29 ms·

Reading fast, reading well, and reading widely (2020)

189 points by ipnon 4y ago

andsoitis 4y ago
> … I go through five or ten books a day. And which parts of them I’ve read you can debate – maybe it washes out to be two or three books a day. Some good nights you can get through five whole books… Smells like BS.
- briga 4y ago
  Some people are just really gifted readers. Whether through some combination of learning to read early or just being able to skip the ‘sub-vocalization’ part of reading, many are able to get through hundreds of books a year. It’s a kind of super-power if you think about it. I don’t think I’ve gotten faster at reading as I’ve aged, but I’ve certainly gotten better at skimming through texts. If you’re relatively familiar with a subject you’ll know which sections of text you can skim over and which sections are worthy of careful reading
  - xxxtentachyon 4y ago
    I don’t subvocalize and haven’t for many years, but when I did (and more so now), the speed-limiting factor was never the time it took to read the word, but to comprehend what’s on the page in the sense of understanding it. You can probably get away with 200+ pages per hour if you’re not reading for comprehension, but it’s hard to imagine getting anything out of a difficult text at that speed.
    - briga 4y ago
      I think that’s an important point, and not all texts are made equal. Reading and understanding 200 pages of Heidegger is very different than reading 200 pages of Harry Potter. Part of reading well is know what to spend the time on.
      - HeavenBanned 4y ago
        Heidegger was a Nazi, besides, and Being And Time and the concept of Dasein are rubbish -- he was a circular reasoner and a poor communicator -- and B&T really doesn't purport any new claim that hasn't already been made in some form or fashion since Socrates. 200 pages of Aristotle makes more sense. I would just watch Sugrue's Princeton lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaobMHescwg&t=476s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaobMHescwg&t=476s if you're interested in getting the gist of Heidegger without having to slog through his nonsense. It all goes back to the Overman in some form or fashion. I'm rambling now.
      - quickthrower2 4y ago
        200 pages of math text is probably a year of full time undergrad study.
        paulpauper 4y ago
        depends hugely on the math book
  - paulpauper 4y ago
    It's sometimes called photo reading, and it's likely genetic and correlated with high IQ (which Tyler certainly possesses). Someone described it as not having to process the letters or words individually but as a chunk. For example, when you see a McDonald's logo, you don't have to mentally recite the word "McDonald's" but you instantly know what it is. So with photo reading, this can apply to entire sentences. I think this how some people can speed read and not sacrifice comprehension.
  - periphrasis 4y ago
    I’m not sure avoiding sub vocalisation is an advantage unless your only priority is speed. If you’re reading poetry or rhetorical writing, i.e. a speech, and if you’re neither sub vocalizing nor reading aloud, then you’re missing most of what’s on offer: the careful arrangement of rhythm and sound to create literary effect.
- DantesKite 4y ago
  If you’ve listened to Tyler Cowen, he seems to have a deep erudition about a broad range of topics. Maybe most people can’t pull it off, but he can.
- PainfullyNormal 4y ago
  From TFA: > People feel compelled to finish books they’ve started – that’s just a tax on your reading. Why would you do that to yourself? He clearly doesn't finish "five or ten books a day". It also sounds like he doesn't read a single book until it's done. He hops from book to book, even if they're good books. I've heard a lot of people do that. On an episode of Would I Lie To You, Victoria Coren Mitchell said she's in various states of completion on 7-8 books at a time. If you want a laugh, here's the segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHbSBjuoVE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHbSBjuoVE4
  - Forgeties79 4y ago
    I’ll juggle a few pieces of any media at any given time but my goodness, 7-8 books at a time? I’ve got ADHD and that still gives me anxiety.
    - skydhash 4y ago
      Not that hard if you have good memory. Mine works my association. I can forgot all about a book, but as soon as I saw the cover I can give you the rough plot. If I saw the table of content, I can give you a summary of each chapter. I don’t hope between books as I don’t force myself to finish what I don’t like. But I can only reread books after a good deal of time (3 years mostly). Earlier than that, I just find myself skipping ahead as I remember stuff before I read them.
- georgia_peach 4y ago
  I also call BS. If he only did two of the three, he'd be far more interesting than he is.
  - buzzy_hacker 4y ago
    If there’s one thing Tyler Cowen is not it’s uninteresting.
- HeavenBanned 4y ago
  I remember I read one book when I was a child that promised to raise your IQ by reading pages of a book within seconds like you're looking at an autostereogram. LMAO! These crooks, I tell yah.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  I think when he says "go through" he does not mean cover to cover, but either skim parts or only read part of the book, and maybe some of the books are short. It does seem sorta ridiculous.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
emmo 4y ago
I'm sorry, but that seems like an absolutely miserable way to experience books.
- tartoran 4y ago
  Not all books are experience worthy, some are even frustrating to read cover to cover.
- zahma 4y ago
  I think something that went unsaid here is that readers have fundamentally different reasons to pick up a book. Someone like Tyler Cowen, or indeed many commenters here, are quite keen to absorb knowledge, and time may be limited. I enjoy reading for learning, but I also enjoy reading to quiet my mind, to practice focus, and to bring myself joy from the beauty of a tapestry of words. I agree with you that some of these objectives can’t be accomplished by ruthlessly discarding a book that doesn’t immediately captivate.
  - emmo 4y ago
    You're right, that's absolutely valid. And there surely are plenty of non-fiction books that could be summed up in a few pages.
- viburnum 4y ago
  His career as a lobbyist for the Koch brothers requires him to never learn too much (“it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”).
  - astrange 4y ago
    - crdrost 4y ago
      So like I don't appreciate this sort of thread normally, I feel like it pollutes our contexts. (Though I confess on some occasions saying to myself something like “this is going to get downvoted to hell, but I have the karma to afford that” so who am I to judge.) But in this case, I wanted to say thank you to the folks in this thread for a different reason. This sort of comment actually helps me get a sort of side channel of information for this really implausible claim that he reads 5 books a day. I have actually read five books a day for two days straight, it was intense. Like, “oh it's dark outside, I should probably eat something today” intense. The idea that you average that every day, goes from enthusiasm straight over to obsession. Voracious readers that I know tend to finish 100-200 books per year (which is also how they prefer to measure—who measures per day?!) so I don't think my personal experience is atypically slow. And it's like, I read this comment thread and now I have more context... Okay, if this person is mostly known for moderating a blog, first off I can mentally degrade the claim to just, bragging about yourself on the internet, so sure, probably exaggerated... Maybe only does these binges once a week, but really does binge five books a day, just doesn't sustain it every day. But second, I mean, maybe he really is reading the sort of stuff that only merits 5 seconds per page, “okay so this person is from that school, they are hitting the major talking points, yada yada yada, oh hey, here's one atypical idea for folks from there, do I think that they are likely to have a second big idea, no, close book and consider it read.” One misses a certain luxurious Joy from reading this way, but if one was not reading joyous work in the first place then that's fine. That in turn helps me better understand what the original article is trying to talk about, so kudos!
kzrdude 4y ago
Yes, don't spend time on books you don't feel like. That is a good rule.. don't be afraid to.give up a book early and find a better one.
queuebert 4y ago
