11 ms·

Choose your reading carefully

83 points by bootload 12y ago

thret 12y ago
"I only enjoyed about 700. The other 300 were books I felt I had to read; classics that everyone told me I was a fool to miss..." Classics are just the books that millions of people, over dozens of generations and hundreds of years, have enjoyed more than other books. Of course that is the list you should start from.
- throwawaymsft 12y ago
  To paraphrase Twain, many classics are books people want to have had read.
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    "'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read."
    - walterbell 12y ago
      Classics are often a function of their socioeconomic milieu. It's harder to identify older books that are more relevant to modern times than the time of their original publishing.
      - dublinben 12y ago
        On the contrary, many books that now live in the literary canon as "classics" were barely appreciated or noticed in their own time. It is almost certain that even a commercial success like Great Expectations or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer enjoy more readers in the 21st Century than the 19th.
        JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        That seems like a certainty. Isn't it true that there are more people alive now, than have every lived before? Geometric growth works like that. So conceivably, everything is more popular in absolute terms, than it can every have been in history.
        dublinben 12y ago
        Only works that are still remembered would be more popular (in absolute or relative terms). There are countless authors whose works were enjoyed at their time of publication, but have been completely forgotten. This is the fate of almost every one hit wonder.
        walterbell 12y ago
        As long as a critical mass of copies were printed and migrated forward. If a book received a strong negative reception, not many copies would survive for evaluation by future audiences.
- ashark 12y ago
  I'm wary of anyone who dismisses classics en masse like that. My experience has been that if I don't like a classic, it's usually my fault, not the book's, and if I wait a few years, read and learn some more things, and try it again I'll likely get a lot more out of it. [EDIT] A closer reading of the linked article has revealed that only some of those 300 were what the author had been told were must-read classics, making my criticism less relevant.
- learc83 12y ago
  I don't think that's true at all. Sure many classics are great, but what is and isn't considered a "classic" is dictated to a large extent by what literature teachers choose to teach, and it is heavily biased towards what literature teachers find enjoyable. Classics definitely aren't picked because millions of people over dozens of generations have enjoyed them more than other books. If that were the case, high school students would spend a year just reading Agatha Christie. And I can count on one hand the number of science fiction and fantasy books we read in high school and college literature classes (1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451).
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    The criterion isn't 'enjoyable' - it's 'improving.' There's a strange belief that reading certain books will make your mind better. (For ''better', read 'more middle class' - at least, that's how it works in the UK.) It may even be true: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/07/reading-good-book-make-better-person-nathan-filer-costa http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/07/reading... There's an entire series of books by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu where he pulls apart culture as a symbol of status and social distinction. He's well worth reading on the topic. (But being middle class, I would say that...) A lot of people miss the fact that literature is about teaching moral lessons. If you read books about novel writing, you'll see that some recommend that you start with a premise - which is a moral point you want to make. You can then use the writing to dramatise the premise. This is more persuasive than stating it outright as an opinion, and also gives the book a focus it wouldn't otherwise have. This is a slightly old-fashioned view now, but I think it applies to many old-fashioned classics - maybe not so much to modern fiction, a lot of which is either escapist or nihilistic or horrific for the sake of it. 1984, Brave New World, and F451 all have a strong premise, IMO.
    - ashark 12y ago
      As a mostly-sic-fi reader who later broadened his horizons to include lots of classic literature, I think a lot of sci-fi fans don't have a great sense of how "good" sci-fi writing compares with the sorts of things that end up in the literary canon. Often the basic craft of the writing isn't even up to the standards of a typical "canonical" work (see: Asimov, with his hopelessly flat characters and dialogue), let alone the finer qualities that take a work from "a fun read" to sublime.
WalterBright 12y ago
These days I no longer feel compelled to finish a book I started. Most books really aren't worth the time to read.
- ssully 12y ago
  Out of curiosity what do you find to be worth time doing?
  - oh_sigh 12y ago
    Posting on HN, of course.
- ytturbed 12y ago
  I have to agree. Sometimes I think I'm not disciplined enough. But every now and then I start a book which is so interesting and vital that I'm compelled to go all the way through at top speed, with later re-reads. I'm thrilled and altered as a result. That's what reading is like for me now. Unfinished books no less than unordered books are part of the search and nothing to be ashamed of.
  - lugg 12y ago
    I wish somebody taught me this in highschool. I'd be a very different person than I am today.
- hellbanner 12y ago
  Does reading a thousand lifestyle on the web count for being worth your time?
