6 ms·

Serial Reader: Reading Schedule Builder

68 points by mlschmitt23 4y ago

maerF0x0 4y ago
Sadly this doesn't include many books. Probably going by free ebooks library or such. Would Love to hear from other's book recommendations fiction or non. Those looking for inspiration I'd recommend (not in order) * Ray Bradbury * Pearl S. Buck * John Wyndham * Fyodor Dostoevsky * Frank Herbert - Dune * Terry GoodKind - Wizard's first rule
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  It's caught some shit over the years, but it's hard to go wrong picking almost anything off Bloom's (IIRC somewhat reluctantly-compiled, at the request of the publisher) list from the appendices of The Western Canon. There's another pretty good one, that includes more science writing and such, at the end of Adler's How to Read a Book. Bloom's: http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html Adler's: http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtadler.html http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtadler.html And that site has a bunch of other lists in a similar spirit, on it. [EDIT] One thing to beware of with free ebooks and non-English works in translation, is that it's pretty common for older public-domain translations to be needlessly-obtuse to a modern reader, or outright bad. Worth taking a few minutes to compare your options before committing to one of those.
- elliekelly 4y ago
  Dostoevsky is definitely in the library. And if you pay a one-time fee (it’s $3-5, IIRC) you unlock some additional features, one of which is the ability to upload and automatically “serialize” your own .epub files but I haven’t tried this feature yet myself.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
constantcrying 4y ago
In my experience reading frequently, even if just for short periods, is easily the best way to read a lot. Ten thousand pages in a year might seem like an enormous ammount, but it is actually quite manageable if you dedicade one part of every day to doing so.
FvKdgxD 4y ago
Does anyone know of a more generic piece of software for this? I want to be able to input my own books to read and get a schedule.
- martzy13 4y ago
  That seems like it would be a fun side project to work on... Thanks for the idea!
- ikesau 4y ago
  readinglength.com can give you an estimate based on page count, which, if you wanted to build your own tool, is freely available for most books via Open Library's API.
- dvisca 4y ago
  The pro version of the app lets you upload .epub files. You have one free epub to test in the free version.
danielodievich 4y ago
I am an avid reader, reading 2 or 3 books at a time, alternating between history and economics to fiction and fantasy, with detours into science and periodicals (like The Economist). I think I exceed this 50 books/year goal easily, but I never bother counting. I am also lucky to read in more than one language, for a nice variety. Incidentally, I read Moby Dick this year and found it a mixed experience, but more on a pleasure side. Anyhow, it's been very interesting to see changes in myself the attention span required. I have to consciously put my phone and get cozy in reading chair so I am not distracted. For my teenage children, once phones and high school was introduced, their reading dropped quite a bit. They still read but they seem like madly dancing gadflys in their approach to it. Yesterday we visited with friends and their 12 year old daughter was on chapter 3 of Count of Monte Cristo and was complaining that it was dull and when it was going to start being awesome. We (her parents and our family) were cheering her to stay with it because the epic tale of escape and revenge (served quite cold) is really good.
- izzydata 4y ago
  I find that part of the reason a book can feel so great is because of the time investment. If you could somehow read Count of Monte Cristo in 5 minutes and absorb all the information I don't think it would have the same impact. So basically you need the "dull" or at least more mundane parts of the story so that the climax can exist and actually feel climactic. Semi related, but I feel like this is one of the reasons that a lot of Japanese RPG games are 80-100 hours long. It feels much more like a long adventure and despite a large percentage of it being mundane it really adds to the emotional investment in what you are doing.
  - danielodievich 4y ago
    Yes, that's right! In many ways a good book experience is like a really nicely made and presented dinner. Sure, you can wolf down a nicely made steak and drown a glass of wine quickly, but you would have missed out on a nice conversation and enjoyment. Lots of modern literature for youths is all about crash boom bang getting right into it tiktokiness algorithm wise - hey if something isn't flipping on the screen quickly it's no good. I enjoy that occasionally, like at the beach or by the pool, but not always.
Freak_NL 4y ago
The estimates seem a bit high, or perhaps unbalanced from book to book. The Count of Monte Cristo is slated for 208 days at twenty minutes per day! I read mostly just in bed before going to sleep, averaging around 30 minutes. The Count of Monte Cristo took me three to four weeks (I don't keep notes on that, so it's an estimate), and I'm not a speed-reader. It's just a book that has aged well (i.e., a limited cognitive overhead) and is not particularly hard to read in the English translation. On the other hand, it lists The Canterbury Tales for 64 days, which seems reasonable given that reading English that old really does take a lot more effort (and that's assuming an annotated edition), but way out of whack compared to Dumas' novel above. (Also The Canterbury Tales is not a work I read in one go; a couple of stories before moving to another book is sensible here in my opinion.)
- SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
  The unabridged Count of Monte Cristo is substantially longer than the more popular abridged version.
  - mzi 4y ago
    The first copy I found have 1286 pages, so that means you read six pages per day at around three minutes per page.
- wazoox 4y ago
  > The estimates seem a bit high, or perhaps unbalanced from book to book. The Count of Monte Cristo is slated for 208 days at twenty minutes per day! I've started reading Monte Cristo one day. I finished the 1800 pages of it in one long 48 hours sitting, hardly sleeping or doing anything else. That's how you read this book. It was a feuilleton, one page a day in the newspaper, and there is a cliffhanger at the last line of every frigging page. You just can't stop. It was certainly a big selling point for the journal publishing it back then :D
