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I'm envious of your success. I'm convinced that reading dense technical books is crucial to developing yourself over time, but I have a hard time reading techni

I'm envious of your success. I'm convinced that reading dense technical books is crucial to developing yourself over time, but I have a hard time reading technical books alone. The few times I've been in a book club they started out great, but fizzled out in a couple of months. Maybe I'll look into it again.

senkora 2y ago
This is unrelated to the book club topic, but have you considered reading dense technical books as audio books? I often do this and I find that I absorb them maybe 50% as well as if I sit down and read them, but that I read 500% more. As a result, I can re-read them a few times and still come out ahead. (rather than actually getting an audio book version, I'll typically get the epub and use a third-party reader with a read-aloud feature. I mention this because audio books are often not available, and because first-party readers typically won't allow you to read books aloud specifically because they to upsell you on the audiobook)
- chrisweekly 2y ago
  what reader do you use?
  - senkora 2y ago
    I currently use this one for iOS which handles both epub and pdf pretty well: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/voice-aloud-reader/id1446876360 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/voice-aloud-reader/id144687636... I've switched a few times, and anything on an Apple platform will typically just use the speech synthesis APIs and have the same set of voices available: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/speech_synthesis/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/speec...
    - chrisweekly 2y ago
      thanks!
- zeroCalories 2y ago
  I do listen to audio books, but I don't like them for technical books. Screen readers usually do a poor job of handling code and diagrams that are crucial for understanding something. I like talks and lectures though, but with those I suffer from a similar issue to reading alone.
  - senkora 2y ago
    > Screen readers usually do a poor job of handling code and diagrams that are crucial for understanding something. That's fair. This is definitely the main reason why my comprehension is lower and I have no solution for it.

senkora 2y ago

This is unrelated to the book club topic, but have you considered reading dense technical books as audio books? I often do this and I find that I absorb them maybe 50% as well as if I sit down and read them, but that I read 500% more. As a result, I can re-read them a few times and still come out ahead. (rather than actually getting an audio book version, I'll typically get the epub and use a third-party reader with a read-aloud feature. I mention this because audio books are often not available, and because first-party readers typically won't allow you to read books aloud specifically because they to upsell you on the audiobook)

chrisweekly 2y ago
what reader do you use?
- senkora 2y ago
  I currently use this one for iOS which handles both epub and pdf pretty well: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/voice-aloud-reader/id1446876360 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/voice-aloud-reader/id144687636... I've switched a few times, and anything on an Apple platform will typically just use the speech synthesis APIs and have the same set of voices available: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/speech_synthesis/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/speec...
  - chrisweekly 2y ago
    thanks!
zeroCalories 2y ago
I do listen to audio books, but I don't like them for technical books. Screen readers usually do a poor job of handling code and diagrams that are crucial for understanding something. I like talks and lectures though, but with those I suffer from a similar issue to reading alone.
- senkora 2y ago
  > Screen readers usually do a poor job of handling code and diagrams that are crucial for understanding something. That's fair. This is definitely the main reason why my comprehension is lower and I have no solution for it.