6 ms·

> 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 restau

> 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.
  - ARandomerDude 4y ago
    > A good study group can be invaluable, if the group and its members understand what is required to pass the specific course. Maybe you've had a better experience than I have but over 3 college degrees I've never been part of a study group that was worth the time. The problem is it's so hard to find other motivated people who won't let the group devolve into social hour. After multiple attempts I gave up.
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      Rare, yes, but invaluable. I don't know the magic behind creating, cultivating, or finding one, but I suspect that giving up on the social-hour element is key. It doesn't have to be large either. The Paper Chase is a fictitious example, but might be worth considering, for its successes and failures. Finding the lecturer's own notes doesn't hurt either. As in Chase and also this recent HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335884
jimbob45 4y ago
My grandmother did the opposite. If she was about to put the book down for good, she’d read the last page. If that was good enough, she’d read the second-to-last page. If that was good enough, she’d go back and finish the book from the beginning. Seems like stupid advice but it’s helped me through books I would otherwise have dropped permanently.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- guidoism 4y ago
  This is actually good advice.
Barrin92 4y ago
I don't like this advice. For one because I would have missed out on some incredible books. (the first one that comes to mind for me is Roberto Bolaño's 2666, I struggled with the first part, the rest blew me away). But more importantly to me this seems like a mindset that centers around quick gratification. Perseverance is a useful skill. Thinking the author needs to get you in the first 50 pages is somewhat entitled attitude. The restaurant metaphor seems apt because it seems like taking the "the customer is king" attitude to reading. There's humility involved in reading that requires to give an author time.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  I think this is exactly why people have a hard time with this advice. We're used to thinking we owe the author something because we've chosen to read their book. What this presupposes is that we owe them nothing, in fact it's up to them to justify spending our limited time and attention on their book, rather than in the million other options for books available to us. You will occasionally miss out on a good one by following this advice, but in the end you'll read so many more good books, because you'll spend less time halfheartedly slogging through books you hate and dread.
- nine_k 4y ago
  I think that "first 50 pages" just gives you a poor sample. I often read 5 sections of 5-10 pages from several random parts of a book, including closer to the final. For fiction in can give you "spoilers", but I don't care. A book which is worth reading to the end is usually worth re-reading anyway, despite your knowing the entire plot. "Hamlet" can be seen as a detective story, but we don't read it to find out who is the murderer. A book that can be destroyed by a spoiler is not worth reading, to my mind. In non-fiction spoilers don't exist. But looking at the farther chapters you can see if the author is going to tackle some new and interesting material. First 50 pages of many non-fiction books are often intros, and if the topic is not new to you, you already know what they are trying to explain, and can skim / skip.them.
- guidoism 4y ago
  That's great. Especially if you have a lot of people telling you this is an awesome book worth reading. I've definitely put effort into reading hard books because of this. But mean, 95% of the stuff I read isn't this. It's still useful to glean some info out of but there are only so many masterpieces in the world.
LoveMortuus 4y ago
I always do my best to finish the book, including the foreword and any other additional texts that the book may have. To me, it feels disrespectful to the author to not read the whole book, even if they've been dead for 2000 years, they still deserve respect for the work that they've done. To me, not finishing a book is like looking at only half of a painting - you can't see the whole picture. ^^ But I do understand that these days people are obsessed over not wasting time, even though I disagree with the "must not waste time" mentality. You know, sometimes I quite enjoy pressing the Snooze button and just taking in the cold fresh morning air while enjoying the warmth of my blanket.
- guidoism 4y ago
  I used to think this way, but think about all of the amazing books that you didn't experience because you were stuck on a book that didn't click with you. There are a bazzilion books, you aren't going to read them all, you might as well read what clicks with you.
  - thakoppno 4y ago
    isn’t the really interesting argument here about the next word? edit: should i read the next
  - LoveMortuus 4y ago
    But the problem is that you don't know if the book will click for you later, and click in such a way that it might change the way you look at life. I don't know, what I don't know.
