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Read fewer books and feel better about it
- donatj 3y agoFor me, I want to be OK with putting down a book I’m not loving. I do put books down all the time, but I want to be OK with it. I lose interest and put books down, but they stay on my mental list of books I need to finish for YEARS, often long after I have forgotten the current context and would be unable to continue reading where I left off.
- woliveirajr 3y agoTip: close the book, close your eyes and imagine any possible ending that makes you feel that the story ended in full. Non-fictional? Read something in Wikipedia.
- gizmo 3y agoNot only are there more books in the world than you can read in a lifetime, every year a bunch of new terrific books get published. The hours you spend reading a mediocre book or a book that drains your love for reading are not hours well spent. If you lose interest and put a book down just forget about it and move on. You will probably never ever finish it, and that's how it should be. You can always read a different book on the same subject or with a similar theme if when the time is right. It's corny, but: read what you love until you love to read.
- grepLeigh 3y agoThis is a great mindset to have. I think it's common to get "stuck" reading a particular title, and as a result stop reading altogether. I try to normalize putting books down by talking about books I've never finished. People who have read these are more than happy to fill in the details, and I get the Cliff Notes. If the conversation resonates, then I have a reason to pick the book back up with fresh perspective.
- woliveirajr 3y ago> If you’re finishing every book you start you’re doing something wrong: you’re probably finishing books not worth your time This is how you'll have time to read a lot of interesting books: by not finishing all books you started. If you read half of a book and it still didn't gave you good feelings, the last half probably won't. Save your time.
- hammyhavoc 3y agoI started heavily applying this to TV, movies and video games in recent years. How we spend our time is important. The sunk-cost fallacy is a doozy. Wishing you and anyone else who reads this a satisfying and fruitful 2024. Be in excellent health.
- edflsafoiewq 3y agoThis may be good advice if you read only to give yourself pleasure, but it isn't very conductive to becoming well-read.
- xboxnolifes 3y agoThe best books are good all the way through.
- wenc 3y agoI'm an incorrigible book non-completist. I only read to get what I need and I duck out. Now with ChatGPT-4, I can read and comprehend even faster. For dense books in areas I'm unfamiliar with, I ask ChatGPT to, not summarize, but to break things down for me. For me, it's the new efficient way for doing syntopical reading (Mortimer Adler's technique for reading deeply). https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-reading#6h1rJYC6kETAeh4KZApvrp https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-get-the-most-out...
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- moneywoes 3y ago
- simonbarker87 3y agoI forget which book but a few years ago I ploughed ahead with a (to me) terrible Kim Stanley Robinson book (maybe Red Mars?) as I had enjoyed previous books and figured it would click eventually. I gave up at about 80%, sadly it was too late and it ruined my desire to read for about 2 to 3 years. Prior to that I would happily do 20 a year and enjoy my time reading. Now if a book isn’t vibing with me I give it one more day and then drop it. I gave up on book 2 of Dwarves just last week, loved the first, second was boring, on to the next book I fancy (Backyard Starship, so far so good)
- aaronbrethorst 3y agoI had a similar experience with the interminably dull Neal Stephenson slog-a-thon "Fall" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;_or,_Dodge_in_Hell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;_or,_Dodge_in_Hell) I only made it through the book because I ended up skipping the 75%(?) of the book that took place in the cloud, or whatever.
- TylerE 3y agoIf ever there was an author who did one or two good things early on and has been coasting oon reputation ever since... What the man needs is a damn editor.
- surprisetalk 3y agoI read 100+ books in 2023: [1] https://taylor.town/books https://taylor.town/books It was totally by accident! I listened to more audiobooks than usual because I exercised more and did more yardwork and house chores. Hopefully I’ll be reading a lot less in 2024 and writing a lot more :)
- LouisSayers 3y agoI pretty much never read fiction and was at a book store some years ago when I thought "maybe I'll give it a go". I found a book that looked pretty cool called "The Binding" about "book binders" - people that could erase a person's memory by writing their stories in books. As I read on it seemed to turn into something less about book binding and more into a kind of homo erotic novel.. boy was I disappointed and felt totally bait and switched.
- secstate 3y agoIt's totally okay to read a full plot synopsis of any fiction worth reading. Honestly, if a story is ruined by knowing whats going to happen (baring murder mysteries, which are their own animal), it's probably not worth reading. Re-reading is one of the things I most look forward to. There are even some books I re-read at the same time every year (just started my annual re-read of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)!
- LouisSayers 3y agoThanks for the tip! I'll definitely do that if / when I decide to give it another go.