By his metric, I "read" fifty books every time I go to a bookstore.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Interesting but I decline the invitation to feel guilty about my book a year max habit. Non fiction books to me are labourious because convention means they need to spill a few thousand words when 1000 will do. Most can be a cheat sheet. With the words “just trust me” replacing the 500 anecdotes. Less is more. The action to reading ration is almost always to low. If you read 200 pages but haven’t practiced or implemented anything then it is a bit useless. This would be interesting for fiction too. Maybe some end of chapter open ended questions. I would probably enjoy it more.
karaterobot 4y ago
> People feel compelled to finish books they’ve started – that’s just a tax on your reading. Why would you do that to yourself? Imagine a world where any restaurant you tried you had to keep on going there for days or weeks, you’d hardly ever go out to eat. I got this advice from an English Lit professor 20 or so years ago. His advice was: "Read the first 50 pages, if the author hasn't earned your attention by then, you can stop reading. You'll never read all the good books anyway, don't waste your time on the bad ones." A literature professor, mind. It's among the top pieces of advice I've ever put into practice. It's liberating. I try to pass on this advice, but it's rare that anybody sees the wisdom there.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  It's not like this can work for college or high school reading assignments, in which you have to read the whole thing and cannot bail out. Maybe this is why some kids grow up not liking reading...they are forced to read books they dislike in school.
  - jimbob45 4y ago
    SparkNotes can get you through enough of a book for a C in a small fraction of the time it would take to read the book. In fact, I got more out of SparkNotes’ vernacular-ified versions of Shakespeare than I did out of reading the actual Shakespeare.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    This is where reading smarter works for you. Unless you're actually studying for your own interest (and this is a good thing of itself), the goal in a college course isn't to read the assigned texts, it's to maximise your grade in the course. Usually with a minimum required effort. If you are studying for your own interest, the text will probably be intrinsically interesting to you, and you don't have a problem. If you're reading "for the course", then consider what the goal of the reading is. This will vary by subject and text, but generally: - Skills courses (maths, engineering, comp sci) tend to focus on learning a specific skill or ability. Focus on what delivers that. Often the assigned text is not the best. - Theory courses (typically social sciences and some humanities) focus on understanding a concept and its applications or instances. - Knowledge courses (law, medicine, philosophy) often require memorisation of a large body of knowledge. In all cases, examination or essays will only focus on a small quantity of the material. Understanding how tests are structure or how essays or presentations are graded gives you a leg up here. Specific approaches will vary by subject, course, and instructor, but "read it all" is virtually never actually required. A good study group can be invaluable, if the group and its members understand what is required to pass the specific course.
colechristensen 4y ago
Most popular nonfiction books these days contain very little information, should be about a dozen pages long, and can indeed be mostly skipped. There is a good art to skimming and carefully selecting books that get your full attention, there is a lot of garbage out there. If you only have, say, 20 minutes with a book, you can get a lot out of it. This does offend people who really like books who read most of their books every word. Lots of books don’t deserve that and you’ll get more out of books if you realize that. And yes you can absorb a lot of a topic by only spending a short time with many books. But still, some books do deserve to be read word for word, others studied for years.
- f0e4c2f7 4y ago
  I tend to agree. While some nonfiction is enjoyable I find a lot of the better writing to be in fiction or textbooks.
- abc_lisper 4y ago
  This is very surprising to me. Can you tell more about your method and a couple of books you read like this and what you learnt from them.
  - endominus 4y ago
    The book How to Read a Book (by Mortimer Adler) goes into some detail about the levels of reading (skimming, full reading, analytical, and syntopical) and attention that should be paid to books, and describes good technique for quickly skimming a book to determine what it says, how well it makes its point, and whether more careful reading is needed.
    - abc_lisper 4y ago
      Yeah, I have actually read that book. But he doesn’t say you can learn a lot by reading like this. In fact he says that a book should be read twice, second time soon after finishing it the first time.
- jrvarela56 4y ago
screye 4y ago
Imo, 99.9% books aren't worth reading. If a book's value can be captured within its cliff notes, then it should have been a long form blog to begin with. Of the 0.1% worth reading, a majority are hard to actually finish. IE. Textbooks. Informative but doesn't become more than the sum of its parts. This leaves the ones that can be read, and are worth reading. The absolute best. These books have a few common traits. 1. Literary value akin to music. The sheer joy of the act of reading. Pure entertaintment. 2. Philosophy. Everything is philosophy. But good philosophy is felt through a book before it is even stated. 3. Anecdotes that hit beyond standard tropes. Unique anecdotes either in scale, investment or anomalous structure that carry you to the philosophical conclusion. 4. Compression and focus : what not to write and how express it. Often, this is the biggest shortcoming of almost good books written a compilation of great ideas. I have consistently found these 4 to be the best way to evaluate the value of a book for me. Everything else is secondary.
- JonathanMerklin 4y ago
  I'd love to hear some of your recommendations for books you've read or skim-evaluated that yield a large magnitude vector on your <1, 2, 3, 4>-space.
  - screye 4y ago
    The closest has been the book I'm reading (and should have finished by now) - "Why the west rules for now". No book drives the 'geography is destiny' point home as well as this book. It is one of the rare textbooks that is a delight to read. Lastly, the anecdotes highlight the 'history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes' adage in a uniquely convincing manner. It is one of the few books I see recommended on both center-left (r/askhistorians) and center-right (IDW) platforms. Catch-22 is another such delightful book without a single fault. It is a cliché now, but it must have been a revelation to see a book capture such a fundamental idea so perfectly through anecdotes. No wonder the title of book became a phrase to represent the phenomenon itself. Somewhat disappointingly for hipsters, most English language classics are classics for a reason. There are plenty of discerning readers out there, so good books with moderate resources eventually reach a level of deserved critical acclaim. That being said, there is still a lot of underappreciated foreign-language literature yet to be fully appreciated.
spookybones 4y ago
I have ten meals I want to eat, but only ten minutes to eat all of them. How can I do this well? Any advice?
- tartoran 4y ago
  Sort your meals by most to least favorite then eat what you can slowly. Whatever you eat in 10 minutes is likely enough for you.
- chrismarlow9 4y ago
  Put it all in a blender and chug.
  - pyinstallwoes 4y ago
    So lossless compression?
    - dEnigma 4y ago
      Something is definitely lost.
      - pyinstallwoes 4y ago
        The space between?
Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 4y ago
maybe not a particularly useful comment to many, but there's a recent Econtalk episode with Tyler Cowen on the topic of reading: https://www.econtalk.org/tyler-cowen-on-reading/ https://www.econtalk.org/tyler-cowen-on-reading/ (transcript available on the site as well). I enjoyed the episode a lot. Not sure if better than the podcast episode the submission story is based on, but I don't know the podcast in question and like Econtalk. And since the latter seems to get some love with the HN crowd regularly, thought I'd make some people aware.
sebmellen 4y ago