    - dekleinewolf 4y ago
      But based on the first 50 pages, statistically, the chance of this book clicking for you is lower than the chance the next book will click.
    - Sakos 4y ago
      You might also not yet be at a point in your life where you'll be able to appreciate a book. You can't force these things.
jfoutz 4y ago
it took me a good 30-40 years to learn to give up on books. There are quite a few I ground out but they didn't really land. I think there are some that I'll give another go. I'm older, more perspective. There are books I read that I hated but friends enjoyed. There's also stuff that I read as a kid that, well, didn't hold up on a revisit. I imagine I'll give Borges' fantastical realism another shot someday. But at that time in my life it just didn't hook me. There are some big bad Russian books I'll take another stab at as well. I think the Bible I think pushed me over the edge. My profession gives me a certain tolerance for long lists of names and rules. There's some beautiful stuff, there's some horrible stuff. . (no judgment either way about other readers beliefs). But yeah, multiple authors over a long time, with whatever revisions. It's a difficult book. Maybe someday, I'll take another run at big religious texts. Every attempt is sooo hard. There are very few books I'd say I'd never try again, but most are so forgettable to begin with, I doubt I'd ever find them again, or realize this was round 2.
- deckiedan 4y ago
  "The Bible" isn't really one book, and trying to read it as one is ... messy and hard. It's a convenient collection of a whole bunch of short books. I'd think reading individual books would be a better approach. Story books: (written as narrative, can pretty much be read as is, just with lots of historical context need for some "wtf?" And "why is that a good thing?" Moments) Ruth, Esther, Jonah, possibly Mark and Acts. poetic stories: ( narrative content, but expressed in Hebrew poems, so form and patterns etc more than just reading for the story) parts of Genesis, Job, parts of John, and Revelation. History (biased, but still intended to be read as history, contains lots of individual short stories): Parts of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, The Samuels, Kings and chronicles collection, some of the prophets, Luke, Acts... "Wisdom literature" / poetry: Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, song of Solomon... And a whole bunch of prophecy, laws, other stories, collected letters to people, and a whole bucket of misc. Genesis & exodus, as a "ancient Israel primary establishing narrative" maybe a good start if you want to read a whole bunch of the Bible. But then skip and read some stories from later on in Jewish history, try reading some of the more famous Psalms, perhaps with some of the commentaries about them, to see what people believe the meanings behind them are, etc. Checking out some "Bible history timelines" may be helpful too, to get a grasp of when and why different bits were written, and to whom. Reading about Jesus' life, the four gospels basically cover the same stuff, but written to different audiences, with slightly different emphasis (writing to Jews who knew their religious history, compared to writing to non-Jews living in Roman context who were still investigating this new thing, etc). John is kinda poetic, Mark is all about the action, Luke is trying to be methodical, and Matthew brings in a lot of expected past knowledge of things)... Reading them and comparing them can be interesting to see the different perspectives, but any one of them is enough to get the basic idea. After Jesus, Acts gives the continued story, what the early church did. And then most after that is letters addressing specific people and circumstances. Reading them as "blanket rules for all ages" without knowing who and why they were written, knowing about the context, what was already the culture at the time, etc, makes them really easy to misread parts as endorsing things our culture does differently, compared to critiquing the situation at the time... I guess that's true of all ancient literature.
vishnugupta 4y ago
My finish/start ratio is something around 15%. I consider it as a feature and not a bug. It’s the price I have to pay in order to unearth good books that cater to my taste. Also, I have made peace with the fact that I will never be able to read all the good books. It’s a tough pull to swallow but that’s just the way it is unless I spend stupendous amount of time reading which I won’t so it’s OK.
nevster 4y ago
One fun metric I heard: subtract your age from 100 and that's that pages you should read. So, for example, if you're 60, then 100-60 = 40. If it hasn't grabbed you by page 40, toss it.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  I love the implication of inverse relation between accumulation of wisdom over time and a need to get your hands dirty to accumulate that wisdom. That is: The younger you are, the more you need to read a given book in the off chance it might teach you something new and worthwhile. The older you are, the less you need to read a given book because you probably already know whatever it contains.