  - 5555624 4y ago
    > I've started reading Monte Cristo one day. I finished the 1800 pages of it in one long 48 hours sitting, hardly sleeping or doing anything else. That's how you read this book. I don't think I could do it in one long sitting. The last time I read it, my "serial" approach was to read one chapter per day, before going to bed. It was hard to stop; but, it was also easy to pick up each day. (Another advantage was it sat next to the bed and I didn't have to carry it anywhere, since it didn't fit in a pocket.) I'm about to read it again and I'm not sure what approach I'll take.
northwest65 4y ago
I low key enjoyed COVID, it gave me a week of free time to read.
karaterobot 4y ago
I devote part of my time to rereading books, on the basis that you've read a book for the first time only on second read. One benefit is that I get a lot more out of them, another is that I remember more of them. This is useful when the book is complicated, or more is going on than is obvious at the surface: many classics benefit from this strategy.
susam 4y ago
In 2021, I did an experiment to find out how long it takes to read classic technical books if we spend 40 minutes a day. It turned out that our small book club could read and understand a complete analytic number theory book in 120 days. The complete meetup logs are archived here: https://susam.net/club/meets/iant.html https://susam.net/club/meets/iant.html I am currently doing a similar book club meetups for Mastering Emacs. If this sounds interesting to you, you are very welcome to join us. Meeting link, schedule, and other details are available here: https://susam.net/club/mastering-emacs/ https://susam.net/club/mastering-emacs/
- erksa 4y ago
  This sounds very interesting. Might come lurk a couple of times if the scheduling works!
fedeb95 4y ago
My two cents, if you have to think hard about how to set aside time for reading, you have another problem
mokash 4y ago
one piece of advice for anyone about to read war and peace: the number of chracters are vast and you'll find that the names used to refer to each can often change with no warning. different names can be used interchangeably, even in the same piece of dialogue. it can get very confusing. best to have a map of character names before you start.
Archelaos 4y ago
Don't be discouraged from "War and Peace", because it says that it is 235 days (probably it is much less). When I finished it, I wished it had another 1,000 pages.
ipaddr 4y ago
I recommend reading a book every three days (on average) and doing it for a year. I did this one year and read mostly bios and history material. At the end of the year I felt I have so much more knowledge in so many different areas and has given me different perspectives.
- vkdelta 4y ago
  How do you do it? That seems a lot and more than 100+ a year
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    I did it one year and I am focused in other areas now but will go back to it when I have time. I got an ebook reader and found something in each book that made me want to absorb the entire book and keep going. I started with bio of wrestling heros and learned so much.
- boppo1 4y ago
  How many hours are you spending reading each day?
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    6/8 hours.
nu11ptr 4y ago
Reading War and Peace in 20 min/day increments? Would that be a good experience? disclaimer: I have not read, but normally very long books are best absorbed in larger chunks as they tend to be more descriptive and take longer for plot to unfold
- branweb 4y ago
  I haven't read War and Peace, nor (presumably) have I tried this app, but I will gladly come into the comments and shit on it. Gotta love hacker news.
  - nu11ptr 4y ago
    A bit lost. In what way did I shit on it? And why do I need an app to understand how much reading 20 min a day is? I'm simply suggesting larger, richer books are often best absorbed when you have more time to enjoy them and get involved in the plot which often takes longer to unfold. I could be wrong it just struck me as a bad fit for a 20 min/day. exercise. I could be wrong.
    - babblingfish 4y ago
      There are really short chapters and really long chapters. I agree that some of the longer chapters, especially the battle scenes, are probably too long for a 20 minute reading session.
quadrifoliate 4y ago
I have read a lot of classic books and several of them are quite dull. I have no idea why you would read both Wuthering Heights and The Count of Monte Cristo just because they are "classic". For people that really want to read through some these books, I actually recommend the abridged versions first. It is a lot easier to read the details of the full novel if you have read the abridged versions, and know that you enjoy the story. Another suggestion if you just want to get used to reading long books is to start with something more modern like the Game of Thrones books, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter.
OriginalPenguin 4y ago
Nice. Can you talk a little bit about what this is written in and how the development process went?
- mlschmitt23 4y ago
  This web project is Python Flask web server backed by MongoDB, mostly written as Jinja template HTMLs and forms instead of any slick JavaScript which was fun to try! The mobile apps are Objective-C for iOS (with very small amounts of Swift, boy I have been slow to pick that up and start migrating my codebase) and Java for Android. Backed by a Flask API and MongoDB.
gnicholas 4y ago
@mlschmitt23 not sure if you're looking for feedback, as this isn't a Show HN, but when I click to download the app in the banner on your website, then it turns into an Open button, which opens the app when I click it. Unfortunately the app only opens for a split second, and then bounces me back to Safari to your website. I was able to open the app like normal from my home screen.
elliekelly 4y ago
I’m so happy to see this on HN! I have nothing to add to the conversation except to say I’m a satisfied and dedicated user! I read a lot but I tend to read books that are “shorter” (~350) and finish them in 3-5 days so the huge classics can be intimidating and sometimes feel like a bit of a slog. I read on Serial Reader every morning while I have breakfast and I’ve finished 15 books this year on the app that I absolutely never would’ve bothered with otherwise. The $5 or whatever it costs to upgrade and read ahead is also well worth it. Sometimes you just need to know what happens next!

