material for you for life. Books like Gladwell's: They're mostly for entertainment. It's fine not to take notes, although it's probably better to read fiction itself.
mejutoco 4y ago
I think writing on the margins of the book and underlining (even vertical underlining, which is very quick) is a good compromise. I rarely read without a pencil these days. It is low effort and helps me find interesting bits later and engage with the book. I am probably not really brilliant, so YMMV :)
ChildOfChaos 4y ago
I think notes so I can remember though. When I have a thought or an idea, I can then refer to the book I read years ago with my relevant notes, else it's just in one ear and out the other.
marttt 4y ago
I think this resonates really well with an old HN comment (one of my all time favorites) by Alan Kay on reading and remembering: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11809285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11809285 "The simple heuristic is 'relax'." In other words: sleep on it? Might be due to my soon 40yo brain, but I've come to more and more value forgetting things -- hoping that the really relevant to me bits of any information will "float to the surface" of my brain by themselves, over some time.
- marttt 4y ago
  Some more context -- Alan Kay discussing whether he has read 20,000 books in his life or not, and he also drifts to things like remembering and knowledge accumulation in general: https://www.quora.com/How-did-Alan-Kay-read-20k-books https://www.quora.com/How-did-Alan-Kay-read-20k-books I don't know what it is, but I feel like I could read prof Kay's musings over and over again. There's always an almost magical clarity in the way he explains things, and a lot of empathy and respect towards the listener. What a great mind.
larve 4y ago
For me, taking notes is writing, thinking, intellectual stimulation, not passive copying and interrupting the reading. It is engaging with the work, savoring the insights one can gather. If it is not enjoyable, if you feel it is pointless and tedious, then of course don't do it.
zozbot234 4y ago
You can write the notes up in an SRS and make sure that the ideas stay in your long-term memory. While not without their drawbacks (such as a lack of explicit support for dependency hierarchies, that might enable higher-level learning beyond raw "ideas") SRS systems really are ridiculously efficient once you go past the effort of inputing content and first committing it to memory.
lbrito 4y ago
There's a lot of truth there about the obsessive nature some people might take, but I don't think it's that black and white. Some books are denser than others. Sometimes you can stumble into information very dear to your own interests, and the best way to keep preserve that memory is probably taking a note. This might be solely for personal education and fulfillment, by the way.
panarky 4y ago
Some of us aren't "really brilliant people". Some of us are trying to make the most of an average intelligence. While reading 500 pages of fiction or non-fiction, we're introduced to dozens of people, places, events and ideas that we'd like to know more about, but don't want to interrupt the flow of the book to pursue at that moment. Some of these people, places, events and ideas are new to us. Some are familiar but from a different perspective. Sometimes there's a different context or frame that provides new insights into what we thought we already understood. Those of us with average intelligence sometimes find it difficult to remember what we thought was important when we were on page 206 of 500. Even though we're not extraordinarily brilliant, we also want to synthesize different ideas and make connections among various sources for better understanding, and for inspiration into what to read and research next.

by OskarS 4y ago

rsanek 4y ago

Always funny to read sweeping generalizations about "really brilliant people"

quickthrower2 4y ago

As someone without a photographic memory I am quite interested in trying a note taking system like this to increase my enjoyment of reading, and long term benefit of it.

Parzival99 4y ago

"Really brilliant people, the kind of people that can take different ideas from different sources and synthesize them into new things, they don’t read books in this way. They just read them. If they do take notes, it’s to check something with some other source or if it’s something they want to remember." Ah yes, let me take a note of that and remember to mimic these "really brilliant people" who all operate in one way. I think my own view is not too far off yours, oops, but the way you wrote it as a statement of fact (which is really like 4 propositions in one) made me chuckle.

foldedcornice 4y ago
To add an example of a brilliant person who operated in a different way via heavy note-taking, philosopher Mortimer J. Adler advocated for note-taking for books that are important to study, after doing an initial read deliberately without note-taking (called "superficial reading"). He wrote a book about it—"How to Read a Book," published in 1940—which was summarized by the Farnam Street blog: https://fs.blog/how-to-read-a-book/ https://fs.blog/how-to-read-a-book/

szundi 4y ago

Lot of comments are mocking this one, but it has a point. These people make connections in their heads while reading. They don’t just read but gaze away sometimes and play games in their heads about these ideas. They vet it. Thinking about them in connection with other stuff just come up in their minds. Notes are to not to forget to follow up something for them mostly. Taking lots of notes are inefficient and diverts you from doing the stuff above. I think.

larve 4y ago
That is the point of the article indeed. Think about the book and come up with your own ideas, then write those down and put them into the context of your other ideas. (I read almost exclusively programming/product/art related non-fiction). I am someone who “thinks while writing”. Taking notes while reading a book (I usually write into the book margins) allows me to clarify what I think the author is saying, start bringing in some of my ideas and juxtapose them, reformulate some important points. It is the opposite of taking away from the book reading experience: it makes it oh so more vivid. This also applies to articles on the web and my twitter stream. Seeing how fallible my memory is, I envy people who can recall what they were thinking even just yesterday when reading a complex piece of literature, let alone retrace the complex arguments I make to myself (and the reified author) when reading.
LegitShady 4y ago
counterpoint - if taking notes by hand, the reading and then rewriting of an idea is far superior in terms of my ability to recall the fact/idea/etc in the long run. Taking notes can be miserable but it improves my recall 100x.
- causality0 4y ago
  Taking notes can be miserable but it improves my recall 100x. Exactly. Taking notes is great if you have a goal in mind, like incorporating ideas into your own writing or quickly grasping a complex system you're learning about. It doesn't make sense to apply to everything you read unless you don't read for pleasure at all.