  - WalterBright 12y ago
    No :-) but I had to read it to find that out.
placebo 12y ago
Books are just one aspect of the larger question of how to prioritise what you spend your time on given a limited life span. It's good to refresh that question once in a while...
wallaceblack 12y ago
Life is definitely too short for "We Should All Be Feminists" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
SwellJoe 12y ago
Oddly enough, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and it was Octavia Butler novels that made me think about it (which the author of this article mentions as something she'd like to spend more time on). It struck me that it's taken me nearly half my life to get around to reading Octavia Butler; how that happened for a rabid scifi fan, I don't know. But, she's amazing, in the same class of writer as Asimov, Herbert, Atwood, Clarke, and Bradbury. Though I also like Joseph Heller...so, I probably won't choose Butler over Heller, but I'll continue to read both, until the supply has run out.
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  Heller does not have that many titles. Catch-22 is a towering work but the others are still all good.
mhartl 12y ago
I suggest restoring the original title of the article, which is "Three thousand reasons to choose your reading carefully". The purpose of preventing titles from beginning with numbers is to get rid of things like "10 things you need to know as an entrepreneur", but in this case the number refers to the number of books, so the pattern has overmatched.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- firebones 12y ago
  It looks like your suggestion caused this to be flag killed or something. It was on the front page, now it is nowhere to be found in the first 600 entries. Glitch in the algorithmic matrix?
  - stolio 12y ago
    currently #13 on the front page
    - firebones 12y ago
      Dang. If I'm logged in, it isn't anywhere to be found. If I'm not logged in, it is indeed #13. I must have posted to this thread too much?
- mhartl 12y ago
  Now the title has been truncated even further, from "Reasons to choose your reading carefully" to "Choose your reading carefully". Just use the original title, which was fine. In fact, it was better, because "three thousand reasons" refers to the number of books left in the author's reading-lifetime. This context has now been stripped, for no good reason. This sort of questionable title editing is a recurring theme on Hacker News. I might be willing to help with this issue if there's an easy way to get involved. I think the kind of editorial judgment required to make good title changes is right in my wheelhouse.
intopieces 12y ago
I mostly disagree with this article. Reading only what you like is not a challenge at all. The real challenge is reading works that you disagree with, with ideas that make you think and change your perception. In the age of predictive searchand targeted advertisements, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people to stay within their own bubble.
- annythesillicat 12y ago
  I totally agree. I read various authors in one particular things. I try not to judge whether this book is “good” or “bad” but I try to observe the authors idea instead. Maybe I have lots of time to read and so reading books worth my time. In any books I’ve read, I learned something. Open minded reading changed my life, changed how I think, changed how I perceive. It is also leads me to discover different fields like neuroscience or quantum physics or Python programming. I’m quite surprised because I had always hated math and science in my teenage. Metaphorically, reading helps me see the size of the world as big as the size of the sun. (also helps improve my English)
- davedx 12y ago
  I go through long swinging phases in and out of my comfort zone, if I didn't I would probably lose interest altogether. For example I went through a phase of "harrowing" books, like Primo Levi's books, books about Stalingrad and drug addiction. Then I needed a break and went back to comfortable, fun sci-fi authors I knew. At the moment I'm doing a historical fiction binge. The current book I'm reading is very easy reading, almost a bit too pulpy. When it's done I'm considering tackling the Koran. We'll see! :)
- peteretep 12y ago
  > The real challenge is reading works that you disagree > with, with ideas that make you think and change your > perception. I think you're wrongly conflating enjoyment and agreement. I subscribe to The Spectator, which is an exceptionally well-written, urbane and articulate equivalent to Fox News. I disagree with almost everything I read in it: it's Islamophobic, classist, popularist, chauvinistic, misogynist, and I occasionally throw it against the wall in disgust, but I _enjoy_ reading it, because it's well written and well argued. It's challenging, and it forces me much out of my comfort zone, and I enjoy having my thinking challenged, and I enjoy the silent arguments in my head with the authors. Conversely (and ironically, given the source) I stopped reading The Guardian. I agree with most of the politics, but it's so _whiney_. It's often poorly written, poorly argued, and snipey. The article suggests reading books you _enjoy_, not ones you agree with, and the difference is important.
mindcrime 12y ago
I agree with the sentiment of this post, but strangely enough, I can't recall very many books that I've read, that I consider a complete "waste" to have read. Even the books I didn't enjoy quite as much, I usually gained something from reading. And the thing is, you never really know ahead of time what will click for you and what won't. And then there's the issue of "why" do you read. Are you reading for enjoyment? Well then give me Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Lee Child, David Baldacci, Vince Flynn, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Charles Stross, etc. all day long. Are you reading for social commentary? Then read Ayn Rand, Tom Wolfe, Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, etc. Are you reading to "improve your mind" or "broaden your thinking?" Great, read David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, etc. Classics? Sure, read classics if they have value to you. I don't think anyone should feel compelled to read classics just because somebody said they "ought" to have read them. This is where my "life is too short filter" kicks in. I'll read works I anticipate liking, or anticipate gaining some sort of value from. I won't waste my time reading something for no better reason than to satisfy the whims of some judgmental, pretentious asshole.