68 points by mlschmitt23 4y ago

Sadly this doesn't include many books. Probably going by free ebooks library or such. Would Love to hear from other's book recommendations fiction or non. Those looking for inspiration I'd recommend (not in order) * Ray Bradbury * Pearl S. Buck * John Wyndham * Fyodor Dostoevsky * Frank Herbert - Dune * Terry GoodKind - Wizard's first rule

yamtaddle 4y ago
It's caught some shit over the years, but it's hard to go wrong picking almost anything off Bloom's (IIRC somewhat reluctantly-compiled, at the request of the publisher) list from the appendices of The Western Canon. There's another pretty good one, that includes more science writing and such, at the end of Adler's How to Read a Book. Bloom's: http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html Adler's: http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtadler.html http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtadler.html And that site has a bunch of other lists in a similar spirit, on it. [EDIT] One thing to beware of with free ebooks and non-English works in translation, is that it's pretty common for older public-domain translations to be needlessly-obtuse to a modern reader, or outright bad. Worth taking a few minutes to compare your options before committing to one of those.
elliekelly 4y ago
Dostoevsky is definitely in the library. And if you pay a one-time fee (it’s $3-5, IIRC) you unlock some additional features, one of which is the ability to upload and automatically “serialize” your own .epub files but I haven’t tried this feature yet myself.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

constantcrying 4y ago

In my experience reading frequently, even if just for short periods, is easily the best way to read a lot. Ten thousand pages in a year might seem like an enormous ammount, but it is actually quite manageable if you dedicade one part of every day to doing so.