HellDunkel 4y ago
I too follow this advice and i wish someone would have told me earlier. But hiw do you judge if the book at hand is „interesting“? I for myself try to figure out my emotions towards the book- do i feel a real urge to keep reading? If the answer is yes, you probably wouldn’t even think about it. If not it can be hard to detach oneself from the book. Maybe you like the author or the cover print. Going back to the question above helps. But what is even more important is the selection process. Reading should be fun but selecting your next book can be tedious. Often researching the internet is sufficient but sometimes i have to sit down inside the bookshop and start reading. I often leave without buying anything. Dont buy loads of books and only read a fraction- this is bad advice and will make you loose interest quickly.
molly0 4y ago
But to answer his rhetorical questions, “why is that”? Is it simply because it feels like a failure to not finish what you started, or something else?
rdcc 4y ago
There is a book called “How to talk about books you haven’t read” by Pierre Bayard. It is exactly about this. And the writer is a also a litt prof. Really interesting, but I also feel that reading books is different from eating at a restaurant in a very unquantifiable way. I don’t know.
- abnry 4y ago
  This book helped me be okay with not finishing a book. Another way I put it is that the book is there to serve me, not me to serve the book.
TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
Also true for other forms of media like anime, movies, and internet videos. If you really want to know how it ends, look up a sunmary or watch it at 2x speed with liberal skipping. Skimming technical books is also severely underrated.
- falcolas 4y ago
  2x with skipping is the only way I can watch many “seminal” animes. Most of the time, due to cost saving measures taken while doing the animation, you’re not really missing anything by going fast. As for the skipping, well, all I have to do to justify it is point at the “heavy breathing” scenes in Dragon Ball Z and even the most hardcore fans will forgive me.
hackerlight 4y ago
Another hack: Find a book you sort of want to read, and just watch a 1 hour lecture about the book by the author on YouTube. If you've ever done both of those things before, you will have realized that the Pareto Principle kicks in and you've got almost all of the value from just the lecture. Books as a medium actively encourage unnecessary verbosity. This doesn't work with technical texts, obviously. But for those 150 page pop-sci type books, it's fine.
- reallydontask 4y ago
  > Books as a medium actively encourage unnecessary verbosity. From memory that is the main thesis of this article by Sam Harris (from the article): >If your book is 600 pages long, you are demanding more of my time than I feel free to give. And if I could accomplish the same change in my view of the world by reading a 60-page version of your argument, why didn’t you just publish a book this length instead? https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-future-of-the-book https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-future-of-the-book
  - satysin 4y ago
    I recently read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear and felt exactly this. The book could have easily been one quarter the length and covered all the same material. The contents of the book is quite good albeit not revolutionary. But it should have been around 60 pages not 270. I actually found a fantastic short form version at https://www.chrisbehan.ca/posts/atomic-habits https://www.chrisbehan.ca/posts/atomic-habits which is just as good as the book at explaining the concepts at a fraction of the read time. I advise anyone read that over the book.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    It's also that Paul Graham saying ~"books should be blog posts, blog posts should be tweets".
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    I feel this is a consequence of how cheap books have gotten to produce. Older books, the sort that were copied by hand onto calf skin, tend to have a lot less meandering filler than contemporary literature.
mariusor 4y ago
I usually don't do this. As a counterexample (and they are science fiction works, not necessarily literature) I give you Anathem and Ridley Walker (similarly A Clockwork Orange). They both make use of the same stylistic device of an invented language that you need to untangle and internalize, before you can seamlessly scan the phrases. 50 pages weren't enough for me to understand what the stories were about. I pushed through it and I found both highly satisfying and I enjoyed the language puzzle that they put in front of me. It can be argued that it's clear that the stories did grab me before 50 pages, and that's why I pushed through, and maybe this is right, but I just wanted to clarify that 50 pages might not be enough every time. :)
dekleinewolf 4y ago
I realized this pretty early on in life. There is an unlimited supply of stuff to read - I'm not wasting my precious time on a book I don't like.