I have always loved Naval Ravikant’s thoughts on reading (see https://youtube.com/watch?v=z6rklFf69z8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=z6rklFf69z8), which align nicely with this article.
braingenious 4y ago
>I go through five or ten books a day. This is a great example of self-help “optimized performance for super geniuses with enormous brains” drivel that I’ve talked about being a silly feature of the content on HN! I would absolutely love to watch a live stream of this guy reading between two and ten books per day! (he immediately says the number is likely actually 2-3 depending on your definition of… reading?)
- paulpauper 4y ago
  He can do a livestream in which someone picks a book at random for him to read and then he is quizzed on the book.
  - braingenious 4y ago
    Book 1: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Book 2: Goodnight Moon
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
wawjgreen 4y ago
For me, reading is decided by two factors: 1: is the author intelligent enough? (I filter out atheists, extremists, nonsense-blatherers, rudes and hypocrites etc). 2a: if humanities, does it touch a chord in my heart? the first 100 pages can decide. 2b: if sciences, do I understand enough to keep reading?
- gandalfgreybeer 4y ago
  For 1, how does intelligence correlate with the types you mentioned? Seems pretty subjective.
  - wawjgreen 4y ago
    anyone in that original list of mine has deficient intelligence levels. you need an elementary analysis to see that it is so--there is nothing subjective about logic.
    - Bakary 4y ago
      Did Turing have deficient intelligence levels? We are after all having this conversation in large part thanks to him.
      - wawjgreen 4y ago
        are we? Your history of computing begins with Turing????? Turing--with generous help from the British military--merely followed up and finished (in effect stole and took credit for) what Babbage started and conceived but could not finish due to no financial or governmental support in his time (btw Babbage was no atheist). Turing was merely a functionally normal. There is a difference between a functionally normal atheist (like Turing) and a genius theist like Descartes. When I say deficient--it is in this relative term. The atheist is merely functionally normal but in objective terms, still deficient. It is not atheism that leads to that, but the underlying low level of intelligence that leads to atheism. Fortunately, there's hope: the underlying low level is ARTIFICIALLY-induced. In other words, the human brain is capable of achieving higher intelligence levels even if it has been stuck in low levels for a long time. Functional normality is being just intelligent enough to pull off the type of tasks that given training, both computers and chimpanzees could do--the functionally normal person is somewhere in between. The difference being, as I stated in my second paragraph, that with humans, you can go beyond and remove the artificial barrier to higher level of intelligence. Ask any former atheist and they will be glad to tell you how they fully self-actualized and became smarter beyond their wildest dreams.
wikitopian 4y ago
I tried subscribing to blinkist with this idea of learning a bunch of new things, ...and all I learned was that the only books I enjoy reading are the ones too dense and technical to skim through for key points.
Silverback_VII 4y ago
I have switched almost completely to audiobooks. I believe it's more natural for humans to listen as it removes a layer of useless computation(deciphering symbols and converting into sound or whatever). Reading is now limited to stuff on the internet and for incremental reading software.
- dorchadas 4y ago
  I've found I can't do audiobooks at all. My mind wanders and I lose comprehension, and I can't really do it when I do other things as background noise because, again, no lasting comprehension for me . But maybe it's a difference of why people read, and I see a lot of comments on multiple sides assuming that there's only one correct way to read and it's theirs.
  - Silverback_VII 4y ago
    it's just at the beginning... you will get better at it quickly and your comprehension will also increase.
    - dorchadas 4y ago
      Not really. I've been trying it regularly with podcasts for years and haven't gotten any better at being able to focus on it. I'm just better at achieving actual understanding through text. Besides, I'd never try to listen to anything actually deep -- can you imagine listening to Nietzsche?
      - cosmiccatnap 4y ago
        I can and have. The author makes it quite engaging compared to reading it in book form which I have also done.
        dorchadas 4y ago
        But how much did you comprehend? Were you able to easily go back when you didn't understand something or re-listen to a specific part to make sure you understood it? It doesn't seem very conducive to a deep understanding of any topic, let alone deep understanding. I for one can't imagine actually getting much out of a 'deeper' book via audio, even if I could sit and listen to them with the comprehension levels I get out of reading.
fedeb95 4y ago
I pretty much agree on everything, plus three personal ideas about reading: 1) there's no need to cluster. I like better to read different topics at once, you don't know what ideas are in there that may apply to other fields by analogy or something 2) read very specific books over more broader stuff, sonetimes. For instance, a book about the birds of zone X may be better than a books on birds 3) read controversial books or books that has been controversial. Books that stimulated people are more likely to stimulate you
Randomer003 4y ago
Absolutely agree with the author's idea that you shouldn't waste your time on bad books, but also wanted to highlight his idea of reading in clusters. I find that to be one way to really gain depth on a topic. I thought I was a bit of a buff on Ancient Roman history after finishing Mary Beard's SPQR. After reading Tom Holland's Rubicon, and some of Dan Carlin's podcasts on it, I realized how complex, and full of disagreement that world is. It really gave me a huge appreciation for the people that actually study this stuff, moreso than if I had just read the one book.
Tomis02 4y ago
I see the article advocates for quantity over quality, superficial skimming over deep analysis, and quitting when things become uncomfortable. I strongly disagree with this stance. I believe that instead of reading many books, you should read few books very well (it's a saying by a classic); and that high quality books are usually not easy, you need to put in some effort - generally, things that are worth it don't come easy. I also don't understand the fetish for reading "many" books. What is your goal? Do you want to be a better human being, deepen your understanding of the human condition, get a taste of the best this art form has to offer? Or do you just want to kill time or impress others with the quantity of books read?
- falcolas 4y ago
  Why not all 5? Seems like a reasonable way to pass time.
- larve 4y ago
  Ironically, that's exactly the points brought up... later down the article.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
  The article addresses all of your concerns. > "How long did it take you to read that book?" - "57 years". It's a humble brag, but an interesting point. Once you've gained the knowledge of 57 years of reading books you can skim parts you already 'know'. Also, there are plain and simply bad books out there. You've only got so much time to "deepen your understanding of the human condition" as you put it, so why let the author waste it. >I also don't understand the fetish for reading "many" books. What is your goal? Knowledge
  - Tomis02 4y ago
    I suspect your point and my point did not intersect. He's advocating for high throughput ingestion of books, exiting the process as early as possible. My point is that you should select a small number of books that are fundamental or iconic to humanity (or at least the civilisation or country you're part of) and read those very well, rather than the latest New York Times best seller. From the article: "the important thing is to be ruthless with the books that are not good". Well, the criteria for what's good is quite fuzzy, so I can only suspect the author is implying "not good" means "I don't like it". Sticking to your comfort zone has pros and cons. > Knowledge The genre I had in mind was fiction. In the case of knowledge in scientific fields, this is generally distilled in academia and scientific papers. With books not being peer-reviewed, you'd often need to follow up their claims with actual verification work. The author of the article doesn't strike me as a person that would go to such lengths. Anyway, that's just me.