FvKdgxD 4y ago

Does anyone know of a more generic piece of software for this? I want to be able to input my own books to read and get a schedule.

martzy13 4y ago
That seems like it would be a fun side project to work on... Thanks for the idea!
ikesau 4y ago
readinglength.com can give you an estimate based on page count, which, if you wanted to build your own tool, is freely available for most books via Open Library's API.
dvisca 4y ago
The pro version of the app lets you upload .epub files. You have one free epub to test in the free version.

danielodievich 4y ago

I am an avid reader, reading 2 or 3 books at a time, alternating between history and economics to fiction and fantasy, with detours into science and periodicals (like The Economist). I think I exceed this 50 books/year goal easily, but I never bother counting. I am also lucky to read in more than one language, for a nice variety. Incidentally, I read Moby Dick this year and found it a mixed experience, but more on a pleasure side. Anyhow, it's been very interesting to see changes in myself the attention span required. I have to consciously put my phone and get cozy in reading chair so I am not distracted. For my teenage children, once phones and high school was introduced, their reading dropped quite a bit. They still read but they seem like madly dancing gadflys in their approach to it. Yesterday we visited with friends and their 12 year old daughter was on chapter 3 of Count of Monte Cristo and was complaining that it was dull and when it was going to start being awesome. We (her parents and our family) were cheering her to stay with it because the epic tale of escape and revenge (served quite cold) is really good.

izzydata 4y ago
I find that part of the reason a book can feel so great is because of the time investment. If you could somehow read Count of Monte Cristo in 5 minutes and absorb all the information I don't think it would have the same impact. So basically you need the "dull" or at least more mundane parts of the story so that the climax can exist and actually feel climactic. Semi related, but I feel like this is one of the reasons that a lot of Japanese RPG games are 80-100 hours long. It feels much more like a long adventure and despite a large percentage of it being mundane it really adds to the emotional investment in what you are doing.
- danielodievich 4y ago
  Yes, that's right! In many ways a good book experience is like a really nicely made and presented dinner. Sure, you can wolf down a nicely made steak and drown a glass of wine quickly, but you would have missed out on a nice conversation and enjoyment. Lots of modern literature for youths is all about crash boom bang getting right into it tiktokiness algorithm wise - hey if something isn't flipping on the screen quickly it's no good. I enjoy that occasionally, like at the beach or by the pool, but not always.

Freak_NL 4y ago

The estimates seem a bit high, or perhaps unbalanced from book to book. The Count of Monte Cristo is slated for 208 days at twenty minutes per day! I read mostly just in bed before going to sleep, averaging around 30 minutes. The Count of Monte Cristo took me three to four weeks (I don't keep notes on that, so it's an estimate), and I'm not a speed-reader. It's just a book that has aged well (i.e., a limited cognitive overhead) and is not particularly hard to read in the English translation. On the other hand, it lists The Canterbury Tales for 64 days, which seems reasonable given that reading English that old really does take a lot more effort (and that's assuming an annotated edition), but way out of whack compared to Dumas' novel above. (Also The Canterbury Tales is not a work I read in one go; a couple of stories before moving to another book is sensible here in my opinion.)

SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
The unabridged Count of Monte Cristo is substantially longer than the more popular abridged version.
- mzi 4y ago
  The first copy I found have 1286 pages, so that means you read six pages per day at around three minutes per page.
wazoox 4y ago
> The estimates seem a bit high, or perhaps unbalanced from book to book. The Count of Monte Cristo is slated for 208 days at twenty minutes per day! I've started reading Monte Cristo one day. I finished the 1800 pages of it in one long 48 hours sitting, hardly sleeping or doing anything else. That's how you read this book. It was a feuilleton, one page a day in the newspaper, and there is a cliffhanger at the last line of every frigging page. You just can't stop. It was certainly a big selling point for the journal publishing it back then :D
- 5555624 4y ago
  > I've started reading Monte Cristo one day. I finished the 1800 pages of it in one long 48 hours sitting, hardly sleeping or doing anything else. That's how you read this book. I don't think I could do it in one long sitting. The last time I read it, my "serial" approach was to read one chapter per day, before going to bed. It was hard to stop; but, it was also easy to pick up each day. (Another advantage was it sat next to the bed and I didn't have to carry it anywhere, since it didn't fit in a pocket.) I'm about to read it again and I'm not sure what approach I'll take.

northwest65 4y ago

I low key enjoyed COVID, it gave me a week of free time to read.

karaterobot 4y ago

I devote part of my time to rereading books, on the basis that you've read a book for the first time only on second read. One benefit is that I get a lot more out of them, another is that I remember more of them. This is useful when the book is complicated, or more is going on than is obvious at the surface: many classics benefit from this strategy.