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.
- ARandomerDude 4y ago
  > A good study group can be invaluable, if the group and its members understand what is required to pass the specific course. Maybe you've had a better experience than I have but over 3 college degrees I've never been part of a study group that was worth the time. The problem is it's so hard to find other motivated people who won't let the group devolve into social hour. After multiple attempts I gave up.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Rare, yes, but invaluable. I don't know the magic behind creating, cultivating, or finding one, but I suspect that giving up on the social-hour element is key. It doesn't have to be large either. The Paper Chase is a fictitious example, but might be worth considering, for its successes and failures. Finding the lecturer's own notes doesn't hurt either. As in Chase and also this recent HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335884

jimbob45 4y ago

My grandmother did the opposite. If she was about to put the book down for good, she’d read the last page. If that was good enough, she’d read the second-to-last page. If that was good enough, she’d go back and finish the book from the beginning. Seems like stupid advice but it’s helped me through books I would otherwise have dropped permanently.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
guidoism 4y ago
This is actually good advice.

Barrin92 4y ago

I don't like this advice. For one because I would have missed out on some incredible books. (the first one that comes to mind for me is Roberto Bolaño's 2666, I struggled with the first part, the rest blew me away). But more importantly to me this seems like a mindset that centers around quick gratification. Perseverance is a useful skill. Thinking the author needs to get you in the first 50 pages is somewhat entitled attitude. The restaurant metaphor seems apt because it seems like taking the "the customer is king" attitude to reading. There's humility involved in reading that requires to give an author time.

karaterobot 4y ago
I think this is exactly why people have a hard time with this advice. We're used to thinking we owe the author something because we've chosen to read their book. What this presupposes is that we owe them nothing, in fact it's up to them to justify spending our limited time and attention on their book, rather than in the million other options for books available to us. You will occasionally miss out on a good one by following this advice, but in the end you'll read so many more good books, because you'll spend less time halfheartedly slogging through books you hate and dread.
nine_k 4y ago
I think that "first 50 pages" just gives you a poor sample. I often read 5 sections of 5-10 pages from several random parts of a book, including closer to the final. For fiction in can give you "spoilers", but I don't care. A book which is worth reading to the end is usually worth re-reading anyway, despite your knowing the entire plot. "Hamlet" can be seen as a detective story, but we don't read it to find out who is the murderer. A book that can be destroyed by a spoiler is not worth reading, to my mind. In non-fiction spoilers don't exist. But looking at the farther chapters you can see if the author is going to tackle some new and interesting material. First 50 pages of many non-fiction books are often intros, and if the topic is not new to you, you already know what they are trying to explain, and can skim / skip.them.
guidoism 4y ago
That's great. Especially if you have a lot of people telling you this is an awesome book worth reading. I've definitely put effort into reading hard books because of this. But mean, 95% of the stuff I read isn't this. It's still useful to glean some info out of but there are only so many masterpieces in the world.

LoveMortuus 4y ago

I always do my best to finish the book, including the foreword and any other additional texts that the book may have. To me, it feels disrespectful to the author to not read the whole book, even if they've been dead for 2000 years, they still deserve respect for the work that they've done. To me, not finishing a book is like looking at only half of a painting - you can't see the whole picture. ^^ But I do understand that these days people are obsessed over not wasting time, even though I disagree with the "must not waste time" mentality. You know, sometimes I quite enjoy pressing the Snooze button and just taking in the cold fresh morning air while enjoying the warmth of my blanket.

guidoism 4y ago
I used to think this way, but think about all of the amazing books that you didn't experience because you were stuck on a book that didn't click with you. There are a bazzilion books, you aren't going to read them all, you might as well read what clicks with you.
- thakoppno 4y ago
  isn’t the really interesting argument here about the next word? edit: should i read the next
- LoveMortuus 4y ago
  But the problem is that you don't know if the book will click for you later, and click in such a way that it might change the way you look at life. I don't know, what I don't know.
  - dekleinewolf 4y ago
    But based on the first 50 pages, statistically, the chance of this book clicking for you is lower than the chance the next book will click.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    You might also not yet be at a point in your life where you'll be able to appreciate a book. You can't force these things.