poxwole 4y ago
Or: How to take all the joy out of reading.
woopwoop 4y ago
What is the point of reading? Most people would say "learning". So, to be provocative, I will make the following, slightly exaggerated, point. I have never, not once in my life, learned something important by reading about it. Everything meaningful I've learned, I've learned by doing. When you read a textbook, you can almost skip to the exercises immediately. That's where the learning is done anyway.
- recursiveturtle 4y ago
  Without tremendously disagreeing with your admittedly exaggerated point, but to add flavor: The learning of a skill or trade -- your skip to the exercises bit -- yes, teach a man to fish, etc. But to stare at, e.g., a polynomial for the first time ever in the exercises and be asked to "factor" it ... well, maybe your Gauss, but for others, it means going back in the chapter to read the axioms, lemma, the laws, examples -- that knowledge you apply to your own understanding, allowing you to learn. Most people didn't fly to Juneau, on a strong hunch, buy a spray paint can, graffiti a local bridge with "This is the capital of Alaska" just so they confirmed or finally learned, by being arrested for vandalism that, in fact, Juneau is the capital of Alaska. We learn this fact from, e.g., reading about it. Not all knowledge was derived through some form of the Scientific Method. To equally play provocative, I will posit, with no linked papers, most of what we know, to a person, is not from doing, but from some form of passive communication.
- wawjgreen 4y ago
  wow, they have downvoted your comment--but you did not belittle anyone, nor is your comment irrelevant. Hey, HN, must we all write what you like or can we have our own original thoughts? why you so afraid of debates? if he is wrong, prove him wrong (I think he is wrong, btw), why do you downvote his answer? that's pathetic and so 1984.
sinuhe69 4y ago
I'll argue reading non-fiction books is not solely about information. It's more about insights and actions, actually. You might have a lot of information, but if you can not use them, then they are as good as useless. The hardest part is not acquiring information but gain a personal insight from what the author presented. And to do that, you have to convinced yourself; set yourself in the mind frame and the experience of the author to gain the (same or different) insight. And that takes more than a bit of time to read and to digest. If you really want to understand deeply, you have to answer the question of how did the author come to these conclusions. That takes even more time than just reading. That is also the reason why distilled summaries (like these on Blinkist or 12 Minutes) read almost all the same and feel outright trivial. The key ideas are often simple enough. But how to get there is in reality the big question.
EdwardCoffin 4y ago
> Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Excerpted from Of Studies, by Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) [1]. The whole essay is only about a page, and well worth reading. [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/575/575-h/575-h.htm#link2H_4_0050 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/575/575-h/575-h.htm#link2H_4...
larve 4y ago
I think a lot of people are missing the point here, or just read the first two points of the article and didn't go further. TLDR: - reading many books doesn't mean that you don't read some of them in depth, or for enjoyment - reading many books quickly is often richer reading a single one end to end - reading many books is something you can learn and practice, it is not "shallow" - over time, what remains of a book read end to end and a book skimmed is often the same --- The first couple of entries focus on reading for the purpose of gaining information, and he expands upon what that means in more detail further down. The whole "5 books a day" is for his work. He brings up that he reads in order to answer a specific question or solving a specific problem, and reading books in cluster, which is in fact more "studying" or "working" than reading. He explicitly brings up the fun he gets from reading, in particular fiction, and I don't think he skims through 5 novels a day. In fact, he advocates reading the best book on every subject you don't care about to gain insight and future pleasure from knowing about that domain (or that the first book about a subject that you read, probably more carefully than others, has to make you "travel"). I am in a bit of a similar spot in that I churn through books (mostly programming/systems/science-related, mostly textbooks), and when I work on something, I can "read" through 10 books a day. Not only will those 10 books be about the same subject, and I can pick the one book that is clearly better, but by reading fast and in group, I can focus on concepts, how they are differently examined by different authors, and see relationships between these different approaches. It is a very rich way of reading, and you get better at it over time. Reading 5 books at once in a day can also be: read one book much more carefully, and skimp around and discard the 4 others as have not much more to say than that first one. Or realizing they are "factoid" books that will be useful when I need something very specific. Or reading the first book, and only using the other 4 in order to get a different explanation for a certain concept. Sometimes, I will also pick one of those books and study it in great depth, annotating and dissecting pretty much every page. In those cases, I can maybe go through 10 pages a day. The insights into reading and how to extract information from books gained by these hyperfocused readings translates to being able to skim through a table of contents and index and know that that pretty much counts as "having read" the book. --- Even book I read in detail end to end, 5 years later, I will remember at most one big idea. More importantly, I will remember the overall quality of the book and the table of contents. That's great value, because when I will have to study X, I can zoom in on that book and get my answer. Say I want to read up on prolog implementations, I'll remember the implementations I wrote from SICP and PAIP, I'll remember bratko and the odd NLP books I had, I'll remember that odd Partial Evaluation book, and that will allow me to get a good start for my renewed interest. As I go back to those books, I'll have further things to look up, say the alice book for some storage/query engines material, potentially transaction processing and ddia if I get into more datalog-y stuff. That's because I spent many days skimming 10+ books about each subject, and discarding most of them as just repeats or as "discoverable" resources (as in, the interesting info in them can just be googled ad hoc). Building that kind of organic feel for where good information can be found and what "shape" it has can go very quickly after a while. Extracting the valuable information out of them can also be practiced and become extremely quick. Valuable information is the information I will be able to act upon. For technical information, that can often be completely skipping the content and just reading/doing the exercises, that can be taking very "academic" notes (say, math definitions and proofs or algorithms), or very "philosophical" notes (concepts, relationships between concepts, forming or refining personal concepts). I used to filter a lot by typography and quality of writing as well, but that signal is not as good these days. Plenty of good typography around, but mediocre (even if well edited) content, and on the other hand, great content but shitty direct to print self-publishing. (edit: formatting)
m3kw9 4y ago
“ Every area you don’t given a damn about you probably should read at least one book in. Because the very best book in that area is superb, and you’re not going to know what it is. So if tennis is something you don’t know anything about, well, read Andre Agassi’s memoir. That’s a wonderful book. You don’t have to know about or care about tennis. And just go through other areas – gardening, dogs, turtles, whatever. Find the best book about dogs and read it, and the less you like dogs, actually, the better that book is going to be, because you are not sick of the topic.” Great idea
pretendscholar 4y ago
>… I go through five or ten books a day. That sounds like wilt chamberlain’s 20000 women. If the book is any good it should take months to really understand deeply.

