5 ms·

> rediscovered reading Any tips? I didn't, somehow. After leaving high school, then university, my brain went into full on "be productive all the time" mode.

• big_whack 2y ago
  My reading dropped off for years until I got a kindle. The kindle made reading way more convenient and portable. Totally changed my life.
• imzadi 2y ago
  Well, first, audiobooks totally count. Have you tried Dungeon Crawler Carl?
  • fullwaza 2y ago
    Crazy timing, I'm listening to that series now, it's great!
    • imzadi 2y ago
      It's my favorite. I've listened to all the books 6+ times.
      • fullwaza 2y ago
        The Bobiverse series ("We are Legion (We Are Bob)") is also very good and kind of along the same style.
        • imzadi 2y ago
          Oh yeah, I've listened to all of this and some of Dennis E. Taylor's other stuff, as well. I've also listened to all of ExFor and everything Andy Weir, almost everything narrated by Travis Baldree, too.
    • scantron4 2y ago
      Its the next blockbuster series. If my mother, who claimed murderbot was too complicated and has never played video games loved it... the series has legs.
• gknoy 2y ago
  Seconding the "audiobooks count" that Imzadi said, I'd like to note that the Martian audiobook is exceptional, and I've heard that others by Weir are excellent as well. You might enjoy reading _short_ novels. I really liked the "All Systems Red" series, each of them feels short enough to read in a day. If you enjoyed Harry Potter, you might also enjoy the Invisible Library series, or maybe the Harry Dresden novels. They both felt like fun-pulpy romps through magical worlds. Maybe you can convince your brain that reading at bedtime is a good use of time because it promotes healthy sleeping by not being on a screen. ;) (It hasn't worked for me, I still have a backlog two shelves long.)
  • em-bee 2y ago
    i loved Project Hail Mary. read it in a book club where we pick a new book each month. totally helps finding new stuff to read. reading at bedtime doesn't work for me because i fall asleep in the middle and then i have to figure out what i missed.
• octokatt 2y ago
  It sounds like you enjoy books, the problem is convincing yourself you deserve to take time to read them. To quiet that anxiety: > The habit of reading is a meaningful way to meditatively intake large portions of information. Reading helps with creativity, focus, and communication. Reading light-hearted, entertaining books increases these skills while preserving focus for work in a way that reading the latest O'Reilly book does not, while making reading non-fiction books in the future easier because you've been practicing reading. Separately, humans are not machines. In general, we aren't wired to constantly be doing things, and taking time to play or to enjoy stories or to do absolutely nothing is an entirely necessary maintenance task. Removing joy and rest from your life for productivity is the biological equivalent of accumulating technical debt. This debt can intensify until you need a complete rewrite; when this happens, it's called burn out, and it's kinda really bad.
  • foobarian 2y ago
    > the problem is convincing yourself you deserve to take time to read them This hits home in so many more ways than just reading. I find it hard to do any leisure activities because doing them means I have spare time to do any of a thousand items on my personal backlog. It's very stressful.
    • em-bee 2y ago
      the average audio book is 10 hours long. let's say reading a book takes 10 hours. then you only need 20 minutes per day to read one book per month. it should not be hard to find that time. what you say suggests that you have a backlog of non-leisure activities that you feel are more important. i solved this by making leisure activities more important. call it work-life balance if that helps. leisure is part of a healthy day. i started going for a daily walk for exercise. i considered important for my well being. i watch one tv show per day. and only one. i simply decided that is part of a healthy routine. and i made a list of what i want to watch so i don't waste that hour on random stuff. i still do spend more time on random stuff, eg youtube, but that is a different problem. when i run out of time, i stop wasting time on youtube, but i don't stop that one tv episode. i figure i have earned the break after being busy for a day. i should do the same with listening to audiobooks/stories but i haven't been able to re-establish that routine yet.
• iknowSFR 2y ago
  Try Brandon Sanderson novels. General change to my habits has been that if I’m not feeling a story, it’s okay to put it down. The amount of reading I have trudged through because I was afraid of quitting…
  • chrisan 2y ago
    Brando Sando or Wheel of Time :)
    • aatd86 2y ago
      Or David Eddings, or Tad Williams etc. :) All these fantasy stuff are what kept me reading. Although nowadays I read more manuals and research papers. Or the occasional online xuanhuan novel.
  • emseetech 2y ago
    I suggest Stephen King as a reintroduction for general audiences (since a lot of people have a hard time vibing with high fantasy, I know I do). He's not the greatest writer of all time, but he's enjoyable while not feeling like you're reading YA or something age inappropriate. And his classics are classics for a reason. Can't go wrong with Carrie, The Stand, Misery, The Shining or Salem's Lot.
• nullhole 2y ago
  One key thing is: don't feel like you have to suffer through reading an entire book if you don't like it. If it's a chore to read it, find something else - different author, or different type of book.
  • selectodude 2y ago
    Giving up on a shitty book feels the same as cancelling plans that you don’t want to do. Feels great.