huntoa 4y ago

From an interview with Jim Keller: "I know people that read books, and they are really worried if they're going to remember them. They spend all this time highlighting and analyzing. I read for interest, right? [...] I meditate regularly, and then I think about what I'm thinking about, which is sometimes related to what I'm reading. Then if it's interesting, it gets incorporated. But your brain is this kind of weird thing - you don't actually have access to all the ideas and thoughts and things you've read, but your personality seems to be well informed by it, and I trust that process. So I don't worry if I can't remember somebody's name [in a book], because their idea may have changed, and who I was and I don't remember what book it came from. I don't care about that stuff." - https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-with-jim-keller-laziest-person-at-tesla https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-...

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
That's an interesting view and - I suspect - surprisingly correct. We're shaped by unconscious gestalt understandings, not by small details.
celeritascelery 4y ago
"I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- legutierr 4y ago
  Sound about right. But still, you remembered that quote somehow.
  - evolvingstuff 4y ago
    May have looked it up.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  I used to believe that my reading shaped me despite me forgetting 90% of what I read, but I no longer believe it. Or at least, I have no good reason to believe it - it seems more wishful thinking. I've even had experiences where I was profoundly affected by some interesting material, only to later realize that I had encountered that material (in a different book) less than a year prior. I hadn't ignored the material the first time, and had been affected by it then as well. I'm pretty sure it didn't shape me at all. Whether to take notes or not depends on the purpose of reading nonfiction. When I read biographies, I'd like to get the bigger picture rather than the details - so if I do take notes, they are very sparse (e.g. summarizing the major points - perhaps 1-3 pages worth). With some other books I copy quotes of insightful points (e.g. reading The Demon Haunted World, I was struck by how critical he is of the behavior of many skeptics, and noted the irony that many skeptics had recommended the book). But when it comes to potentially useful self help books: There's really no point in reading them if you don't take serious notes. They don't make for great reading, and may actually have useful material for you for life. Books like Gladwell's: They're mostly for entertainment. It's fine not to take notes, although it's probably better to read fiction itself.

mejutoco 4y ago

I think writing on the margins of the book and underlining (even vertical underlining, which is very quick) is a good compromise. I rarely read without a pencil these days. It is low effort and helps me find interesting bits later and engage with the book. I am probably not really brilliant, so YMMV :)

ChildOfChaos 4y ago

I think notes so I can remember though. When I have a thought or an idea, I can then refer to the book I read years ago with my relevant notes, else it's just in one ear and out the other.

marttt 4y ago

I think this resonates really well with an old HN comment (one of my all time favorites) by Alan Kay on reading and remembering: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11809285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11809285 "The simple heuristic is 'relax'." In other words: sleep on it? Might be due to my soon 40yo brain, but I've come to more and more value forgetting things -- hoping that the really relevant to me bits of any information will "float to the surface" of my brain by themselves, over some time.

marttt 4y ago
Some more context -- Alan Kay discussing whether he has read 20,000 books in his life or not, and he also drifts to things like remembering and knowledge accumulation in general: https://www.quora.com/How-did-Alan-Kay-read-20k-books https://www.quora.com/How-did-Alan-Kay-read-20k-books I don't know what it is, but I feel like I could read prof Kay's musings over and over again. There's always an almost magical clarity in the way he explains things, and a lot of empathy and respect towards the listener. What a great mind.

larve 4y ago

For me, taking notes is writing, thinking, intellectual stimulation, not passive copying and interrupting the reading. It is engaging with the work, savoring the insights one can gather. If it is not enjoyable, if you feel it is pointless and tedious, then of course don't do it.

zozbot234 4y ago

You can write the notes up in an SRS and make sure that the ideas stay in your long-term memory. While not without their drawbacks (such as a lack of explicit support for dependency hierarchies, that might enable higher-level learning beyond raw "ideas") SRS systems really are ridiculously efficient once you go past the effort of inputing content and first committing it to memory.

lbrito 4y ago

There's a lot of truth there about the obsessive nature some people might take, but I don't think it's that black and white. Some books are denser than others. Sometimes you can stumble into information very dear to your own interests, and the best way to keep preserve that memory is probably taking a note. This might be solely for personal education and fulfillment, by the way.

panarky 4y ago

Some of us aren't "really brilliant people". Some of us are trying to make the most of an average intelligence. While reading 500 pages of fiction or non-fiction, we're introduced to dozens of people, places, events and ideas that we'd like to know more about, but don't want to interrupt the flow of the book to pursue at that moment. Some of these people, places, events and ideas are new to us. Some are familiar but from a different perspective. Sometimes there's a different context or frame that provides new insights into what we thought we already understood. Those of us with average intelligence sometimes find it difficult to remember what we thought was important when we were on page 206 of 500. Even though we're not extraordinarily brilliant, we also want to synthesize different ideas and make connections among various sources for better understanding, and for inspiration into what to read and research next.