189 points by ipnon 4y ago

> … I go through five or ten books a day. And which parts of them I’ve read you can debate – maybe it washes out to be two or three books a day. Some good nights you can get through five whole books… Smells like BS.

briga 4y ago
Some people are just really gifted readers. Whether through some combination of learning to read early or just being able to skip the ‘sub-vocalization’ part of reading, many are able to get through hundreds of books a year. It’s a kind of super-power if you think about it. I don’t think I’ve gotten faster at reading as I’ve aged, but I’ve certainly gotten better at skimming through texts. If you’re relatively familiar with a subject you’ll know which sections of text you can skim over and which sections are worthy of careful reading
- xxxtentachyon 4y ago
  I don’t subvocalize and haven’t for many years, but when I did (and more so now), the speed-limiting factor was never the time it took to read the word, but to comprehend what’s on the page in the sense of understanding it. You can probably get away with 200+ pages per hour if you’re not reading for comprehension, but it’s hard to imagine getting anything out of a difficult text at that speed.
  - briga 4y ago
    I think that’s an important point, and not all texts are made equal. Reading and understanding 200 pages of Heidegger is very different than reading 200 pages of Harry Potter. Part of reading well is know what to spend the time on.
    - HeavenBanned 4y ago
      Heidegger was a Nazi, besides, and Being And Time and the concept of Dasein are rubbish -- he was a circular reasoner and a poor communicator -- and B&T really doesn't purport any new claim that hasn't already been made in some form or fashion since Socrates. 200 pages of Aristotle makes more sense. I would just watch Sugrue's Princeton lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaobMHescwg&t=476s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaobMHescwg&t=476s if you're interested in getting the gist of Heidegger without having to slog through his nonsense. It all goes back to the Overman in some form or fashion. I'm rambling now.
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      200 pages of math text is probably a year of full time undergrad study.
      - paulpauper 4y ago
        depends hugely on the math book
- paulpauper 4y ago
  It's sometimes called photo reading, and it's likely genetic and correlated with high IQ (which Tyler certainly possesses). Someone described it as not having to process the letters or words individually but as a chunk. For example, when you see a McDonald's logo, you don't have to mentally recite the word "McDonald's" but you instantly know what it is. So with photo reading, this can apply to entire sentences. I think this how some people can speed read and not sacrifice comprehension.
- periphrasis 4y ago
  I’m not sure avoiding sub vocalisation is an advantage unless your only priority is speed. If you’re reading poetry or rhetorical writing, i.e. a speech, and if you’re neither sub vocalizing nor reading aloud, then you’re missing most of what’s on offer: the careful arrangement of rhythm and sound to create literary effect.
DantesKite 4y ago
If you’ve listened to Tyler Cowen, he seems to have a deep erudition about a broad range of topics. Maybe most people can’t pull it off, but he can.
PainfullyNormal 4y ago
From TFA: > People feel compelled to finish books they’ve started – that’s just a tax on your reading. Why would you do that to yourself? He clearly doesn't finish "five or ten books a day". It also sounds like he doesn't read a single book until it's done. He hops from book to book, even if they're good books. I've heard a lot of people do that. On an episode of Would I Lie To You, Victoria Coren Mitchell said she's in various states of completion on 7-8 books at a time. If you want a laugh, here's the segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHbSBjuoVE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHbSBjuoVE4
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  I’ll juggle a few pieces of any media at any given time but my goodness, 7-8 books at a time? I’ve got ADHD and that still gives me anxiety.
  - skydhash 4y ago
    Not that hard if you have good memory. Mine works my association. I can forgot all about a book, but as soon as I saw the cover I can give you the rough plot. If I saw the table of content, I can give you a summary of each chapter. I don’t hope between books as I don’t force myself to finish what I don’t like. But I can only reread books after a good deal of time (3 years mostly). Earlier than that, I just find myself skipping ahead as I remember stuff before I read them.
georgia_peach 4y ago
I also call BS. If he only did two of the three, he'd be far more interesting than he is.
- buzzy_hacker 4y ago
  If there’s one thing Tyler Cowen is not it’s uninteresting.
HeavenBanned 4y ago
I remember I read one book when I was a child that promised to raise your IQ by reading pages of a book within seconds like you're looking at an autostereogram. LMAO! These crooks, I tell yah.
paulpauper 4y ago
I think when he says "go through" he does not mean cover to cover, but either skim parts or only read part of the book, and maybe some of the books are short. It does seem sorta ridiculous.
deleted 4y ago
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emmo 4y ago

I'm sorry, but that seems like an absolutely miserable way to experience books.

tartoran 4y ago
Not all books are experience worthy, some are even frustrating to read cover to cover.
zahma 4y ago
I think something that went unsaid here is that readers have fundamentally different reasons to pick up a book. Someone like Tyler Cowen, or indeed many commenters here, are quite keen to absorb knowledge, and time may be limited. I enjoy reading for learning, but I also enjoy reading to quiet my mind, to practice focus, and to bring myself joy from the beauty of a tapestry of words. I agree with you that some of these objectives can’t be accomplished by ruthlessly discarding a book that doesn’t immediately captivate.
- emmo 4y ago
  You're right, that's absolutely valid. And there surely are plenty of non-fiction books that could be summed up in a few pages.
viburnum 4y ago
His career as a lobbyist for the Koch brothers requires him to never learn too much (“it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”).
- astrange 4y ago
  - crdrost 4y ago
    So like I don't appreciate this sort of thread normally, I feel like it pollutes our contexts. (Though I confess on some occasions saying to myself something like “this is going to get downvoted to hell, but I have the karma to afford that” so who am I to judge.) But in this case, I wanted to say thank you to the folks in this thread for a different reason. This sort of comment actually helps me get a sort of side channel of information for this really implausible claim that he reads 5 books a day. I have actually read five books a day for two days straight, it was intense. Like, “oh it's dark outside, I should probably eat something today” intense. The idea that you average that every day, goes from enthusiasm straight over to obsession. Voracious readers that I know tend to finish 100-200 books per year (which is also how they prefer to measure—who measures per day?!) so I don't think my personal experience is atypically slow. And it's like, I read this comment thread and now I have more context... Okay, if this person is mostly known for moderating a blog, first off I can mentally degrade the claim to just, bragging about yourself on the internet, so sure, probably exaggerated... Maybe only does these binges once a week, but really does binge five books a day, just doesn't sustain it every day. But second, I mean, maybe he really is reading the sort of stuff that only merits 5 seconds per page, “okay so this person is from that school, they are hitting the major talking points, yada yada yada, oh hey, here's one atypical idea for folks from there, do I think that they are likely to have a second big idea, no, close book and consider it read.” One misses a certain luxurious Joy from reading this way, but if one was not reading joyous work in the first place then that's fine. That in turn helps me better understand what the original article is trying to talk about, so kudos!