- pengaru 3y agoThere are far too many books[0] and too few hours in a lifetime to not aggressively cut your losses when something awful (or even just mediocre) has found its way before your eyes. Carl Sagan made this fairly obvious in Cosmos[1] speaking to the number of books one could read in a lifetime relative to the number of books in the library. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeons_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeons_law [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuvKdE5e3eo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuvKdE5e3eo
- bdw5204 3y agoAs a general presumption, avoiding anything on the non-fiction bestseller list is a good idea. Those books are generally aimed at the lowest common denominator that reads so you probably won't get anything of value out of them. There are rare exceptions that prove the rule and you'll generally know them when you see them. People who tried reading the non-fiction bestsellers and then equated them with "books" are pretty much always the ones saying dumb things like "reading books is a waste of time" or "every book could just be a blog post". And of course people who denigrate "books" should be treated with suspicion because they're usually shallow thinkers. I'd also advise against letting friends and family recommend books to you. They're generally going to recommend books they like or they're going to get what you like subtly wrong. A corollary of that is that you probably shouldn't buy books as gifts. If you're looking to discover books, go to a bookstore and look around. Maybe read the descriptions on the dust jacket or back cover. If you do that a few times a year, you'll probably have more books than you can read. Other great sources of books to read are the footnotes of books you liked or the Twitter feeds of authors that you liked. Either of these methods allows authors you already like to recommend other books.
- calvinmorrison 3y agoPlenty of times there's a better academic version of a NYT best seller. Like. "FORGED" is a layman's book about pseudopigraphy but the author also has an more than twice as lengthy tome called "Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics". Id recommend the latter
- kdwikzncba 3y ago[dead]
- chiefalchemist 3y ago> I'd also advise against letting friends and family recommend books to you. They're generally going to recommend books they like o Perhaps. But it's also important from time ro time to leave your comfort zone. I occasionally ask other for suggestions just to stop me from always being me. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But I'm okay with risk.
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- liendolucas 3y ago> Once you start caring about the progress bar, you’re hooked! Your dopamine-driven brain sees each book as a little trophy of the mind and you want to keep going. I don't understand the need to go to GoodReads, pick a read challenge to be "hooked" and collect "little trophies". It's absurd. For me reading is the exact opposite experience of the author. Take time to pick your book, take your time to read it (not eat it) and above all enjoy it, but reading just because you have to finish the GoodReads "homework", nope.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago>> Your dopamine-driven brain sees each book as a little trophy of the mind and you want to keep going Really? I've been addicted to chemicals before, but that's not what's going on with people who like to read books. It's getting really ridiculous. People see dopamine behind everything now.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoBooks just take too damned long to finish for me to care about a progress bar. And I say that as someone who has played and leveled many characters in MMORPGs over the years (to my regret).
- cyrillite 3y agoThere are more books than you can read in a lifetime. There are more books in hypothetical list of “highest rated classic and modern staples” than you can read in a lifetime. Then there’s all the non-fiction. You should read for pleasure and as widely as you can. But do not spend a moment longer than necessary with anything you fail to enjoy or isn’t adding value for certain. There is, quite simply, not enough time.
- bumbledraven 3y agoRelated: "The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything" (https://www.npr.org/2011/04/18/135508305/the-sad-beautiful-fact-that-were-all-going-to-miss-almost-everything https://www.npr.org/2011/04/18/135508305/the-sad-beautiful-f...)
- pjmorris 3y agoJerry Weinberg mentioned that a filter he uses for choosing what to read is whether three people he trusts have recommended the book. I think his plan was more comprehensive, but this seems like a useful quality filter and it's one I keep in mind.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoI really liked Scott Adam's (Dilbert comic author) book Reframe your brain.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dtmaurath 3y agoPermutation City is so good! I haven't ran into it in the wild before but excited to check out his notes. It's a favorite and highly recommend. I like Goodreads for tracking everything I read and collecting all my reviews, which are just unedited thoughts that I can return to later and very rarely helpful to others. It's also fun to see what friends are reading. Just yesterday I was able to pull up my last two years of books to quickly give a friend a few recommendations based on their interest. I find listening to books far easier but they have to be non-fiction (or a reread of fiction) and not too complicated. Cobalt Red, Outlaw Oceans and There Are No Accidents were all great listens from this past year. But it's the only way I get through the 2hr minimum of exercise my dog needs a day.
- JoyfulTurkey 3y agoMy wife, former librarian, introduced me to the rule of 50 of Nancy Pearl (famous librarian from Seattle Public Library). Essentially, if you aren’t feeling a book after 50 pages, you should feel no guilt putting it aside. Recently, it seems Nancy has revisited the rule and adjusted for the 50+ crowd. If you are over 50, subtract your age from 100 and use that as your cut off for putting a book aside. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/nancy-pearls-rule-of-50-for-dropping-a-bad-book https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/nancy-p...
- ThinkBeat 3y agoI read 3 books at a time. Great fiction for bedtime and leisure. A nonfiction book I expect to invest significant time with to learn something. And an audiobook nonfiction or fiction book that is engaging but fits into my brain while commuting. I think it helps to switch between the different types.
- ThinkBeat 3y agoI have had to adopt "You dont have to finish every book" a couple of times. There are books that are challenging and will require considerate amount of work, or sludging through, and in the end it has been a rewarding experience. More so, than a book you just sit down and read front to back. Yet, there is not always gold at the end of the rainbow. A well known piece of literature can give a bit of an indicator on if it is worth it or not. Random literature self published Kindle not so much, yet a couple of self published fiction on Kindle have been difficult but in the end rewarding. it is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you will get.