- kevinskii 12y ago
  At the risk of sounding like a pretentious asshole, over the past few years I've been reading the classics I was forced to in high school and college and hated at the time, along with many "new" ones. Now books like Moby Dick, The Brothers Karamosov, and even Pride and Prejudice are oddly just as entertaining as the works of Koonts, King, etc. This might simply be because I love fiction but hardly ever read it anymore. Or maybe the relative excitement of everything simply increases as I become more boring in my old age.
  - mindcrime 12y ago
    Sure, and don't get me wrong... I'm in no way saying "don't read classics". I enjoy reading a classic every now and then, and - if anything - have been more drawn to them lately than when I was younger. All I'm saying is, don't read classics just because your "supposed to". Read them because you recognize their is some value in them for you, whether it's "cultural literacy" or maybe plain enjoyment, or maybe historical interest, whatever. OR, not. That is, if you feel you are being pressured to read, say, Madame Bovary and every ounce of intuition in your body is screaming "run for the hills", then I think it's fine to take a pass and move on to something else.
jasim 12y ago
It's not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn't serious. So, then, you noticed in a newspaper that "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" had appeared, the new book by Italo Calvino, who hadn't published for several years. You went to the bookshop and bought the volume. Good for you. In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out: the Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages, the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success, the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment, the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case, the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer, the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves, the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified. Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them. With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new). All this simply means that, having rapidly glanced over the titles of the volumes displayed in the bookshop, you have turned toward a stack of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler fresh off the press, you have grasped a copy, and you have carried it to the cashier so that your right to own it can be established. -- If on a Winters Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino.
zimbu668 12y ago
To any Brits reading this, "pasties" means something very different in the US. Google image search will show you the difference.
- rahimnathwani 12y ago
  NSFW
- lmm 12y ago
  The Guardian is a British newspaper, I'm pretty sure the author is using the British meaning.
tmuir 12y ago
After reading a string of books that basically did nothing for me, and then reading a book that completely enveloped me and messed with my head (House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski), I've made a a point of giving books about 50-100 pages to grab my attention, and then moving on if I'm not interested. I do seek out books from lists like "100 greatest books of the 20th century" and similar, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest to say that War and Peace was dry, repetitive, and completely uninteresting, or that Ulysees' and Gravity's Rainbow's prose were so incoherent, I couldn't make it even 50 pages in either book. On the other hand, The Brothers Karamozov is easily one of the top three books I've ever read, so I don't think its an aversion to classic literature in general. I think using other people's opinions of books is a good starting point for finding books to read. But I derive no enjoyment whatsoever from knowing that someone else likes the music, or books, or movies that I like, so why should I feel guilty or question my tastes when I disagree with even the most highly regarded opinions?
- acjohnson55 12y ago
  At the same time, some books take a while to develop. The first third of Catch-22 was a struggle for me. I found it painfully slapstick. Once I finally got into the groove, the second third was a joy. But the final third was absolutely brilliant.
  - tmuir 12y ago
    I think I'd rather miss out on a few slow developers than constantly hold on to false hope that something will get better. It seems to me that the latter is much more common than the former. Being more selective will result in reading more books, and hopefully enjoying more books.
  - danieltillett 12y ago
    Catch-22 is a book where your perception of it is altered greatly by your mood. I first read it when I was 16 and thought it was the most humorous book I had ever read. I read it the second time at 20 after a bad break up (I had what I thought was the brilliant idea that it would cheer me up) and I found it the most depressing book I had ever read. I have been meaning to read it a third time to see what age has done.
gdubs 12y ago
Interesting how things keep coming back to Carl Sagan's Cosmos recently -- I don't have the exact episode at hand, but he makes this point while standing in the New York Public Library. Pointing to a shelf of books, smaller than one might imagine, he says something along the lines of "The trick is knowing which books to read."