kzrdude 4y ago

Yes, don't spend time on books you don't feel like. That is a good rule.. don't be afraid to.give up a book early and find a better one.

queuebert 4y ago

By his metric, I "read" fifty books every time I go to a bookstore.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Interesting but I decline the invitation to feel guilty about my book a year max habit. Non fiction books to me are labourious because convention means they need to spill a few thousand words when 1000 will do. Most can be a cheat sheet. With the words “just trust me” replacing the 500 anecdotes. Less is more. The action to reading ration is almost always to low. If you read 200 pages but haven’t practiced or implemented anything then it is a bit useless. This would be interesting for fiction too. Maybe some end of chapter open ended questions. I would probably enjoy it more.

karaterobot 4y ago

> People feel compelled to finish books they’ve started – that’s just a tax on your reading. Why would you do that to yourself? Imagine a world where any restaurant you tried you had to keep on going there for days or weeks, you’d hardly ever go out to eat. I got this advice from an English Lit professor 20 or so years ago. His advice was: "Read the first 50 pages, if the author hasn't earned your attention by then, you can stop reading. You'll never read all the good books anyway, don't waste your time on the bad ones." A literature professor, mind. It's among the top pieces of advice I've ever put into practice. It's liberating. I try to pass on this advice, but it's rare that anybody sees the wisdom there.

paulpauper 4y ago
It's not like this can work for college or high school reading assignments, in which you have to read the whole thing and cannot bail out. Maybe this is why some kids grow up not liking reading...they are forced to read books they dislike in school.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  SparkNotes can get you through enough of a book for a C in a small fraction of the time it would take to read the book. In fact, I got more out of SparkNotes’ vernacular-ified versions of Shakespeare than I did out of reading the actual Shakespeare.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  This is where reading smarter works for you. Unless you're actually studying for your own interest (and this is a good thing of itself), the goal in a college course isn't to read the assigned texts, it's to maximise your grade in the course. Usually with a minimum required effort. If you are studying for your own interest, the text will probably be intrinsically interesting to you, and you don't have a problem. If you're reading "for the course", then consider what the goal of the reading is. This will vary by subject and text, but generally: - Skills courses (maths, engineering, comp sci) tend to focus on learning a specific skill or ability. Focus on what delivers that. Often the assigned text is not the best. - Theory courses (typically social sciences and some humanities) focus on understanding a concept and its applications or instances. - Knowledge courses (law, medicine, philosophy) often require memorisation of a large body of knowledge. In all cases, examination or essays will only focus on a small quantity of the material. Understanding how tests are structure or how essays or presentations are graded gives you a leg up here. Specific approaches will vary by subject, course, and instructor, but "read it all" is virtually never actually required. A good study group can be invaluable, if the group and its members understand what is required to pass the specific course.

colechristensen 4y ago

Most popular nonfiction books these days contain very little information, should be about a dozen pages long, and can indeed be mostly skipped. There is a good art to skimming and carefully selecting books that get your full attention, there is a lot of garbage out there. If you only have, say, 20 minutes with a book, you can get a lot out of it. This does offend people who really like books who read most of their books every word. Lots of books don’t deserve that and you’ll get more out of books if you realize that. And yes you can absorb a lot of a topic by only spending a short time with many books. But still, some books do deserve to be read word for word, others studied for years.

f0e4c2f7 4y ago
I tend to agree. While some nonfiction is enjoyable I find a lot of the better writing to be in fiction or textbooks.
abc_lisper 4y ago
This is very surprising to me. Can you tell more about your method and a couple of books you read like this and what you learnt from them.
- endominus 4y ago
  The book How to Read a Book (by Mortimer Adler) goes into some detail about the levels of reading (skimming, full reading, analytical, and syntopical) and attention that should be paid to books, and describes good technique for quickly skimming a book to determine what it says, how well it makes its point, and whether more careful reading is needed.
  - abc_lisper 4y ago
    Yeah, I have actually read that book. But he doesn’t say you can learn a lot by reading like this. In fact he says that a book should be read twice, second time soon after finishing it the first time.
jrvarela56 4y ago

screye 4y ago

Imo, 99.9% books aren't worth reading. If a book's value can be captured within its cliff notes, then it should have been a long form blog to begin with. Of the 0.1% worth reading, a majority are hard to actually finish. IE. Textbooks. Informative but doesn't become more than the sum of its parts. This leaves the ones that can be read, and are worth reading. The absolute best. These books have a few common traits. 1. Literary value akin to music. The sheer joy of the act of reading. Pure entertaintment. 2. Philosophy. Everything is philosophy. But good philosophy is felt through a book before it is even stated. 3. Anecdotes that hit beyond standard tropes. Unique anecdotes either in scale, investment or anomalous structure that carry you to the philosophical conclusion. 4. Compression and focus : what not to write and how express it. Often, this is the biggest shortcoming of almost good books written a compilation of great ideas. I have consistently found these 4 to be the best way to evaluate the value of a book for me. Everything else is secondary.

JonathanMerklin 4y ago
I'd love to hear some of your recommendations for books you've read or skim-evaluated that yield a large magnitude vector on your <1, 2, 3, 4>-space.
- screye 4y ago
  The closest has been the book I'm reading (and should have finished by now) - "Why the west rules for now". No book drives the 'geography is destiny' point home as well as this book. It is one of the rare textbooks that is a delight to read. Lastly, the anecdotes highlight the 'history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes' adage in a uniquely convincing manner. It is one of the few books I see recommended on both center-left (r/askhistorians) and center-right (IDW) platforms. Catch-22 is another such delightful book without a single fault. It is a cliché now, but it must have been a revelation to see a book capture such a fundamental idea so perfectly through anecdotes. No wonder the title of book became a phrase to represent the phenomenon itself. Somewhat disappointingly for hipsters, most English language classics are classics for a reason. There are plenty of discerning readers out there, so good books with moderate resources eventually reach a level of deserved critical acclaim. That being said, there is still a lot of underappreciated foreign-language literature yet to be fully appreciated.

spookybones 4y ago

I have ten meals I want to eat, but only ten minutes to eat all of them. How can I do this well? Any advice?

tartoran 4y ago
Sort your meals by most to least favorite then eat what you can slowly. Whatever you eat in 10 minutes is likely enough for you.
chrismarlow9 4y ago
Put it all in a blender and chug.
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  So lossless compression?
  - dEnigma 4y ago
    Something is definitely lost.
    - pyinstallwoes 4y ago
      The space between?

Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 4y ago

maybe not a particularly useful comment to many, but there's a recent Econtalk episode with Tyler Cowen on the topic of reading: https://www.econtalk.org/tyler-cowen-on-reading/ https://www.econtalk.org/tyler-cowen-on-reading/ (transcript available on the site as well). I enjoyed the episode a lot. Not sure if better than the podcast episode the submission story is based on, but I don't know the podcast in question and like Econtalk. And since the latter seems to get some love with the HN crowd regularly, thought I'd make some people aware.

sebmellen 4y ago

I have always loved Naval Ravikant’s thoughts on reading (see https://youtube.com/watch?v=z6rklFf69z8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=z6rklFf69z8), which align nicely with this article.

braingenious 4y ago

>I go through five or ten books a day. This is a great example of self-help “optimized performance for super geniuses with enormous brains” drivel that I’ve talked about being a silly feature of the content on HN! I would absolutely love to watch a live stream of this guy reading between two and ten books per day! (he immediately says the number is likely actually 2-3 depending on your definition of… reading?)

paulpauper 4y ago
He can do a livestream in which someone picks a book at random for him to read and then he is quizzed on the book.
- braingenious 4y ago
  Book 1: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Book 2: Goodnight Moon
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

wawjgreen 4y ago

For me, reading is decided by two factors: 1: is the author intelligent enough? (I filter out atheists, extremists, nonsense-blatherers, rudes and hypocrites etc). 2a: if humanities, does it touch a chord in my heart? the first 100 pages can decide. 2b: if sciences, do I understand enough to keep reading?

gandalfgreybeer 4y ago
For 1, how does intelligence correlate with the types you mentioned? Seems pretty subjective.
- wawjgreen 4y ago
  anyone in that original list of mine has deficient intelligence levels. you need an elementary analysis to see that it is so--there is nothing subjective about logic.
  - Bakary 4y ago
    Did Turing have deficient intelligence levels? We are after all having this conversation in large part thanks to him.
    - wawjgreen 4y ago
      are we? Your history of computing begins with Turing????? Turing--with generous help from the British military--merely followed up and finished (in effect stole and took credit for) what Babbage started and conceived but could not finish due to no financial or governmental support in his time (btw Babbage was no atheist). Turing was merely a functionally normal. There is a difference between a functionally normal atheist (like Turing) and a genius theist like Descartes. When I say deficient--it is in this relative term. The atheist is merely functionally normal but in objective terms, still deficient. It is not atheism that leads to that, but the underlying low level of intelligence that leads to atheism. Fortunately, there's hope: the underlying low level is ARTIFICIALLY-induced. In other words, the human brain is capable of achieving higher intelligence levels even if it has been stuck in low levels for a long time. Functional normality is being just intelligent enough to pull off the type of tasks that given training, both computers and chimpanzees could do--the functionally normal person is somewhere in between. The difference being, as I stated in my second paragraph, that with humans, you can go beyond and remove the artificial barrier to higher level of intelligence. Ask any former atheist and they will be glad to tell you how they fully self-actualized and became smarter beyond their wildest dreams.

wikitopian 4y ago

I tried subscribing to blinkist with this idea of learning a bunch of new things, ...and all I learned was that the only books I enjoy reading are the ones too dense and technical to skim through for key points.

Silverback_VII 4y ago

I have switched almost completely to audiobooks. I believe it's more natural for humans to listen as it removes a layer of useless computation(deciphering symbols and converting into sound or whatever). Reading is now limited to stuff on the internet and for incremental reading software.

dorchadas 4y ago
I've found I can't do audiobooks at all. My mind wanders and I lose comprehension, and I can't really do it when I do other things as background noise because, again, no lasting comprehension for me . But maybe it's a difference of why people read, and I see a lot of comments on multiple sides assuming that there's only one correct way to read and it's theirs.
- Silverback_VII 4y ago
  it's just at the beginning... you will get better at it quickly and your comprehension will also increase.
  - dorchadas 4y ago
    Not really. I've been trying it regularly with podcasts for years and haven't gotten any better at being able to focus on it. I'm just better at achieving actual understanding through text. Besides, I'd never try to listen to anything actually deep -- can you imagine listening to Nietzsche?
    - cosmiccatnap 4y ago
      I can and have. The author makes it quite engaging compared to reading it in book form which I have also done.
      - dorchadas 4y ago
        But how much did you comprehend? Were you able to easily go back when you didn't understand something or re-listen to a specific part to make sure you understood it? It doesn't seem very conducive to a deep understanding of any topic, let alone deep understanding. I for one can't imagine actually getting much out of a 'deeper' book via audio, even if I could sit and listen to them with the comprehension levels I get out of reading.

fedeb95 4y ago

I pretty much agree on everything, plus three personal ideas about reading: 1) there's no need to cluster. I like better to read different topics at once, you don't know what ideas are in there that may apply to other fields by analogy or something 2) read very specific books over more broader stuff, sonetimes. For instance, a book about the birds of zone X may be better than a books on birds 3) read controversial books or books that has been controversial. Books that stimulated people are more likely to stimulate you

Randomer003 4y ago

Absolutely agree with the author's idea that you shouldn't waste your time on bad books, but also wanted to highlight his idea of reading in clusters. I find that to be one way to really gain depth on a topic. I thought I was a bit of a buff on Ancient Roman history after finishing Mary Beard's SPQR. After reading Tom Holland's Rubicon, and some of Dan Carlin's podcasts on it, I realized how complex, and full of disagreement that world is. It really gave me a huge appreciation for the people that actually study this stuff, moreso than if I had just read the one book.

Tomis02 4y ago

I see the article advocates for quantity over quality, superficial skimming over deep analysis, and quitting when things become uncomfortable. I strongly disagree with this stance. I believe that instead of reading many books, you should read few books very well (it's a saying by a classic); and that high quality books are usually not easy, you need to put in some effort - generally, things that are worth it don't come easy. I also don't understand the fetish for reading "many" books. What is your goal? Do you want to be a better human being, deepen your understanding of the human condition, get a taste of the best this art form has to offer? Or do you just want to kill time or impress others with the quantity of books read?

falcolas 4y ago
Why not all 5? Seems like a reasonable way to pass time.
larve 4y ago
Ironically, that's exactly the points brought up... later down the article.
TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
The article addresses all of your concerns. > "How long did it take you to read that book?" - "57 years". It's a humble brag, but an interesting point. Once you've gained the knowledge of 57 years of reading books you can skim parts you already 'know'. Also, there are plain and simply bad books out there. You've only got so much time to "deepen your understanding of the human condition" as you put it, so why let the author waste it. >I also don't understand the fetish for reading "many" books. What is your goal? Knowledge
- Tomis02 4y ago
  I suspect your point and my point did not intersect. He's advocating for high throughput ingestion of books, exiting the process as early as possible. My point is that you should select a small number of books that are fundamental or iconic to humanity (or at least the civilisation or country you're part of) and read those very well, rather than the latest New York Times best seller. From the article: "the important thing is to be ruthless with the books that are not good". Well, the criteria for what's good is quite fuzzy, so I can only suspect the author is implying "not good" means "I don't like it". Sticking to your comfort zone has pros and cons. > Knowledge The genre I had in mind was fiction. In the case of knowledge in scientific fields, this is generally distilled in academia and scientific papers. With books not being peer-reviewed, you'd often need to follow up their claims with actual verification work. The author of the article doesn't strike me as a person that would go to such lengths. Anyway, that's just me.