    • toast0 2y ago
      If you need shitty books to practice giving up on, I can autograph and send you some books written by a Pulitzer Prize winning author who shares my name and writes terrible books. Email in profile.
  • feoren 2y ago
    I would add: don't try to convince yourself that you actually like this book because it has great reviews or your friends recommended it. Plenty of novels with great reviews are actually trash (IMO, of course, but also in yours, which is the point). Admit to yourself that you don't actually like it and that's OK.
• chrisan 2y ago
  I wouldn't call audiobook "settling", I enjoy them more than books with a great narrator. What got me back into reading was Harry Potter. I hadn't read a book for fun since middle school and had grown to loathing reading of any kind from all the assigned reading. (just give me the cliff notes). HP was new, all the rage, and wife convinced me to give it a try (she had always been an avid reader). I had maybe 3 books to catch up on and I read them all back to back and was eagerly awaiting the 4th. We'd do midnight releases and each buy our own book and didn't sleep till we were through.
• dumpsterdiver 2y ago
  Setting aside time for relaxation and leisure activities is highly productive, but unfortunately that isn't something that becomes obvious until your work visibly suffers from "all work and no play". The costs of overworking yourself truly are insidious. It really is akin to a rogue wave - you don't know how deep it runs until it finally hits.
• gwbas1c 2y ago
  >> rediscovered reading > Any tips? > The last book I was able to devour and actually enjoyed was the Harry Potter series Actually, it was Harry Potter that got me back into reading. I read the first 5 books over the course of 2 weeks the summer after I graduated college. In some cases I'd see an interview on late night television and read the book the guest was promoting. More recently I read a book that was discussed on the radio during my commute. In other cases, there was a subject I wanted to learn about, so I'd read books about the subject, or biographies on people who were known in the subject matter. Sometimes I'll see a movie / TV show based on the book, and like it enough to read the book. And: J. K. Rowling's new series about Coroman Strike (written under a pseudonym) is excellent. Read it slowly, though. I'm also slowly re-reading Harry Potter to my kids and it's a lot more enjoyable in bits instead of as a binge.
• pomian 2y ago
  I would up vote trying audiobooks. They are great for traveling, also cleaning up and other chores. Classic narrators make everything fun to listen to. There are voices for lulling you to sleep. Others to make the stories exciting. The Harry Potter books have two narrators -they are both great, in different ways. Lord of the rings is much more fun in audiobook format. Try to find audiobooks read by Simon Vance, for example - he reads the Master and Commander series, and the original James Bond series. Have fun.
• wonger_ 2y ago
  I'm not an avid reader, but I've rediscovered reading in the past couple years. A few tips that help me: 1) Keep a list of book recommendations mentioned from HN, podcasts, friends, etc. Eventually, some will be recommended twice or more, and that may be enough to tell your brain "this will be worth it." 2) Try non-fiction if you're usually a fiction person, or vice versa. I grew up enjoying only fiction. But now I realize I enjoy non-fiction a lot more. 3) Don't stick with boring books for more than a couple chapters. I've been using thriftbooks.com, so it's affordable to toss a few dollars away and try again.
• nicbou 2y ago
  - Try something entertaining instead of something useful. Pick books out of interest, not out of pragmatism or obligation. If a book doesn't work for you, try another. - Make it a special time. Start your bedtime routine early, light some candles, make tea and have a go at it. Or sit in a nice café, or after a nice picnic. I love reading myself to sleep, or with tea on the balcony in the morning. - Remove distractions. I read on a disconnected iPad with no internet and no apps except for reading and notetaking. If you want to put it in productivity-over-everything terms, reading before sleep is a really good way to wind down and get solid sleep. It's also a great way to build vocabulary, get different perspectives, and enjoy idle time without doomscrolling.
• dageshi 2y ago
  Yeah, don't read "worthy" stuff, or things to enlighten yourself, find your particular brand of entertaining trash and mindlessly consume it. I recommend bad litrpg and progression fantasy personally. Mother of Learning is a good one to start, it's free on royalroad.com or available on Kindle.
  • xhkkffbf 2y ago
    Absolutely agree. The definition of "worthy" comes from a narrow group of haughty English majors. That may be your thing, but there's a huge world of non-worthy stuff out there.
  • skydhash 2y ago
    Those chinese cultivation novels are my guilty pleasures. I still look for a good translation, but they what I reach for when I just want to pass the time (and they're really long).
• emseetech 2y ago
  | Any tips? Here's a trick that helped me after a ten+ year hiatus and having my attention fried by social media: A lot of people who have lost their attention span to technology will find themselves reading but not absorbing, their mind wandering, until they realize they'd "read" 3 pages and don't remember what happened. So read slow and with purpose, but most importantly at the end of each page, ask yourself what you just read and have a conversation with yourself about it. This helped rebuild my comprehension and focus. This is similar to how English classes will read a book as a class: Reading then discussion, reading then discussion. But instead of as a group, do it as an internal dialogue.
  • em-bee 2y ago
    i got the same problem with audiobooks. if my mind is occupied i have to relisten, sometimes multiple times, until i can focus enough. it does depend on the writing style though. it happens more when the story is difficult to understand.