jfoutz 4y ago

it took me a good 30-40 years to learn to give up on books. There are quite a few I ground out but they didn't really land. I think there are some that I'll give another go. I'm older, more perspective. There are books I read that I hated but friends enjoyed. There's also stuff that I read as a kid that, well, didn't hold up on a revisit. I imagine I'll give Borges' fantastical realism another shot someday. But at that time in my life it just didn't hook me. There are some big bad Russian books I'll take another stab at as well. I think the Bible I think pushed me over the edge. My profession gives me a certain tolerance for long lists of names and rules. There's some beautiful stuff, there's some horrible stuff. . (no judgment either way about other readers beliefs). But yeah, multiple authors over a long time, with whatever revisions. It's a difficult book. Maybe someday, I'll take another run at big religious texts. Every attempt is sooo hard. There are very few books I'd say I'd never try again, but most are so forgettable to begin with, I doubt I'd ever find them again, or realize this was round 2.

deckiedan 4y ago
"The Bible" isn't really one book, and trying to read it as one is ... messy and hard. It's a convenient collection of a whole bunch of short books. I'd think reading individual books would be a better approach. Story books: (written as narrative, can pretty much be read as is, just with lots of historical context need for some "wtf?" And "why is that a good thing?" Moments) Ruth, Esther, Jonah, possibly Mark and Acts. poetic stories: ( narrative content, but expressed in Hebrew poems, so form and patterns etc more than just reading for the story) parts of Genesis, Job, parts of John, and Revelation. History (biased, but still intended to be read as history, contains lots of individual short stories): Parts of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, The Samuels, Kings and chronicles collection, some of the prophets, Luke, Acts... "Wisdom literature" / poetry: Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, song of Solomon... And a whole bunch of prophecy, laws, other stories, collected letters to people, and a whole bucket of misc. Genesis & exodus, as a "ancient Israel primary establishing narrative" maybe a good start if you want to read a whole bunch of the Bible. But then skip and read some stories from later on in Jewish history, try reading some of the more famous Psalms, perhaps with some of the commentaries about them, to see what people believe the meanings behind them are, etc. Checking out some "Bible history timelines" may be helpful too, to get a grasp of when and why different bits were written, and to whom. Reading about Jesus' life, the four gospels basically cover the same stuff, but written to different audiences, with slightly different emphasis (writing to Jews who knew their religious history, compared to writing to non-Jews living in Roman context who were still investigating this new thing, etc). John is kinda poetic, Mark is all about the action, Luke is trying to be methodical, and Matthew brings in a lot of expected past knowledge of things)... Reading them and comparing them can be interesting to see the different perspectives, but any one of them is enough to get the basic idea. After Jesus, Acts gives the continued story, what the early church did. And then most after that is letters addressing specific people and circumstances. Reading them as "blanket rules for all ages" without knowing who and why they were written, knowing about the context, what was already the culture at the time, etc, makes them really easy to misread parts as endorsing things our culture does differently, compared to critiquing the situation at the time... I guess that's true of all ancient literature.

vishnugupta 4y ago

My finish/start ratio is something around 15%. I consider it as a feature and not a bug. It’s the price I have to pay in order to unearth good books that cater to my taste. Also, I have made peace with the fact that I will never be able to read all the good books. It’s a tough pull to swallow but that’s just the way it is unless I spend stupendous amount of time reading which I won’t so it’s OK.

nevster 4y ago

One fun metric I heard: subtract your age from 100 and that's that pages you should read. So, for example, if you're 60, then 100-60 = 40. If it hasn't grabbed you by page 40, toss it.

Dalewyn 4y ago
I love the implication of inverse relation between accumulation of wisdom over time and a need to get your hands dirty to accumulate that wisdom. That is: The younger you are, the more you need to read a given book in the off chance it might teach you something new and worthwhile. The older you are, the less you need to read a given book because you probably already know whatever it contains.