poxwole 4y ago

Or: How to take all the joy out of reading.

woopwoop 4y ago

What is the point of reading? Most people would say "learning". So, to be provocative, I will make the following, slightly exaggerated, point. I have never, not once in my life, learned something important by reading about it. Everything meaningful I've learned, I've learned by doing. When you read a textbook, you can almost skip to the exercises immediately. That's where the learning is done anyway.

recursiveturtle 4y ago
Without tremendously disagreeing with your admittedly exaggerated point, but to add flavor: The learning of a skill or trade -- your skip to the exercises bit -- yes, teach a man to fish, etc. But to stare at, e.g., a polynomial for the first time ever in the exercises and be asked to "factor" it ... well, maybe your Gauss, but for others, it means going back in the chapter to read the axioms, lemma, the laws, examples -- that knowledge you apply to your own understanding, allowing you to learn. Most people didn't fly to Juneau, on a strong hunch, buy a spray paint can, graffiti a local bridge with "This is the capital of Alaska" just so they confirmed or finally learned, by being arrested for vandalism that, in fact, Juneau is the capital of Alaska. We learn this fact from, e.g., reading about it. Not all knowledge was derived through some form of the Scientific Method. To equally play provocative, I will posit, with no linked papers, most of what we know, to a person, is not from doing, but from some form of passive communication.
wawjgreen 4y ago
wow, they have downvoted your comment--but you did not belittle anyone, nor is your comment irrelevant. Hey, HN, must we all write what you like or can we have our own original thoughts? why you so afraid of debates? if he is wrong, prove him wrong (I think he is wrong, btw), why do you downvote his answer? that's pathetic and so 1984.

sinuhe69 4y ago

I'll argue reading non-fiction books is not solely about information. It's more about insights and actions, actually. You might have a lot of information, but if you can not use them, then they are as good as useless. The hardest part is not acquiring information but gain a personal insight from what the author presented. And to do that, you have to convinced yourself; set yourself in the mind frame and the experience of the author to gain the (same or different) insight. And that takes more than a bit of time to read and to digest. If you really want to understand deeply, you have to answer the question of how did the author come to these conclusions. That takes even more time than just reading. That is also the reason why distilled summaries (like these on Blinkist or 12 Minutes) read almost all the same and feel outright trivial. The key ideas are often simple enough. But how to get there is in reality the big question.

EdwardCoffin 4y ago

> Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Excerpted from Of Studies, by Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) [1]. The whole essay is only about a page, and well worth reading. [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/575/575-h/575-h.htm#link2H_4_0050 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/575/575-h/575-h.htm#link2H_4...

larve 4y ago

I think a lot of people are missing the point here, or just read the first two points of the article and didn't go further. TLDR: - reading many books doesn't mean that you don't read some of them in depth, or for enjoyment - reading many books quickly is often richer reading a single one end to end - reading many books is something you can learn and practice, it is not "shallow" - over time, what remains of a book read end to end and a book skimmed is often the same --- The first couple of entries focus on reading for the purpose of gaining information, and he expands upon what that means in more detail further down. The whole "5 books a day" is for his work. He brings up that he reads in order to answer a specific question or solving a specific problem, and reading books in cluster, which is in fact more "studying" or "working" than reading. He explicitly brings up the fun he gets from reading, in particular fiction, and I don't think he skims through 5 novels a day. In fact, he advocates reading the best book on every subject you don't care about to gain insight and future pleasure from knowing about that domain (or that the first book about a subject that you read, probably more carefully than others, has to make you "travel"). I am in a bit of a similar spot in that I churn through books (mostly programming/systems/science-related, mostly textbooks), and when I work on something, I can "read" through 10 books a day. Not only will those 10 books be about the same subject, and I can pick the one book that is clearly better, but by reading fast and in group, I can focus on concepts, how they are differently examined by different authors, and see relationships between these different approaches. It is a very rich way of reading, and you get better at it over time. Reading 5 books at once in a day can also be: read one book much more carefully, and skimp around and discard the 4 others as have not much more to say than that first one. Or realizing they are "factoid" books that will be useful when I need something very specific. Or reading the first book, and only using the other 4 in order to get a different explanation for a certain concept. Sometimes, I will also pick one of those books and study it in great depth, annotating and dissecting pretty much every page. In those cases, I can maybe go through 10 pages a day. The insights into reading and how to extract information from books gained by these hyperfocused readings translates to being able to skim through a table of contents and index and know that that pretty much counts as "having read" the book. --- Even book I read in detail end to end, 5 years later, I will remember at most one big idea. More importantly, I will remember the overall quality of the book and the table of contents. That's great value, because when I will have to study X, I can zoom in on that book and get my answer. Say I want to read up on prolog implementations, I'll remember the implementations I wrote from SICP and PAIP, I'll remember bratko and the odd NLP books I had, I'll remember that odd Partial Evaluation book, and that will allow me to get a good start for my renewed interest. As I go back to those books, I'll have further things to look up, say the alice book for some storage/query engines material, potentially transaction processing and ddia if I get into more datalog-y stuff. That's because I spent many days skimming 10+ books about each subject, and discarding most of them as just repeats or as "discoverable" resources (as in, the interesting info in them can just be googled ad hoc). Building that kind of organic feel for where good information can be found and what "shape" it has can go very quickly after a while. Extracting the valuable information out of them can also be practiced and become extremely quick. Valuable information is the information I will be able to act upon. For technical information, that can often be completely skipping the content and just reading/doing the exercises, that can be taking very "academic" notes (say, math definitions and proofs or algorithms), or very "philosophical" notes (concepts, relationships between concepts, forming or refining personal concepts). I used to filter a lot by typography and quality of writing as well, but that signal is not as good these days. Plenty of good typography around, but mediocre (even if well edited) content, and on the other hand, great content but shitty direct to print self-publishing. (edit: formatting)

m3kw9 4y ago

“ Every area you don’t given a damn about you probably should read at least one book in. Because the very best book in that area is superb, and you’re not going to know what it is. So if tennis is something you don’t know anything about, well, read Andre Agassi’s memoir. That’s a wonderful book. You don’t have to know about or care about tennis. And just go through other areas – gardening, dogs, turtles, whatever. Find the best book about dogs and read it, and the less you like dogs, actually, the better that book is going to be, because you are not sick of the topic.” Great idea

pretendscholar 4y ago

>… I go through five or ten books a day. That sounds like wilt chamberlain’s 20000 women. If the book is any good it should take months to really understand deeply.