susam 4y ago

In 2021, I did an experiment to find out how long it takes to read classic technical books if we spend 40 minutes a day. It turned out that our small book club could read and understand a complete analytic number theory book in 120 days. The complete meetup logs are archived here: https://susam.net/club/meets/iant.html https://susam.net/club/meets/iant.html I am currently doing a similar book club meetups for Mastering Emacs. If this sounds interesting to you, you are very welcome to join us. Meeting link, schedule, and other details are available here: https://susam.net/club/mastering-emacs/ https://susam.net/club/mastering-emacs/

erksa 4y ago
This sounds very interesting. Might come lurk a couple of times if the scheduling works!

fedeb95 4y ago

My two cents, if you have to think hard about how to set aside time for reading, you have another problem

mokash 4y ago

one piece of advice for anyone about to read war and peace: the number of chracters are vast and you'll find that the names used to refer to each can often change with no warning. different names can be used interchangeably, even in the same piece of dialogue. it can get very confusing. best to have a map of character names before you start.

Archelaos 4y ago

Don't be discouraged from "War and Peace", because it says that it is 235 days (probably it is much less). When I finished it, I wished it had another 1,000 pages.

ipaddr 4y ago

I recommend reading a book every three days (on average) and doing it for a year. I did this one year and read mostly bios and history material. At the end of the year I felt I have so much more knowledge in so many different areas and has given me different perspectives.

vkdelta 4y ago
How do you do it? That seems a lot and more than 100+ a year
- ipaddr 4y ago
  I did it one year and I am focused in other areas now but will go back to it when I have time. I got an ebook reader and found something in each book that made me want to absorb the entire book and keep going. I started with bio of wrestling heros and learned so much.
boppo1 4y ago
How many hours are you spending reading each day?
- ipaddr 4y ago
  6/8 hours.

nu11ptr 4y ago

Reading War and Peace in 20 min/day increments? Would that be a good experience? disclaimer: I have not read, but normally very long books are best absorbed in larger chunks as they tend to be more descriptive and take longer for plot to unfold

branweb 4y ago
I haven't read War and Peace, nor (presumably) have I tried this app, but I will gladly come into the comments and shit on it. Gotta love hacker news.
- nu11ptr 4y ago
  A bit lost. In what way did I shit on it? And why do I need an app to understand how much reading 20 min a day is? I'm simply suggesting larger, richer books are often best absorbed when you have more time to enjoy them and get involved in the plot which often takes longer to unfold. I could be wrong it just struck me as a bad fit for a 20 min/day. exercise. I could be wrong.
  - babblingfish 4y ago
    There are really short chapters and really long chapters. I agree that some of the longer chapters, especially the battle scenes, are probably too long for a 20 minute reading session.

quadrifoliate 4y ago

I have read a lot of classic books and several of them are quite dull. I have no idea why you would read both Wuthering Heights and The Count of Monte Cristo just because they are "classic". For people that really want to read through some these books, I actually recommend the abridged versions first. It is a lot easier to read the details of the full novel if you have read the abridged versions, and know that you enjoy the story. Another suggestion if you just want to get used to reading long books is to start with something more modern like the Game of Thrones books, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter.

OriginalPenguin 4y ago

Nice. Can you talk a little bit about what this is written in and how the development process went?

mlschmitt23 4y ago
This web project is Python Flask web server backed by MongoDB, mostly written as Jinja template HTMLs and forms instead of any slick JavaScript which was fun to try! The mobile apps are Objective-C for iOS (with very small amounts of Swift, boy I have been slow to pick that up and start migrating my codebase) and Java for Android. Backed by a Flask API and MongoDB.

gnicholas 4y ago

@mlschmitt23 not sure if you're looking for feedback, as this isn't a Show HN, but when I click to download the app in the banner on your website, then it turns into an Open button, which opens the app when I click it. Unfortunately the app only opens for a split second, and then bounces me back to Safari to your website. I was able to open the app like normal from my home screen.

elliekelly 4y ago

I’m so happy to see this on HN! I have nothing to add to the conversation except to say I’m a satisfied and dedicated user! I read a lot but I tend to read books that are “shorter” (~350) and finish them in 3-5 days so the huge classics can be intimidating and sometimes feel like a bit of a slog. I read on Serial Reader every morning while I have breakfast and I’ve finished 15 books this year on the app that I absolutely never would’ve bothered with otherwise. The $5 or whatever it costs to upgrade and read ahead is also well worth it. Sometimes you just need to know what happens next!