    • emseetech 2y ago
      I could never do audiobooks for that reason. It was simply too easy to get distracted.
      • em-bee 2y ago
        it takes some practice. and i find it's more difficult with short stories because there every detail counts. if you miss a few details from a longer book, it tends to matter less. and then while listening i need to do an activity that doesn't require mental focus. so i can't sit in front of the computer, unless it is mundane photo editing or some other repetitive task that doesn't make me think. going for a walk and housework work for me. especially housework. there is nothing else i can do while washing dishes, cooking, doing laundry or cleaning. the work doesn't require much focus, and is quite repetitive. that makes listening easy.
  • phone8675309 2y ago
    One of the things that helped me was to have an actual dialog with the book. For non-fiction books, this means pushing back against claims that appear to be unsupported. When I read in a paper book I do so with a pen to make notes in it (I don't sell my books, and I obviously don't do this with library books), but ebooks just get marked up in my ebook reader and it's very nice. It's also good when reviewing a book because I can see all of my thoughts and questions and often can answer them by the end of the chapter/section/unit. For fiction books, this ends up being a "what would I do there/what would an ordinary person do?" It's very helpful to try and place yourself in the character's shoes and see how you may have reacted differently or if you agree with the character understanding _why_ you agree with them.
• NegativeLatency 2y ago
  Find a nice local book store and go have a look around at what looks interesting to you.
• em-bee 2y ago
  another vote for audio books. i was an avid reader in my youth but stopped when i entered university (and got a computer (guess where i spend most of my time instead of reading books ;-)) about a decade ago i discovered audiodrama, short story audio magazines and finally whole audiobooks. i mostly listened to them on my commute. later when i had no commute i started going for walks (to get out of the house and move) and i also listen during housework or other mundane tasks. i tried listening before going to sleep, but that didn't work because i would doze away and miss sections while hearing others. that meant hi had to relisten the next day to catch what i missed. i get about an hour of listening time on average, sometimes two, when i have a good daily routine, less otherwise. one hour per day is enough to listen to 2-3 books per month. i alternate between all three types so i usually only get one book in a month, sometimes less. but that adds up too. my reading list has almost 80 titles. with an average of 10 hours per book you can finish a whole book in a month with only 20 minutes per day.
• mbesto 2y ago
  In my mid twenties I had a mundane 30 minute commute in a crowded London tube which meant no internet (maybe thats different now). I cranked through so many books in that ~2 year timespan.
• tpmoney 2y ago
  If you're into fiction, can I suggest looking for short story magazines in your preferred genre. Look novels are great and all, and I love devouring a book that really hooks into me, but the modern publishing landscape is full of 500+ page books that are part 3 of a 48 book series. That can be overwhelming and certainly difficult to drag yourself into if you're not in the habit of reading. Sort story magazines introduce you to multiple authors and multiple stories, most of which could be read in 30 minutes before bed, and give you a chance to enjoy reading for fun without committing to a who "extended universe" of material you feel like you have to know. If SF&F is your preferred genre, "Asimov's", "Analog", and "Fantasy and Science Fiction" are old staples that are still being published. "Locus", "Lightspeed" and "Strange Horizons" are also options, with Lightspeed and Strange Horizons being relative newcomers to the field. weightlessbooks.com carries a couple of those and some magazine in other genres too if SF&F aren't your jam.
• lupire 2y ago
  Quit your job. It's not reasonable to do a cognitively demanding job all day and then expect to do cognitively demanding leisure at night. Unemployed people are great readers.
  • doubled112 2y ago
    I can use all the books I’ve finished to keep myself and my family warm this winter!
• Aerroon 2y ago
  Maybe it's a problem of taste? Maybe you don't like the books you've tried to read because of the contents of the book? From what's popular these days I think you should try reading: The Martian and Cradle. If you don't like it then stop reading and go for something else. If you want to try a lot of different stuff I would recommend trying web novel on sites like RoyalRoad, Web novel, Scribblehub. Just pick something, read a bit. If you don't like it, find something new.
• tarsinge 2y ago
  Regarding time reading is faster than listening. Also way more efficient than movies, series or video games. I can’t play story based video games anymore like Witcher 3 because at one point I’m like I’m wasting so much time compared if I was just reading the book. Also books are less isolating than listening, for example if you are in a park with nature sounds. If you enjoyed The Expanse you could try the last 3 books. If you haven’t read for a long time it’ll be hard at first to stay focused but by the middle of the book you should hopefully get the feeling of wanting to pick the book anytime like a new episode of the show just dropped.
• prawn 2y ago
  Read when you're fresh (set your alarm earlier and read before you get out of bed) rather than when you're tired at the end of the day. Use a habit tracking app (mine is Streaks on iOS). If tired, walking around the house while reading ticks off pages and steps. Read books you like; quit anything that you feel is a waste of time. Read while eating breakfast if it's not antisocial. Pick shorter books to get momentum (Old Man and the Sea, Into the Wild). Read on your phone, so it's always an option. Put your Books app prominently on the home screen and relegate social media apps out of view.