HellDunkel 4y ago

I too follow this advice and i wish someone would have told me earlier. But hiw do you judge if the book at hand is „interesting“? I for myself try to figure out my emotions towards the book- do i feel a real urge to keep reading? If the answer is yes, you probably wouldn’t even think about it. If not it can be hard to detach oneself from the book. Maybe you like the author or the cover print. Going back to the question above helps. But what is even more important is the selection process. Reading should be fun but selecting your next book can be tedious. Often researching the internet is sufficient but sometimes i have to sit down inside the bookshop and start reading. I often leave without buying anything. Dont buy loads of books and only read a fraction- this is bad advice and will make you loose interest quickly.

molly0 4y ago

But to answer his rhetorical questions, “why is that”? Is it simply because it feels like a failure to not finish what you started, or something else?

rdcc 4y ago

There is a book called “How to talk about books you haven’t read” by Pierre Bayard. It is exactly about this. And the writer is a also a litt prof. Really interesting, but I also feel that reading books is different from eating at a restaurant in a very unquantifiable way. I don’t know.

abnry 4y ago
This book helped me be okay with not finishing a book. Another way I put it is that the book is there to serve me, not me to serve the book.

TheAceOfHearts 4y ago

Also true for other forms of media like anime, movies, and internet videos. If you really want to know how it ends, look up a sunmary or watch it at 2x speed with liberal skipping. Skimming technical books is also severely underrated.

falcolas 4y ago
2x with skipping is the only way I can watch many “seminal” animes. Most of the time, due to cost saving measures taken while doing the animation, you’re not really missing anything by going fast. As for the skipping, well, all I have to do to justify it is point at the “heavy breathing” scenes in Dragon Ball Z and even the most hardcore fans will forgive me.

hackerlight 4y ago

Another hack: Find a book you sort of want to read, and just watch a 1 hour lecture about the book by the author on YouTube. If you've ever done both of those things before, you will have realized that the Pareto Principle kicks in and you've got almost all of the value from just the lecture. Books as a medium actively encourage unnecessary verbosity. This doesn't work with technical texts, obviously. But for those 150 page pop-sci type books, it's fine.

reallydontask 4y ago
> Books as a medium actively encourage unnecessary verbosity. From memory that is the main thesis of this article by Sam Harris (from the article): >If your book is 600 pages long, you are demanding more of my time than I feel free to give. And if I could accomplish the same change in my view of the world by reading a 60-page version of your argument, why didn’t you just publish a book this length instead? https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-future-of-the-book https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-future-of-the-book
- satysin 4y ago
  I recently read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear and felt exactly this. The book could have easily been one quarter the length and covered all the same material. The contents of the book is quite good albeit not revolutionary. But it should have been around 60 pages not 270. I actually found a fantastic short form version at https://www.chrisbehan.ca/posts/atomic-habits https://www.chrisbehan.ca/posts/atomic-habits which is just as good as the book at explaining the concepts at a fraction of the read time. I advise anyone read that over the book.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  It's also that Paul Graham saying ~"books should be blog posts, blog posts should be tweets".
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  I feel this is a consequence of how cheap books have gotten to produce. Older books, the sort that were copied by hand onto calf skin, tend to have a lot less meandering filler than contemporary literature.

mariusor 4y ago

I usually don't do this. As a counterexample (and they are science fiction works, not necessarily literature) I give you Anathem and Ridley Walker (similarly A Clockwork Orange). They both make use of the same stylistic device of an invented language that you need to untangle and internalize, before you can seamlessly scan the phrases. 50 pages weren't enough for me to understand what the stories were about. I pushed through it and I found both highly satisfying and I enjoyed the language puzzle that they put in front of me. It can be argued that it's clear that the stories did grab me before 50 pages, and that's why I pushed through, and maybe this is right, but I just wanted to clarify that 50 pages might not be enough every time. :)

dekleinewolf 4y ago

I realized this pretty early on in life. There is an unlimited supply of stuff to read - I'm not wasting my precious time on a book I don't like.