adamconroy 12y ago
For me it should be careful not to forget about reading books. From ages 10 to 24 I would have averaged at least one book a week. Then my internet addiction surfaced. Since then I have probably averaged 2 books a year, but at the same time I have probably read more words on average per week than before. The problem is that 80% of what I read on the internet is piffle or at best mental chewing gum. I've recently started reading books again and I cant believe I had forgotten how rewarding it is. No time to read anyone else's comments sorry, I'm going back to the engaging story of Karl Ove.
nsomaru 12y ago
There's a great essay by Schopenhauer called "On Thinking for Yourself" which deals with this and related themes. I'll post it here for your benefit (from the great Penguin translation titled "Essays and Aphorisms": On Thinking for Yourself 1-- As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power. You can think about only what you know, so you ought to learn something; on the other hand, you can know only what you have thought about. Now you can apply yourself voluntarily to reading and learning, but you cannot really apply yourself to thinking: thinking has to be kindled, as a fire is by a draught, and kept going by some kind of interest in its object, which may be an objective interest or merely a subjective one. The latter is possible only with things that affect us personally, the former only to those heads who think by nature, to whom thinking is as natural as breathing, and these are very rare. That is why most scholars do so little of it. 2-- The difference between the effect produced on the mind by thinking for yourself and that produced by reading is incredibly great, so that the original difference which made one head decide for thinking and another for reading is continually increased. For reading forcibly imposes on the mind thoughts that are as foreign to its mood and direction at the moment of reading as the signet is to the wax upon which it impresses its seal. The mind is totally subjected to an external compulsion to think this or that for which it has no inclination and is not in the mood. On the other hand, when it is thinking for itself it is following its own inclination, as this has been more closely determined either by its immediate surroundings or by some recollection or other: for its visible surroundings do not impose some single thought on the mind, as reading does; they merely provide it with occasion and matter for thinking the thoughts appropriate to its nature and present mood. The result is that much reading robs the mind of all elasticity, as the continual pressure of a weight does a spring, and that the surest way of never having any thoughts of your own is to pick up a book every time you have a free moment. The practice of doing this is the reason erudition makes most men duller and sillier than they are by nature and robs their writings of all effectiveness: they are in Pope’s words: For ever reading, never to be read. 3-- Fundamentally it is only our own basic thoughts that possess truth and life, for only these do we really understand through and through. The thoughts of another that we have read are crumbs from another’s table, the cast-off clothes of an unfamiliar guest. 4-- Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. – You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost; it is like deserting untrammelled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes. It may sometimes happen that a truth, an insight, which you have slowly and laboriously puzzled out by thinking for yourself could easily have been found already written in a book; but it is a hundred times more valuable if you have arrived at it by thinking for yourself. For only then will it enter your thought-system as an integral part and living member, be perfectly and firmly consistent with it and in accord with all its other consequences and conclusions, bear the hue, colour and stamp of your whole manner of thinking, and have arrived at just the moment it was needed; thus it will stay firmly and for ever lodged in your mind. This is a perfect application, indeed explanation, of Goethe’s lines: Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen.* For the man who thinks for himself becomes acquainted with the authorities for his opinions only after he has acquired them and merely as a confirmation of them, while the book-philosopher starts with his authorities, in that he constructs his opinions by collecting together the opinions of others: his mind then compares with that of the former as an automaton compares with a living man. A truth that has merely been learnt adheres to us only as an artificial limb, a false tooth, a wax nose does, or at most like transplanted skin; but a truth won by thinking for ourself is like a natural limb: it alone really belongs to us. This is what determines the difference between a thinker and a mere scholar. 5-- People who pass their lives in reading and acquire their wisdom from books are like those who learn about a country from travel descriptions: they can impart information about a great number of things, but at bottom they possess no connected, clear, thorough knowledge of what the country is like. On the other hand, people who pass their lives in thinking are like those who have visited the country themselves: they alone are really familiar with it, possess connected knowledge of it and are truly at home in it. ctd...
austerity 12y ago
So she was already reading while driving and then started reading compulsively. That's some serious book addiction. I'm an exact opposite of the author: can never pick a book because of fear it won't be "worth my time" and end up looking at pictures of cute animals instead.
hiperlink 12y ago
It reminds me of a somewhat similar article from NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/21/135508305/the-sad-beautiful-fact-that-were-all-going-to-miss-almost-everything http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/21/135508305/the-...
known 12y ago
If you don't read a newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed.
facepalm 12y ago
To me it is a very difficult problem to discover good books to read. At present I am without a good book. How do you go about it?
- ryan-allen 12y ago
  http://reddit.com/r/books http://reddit.com/r/books is a good start! edit: also check out http://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook http://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook and make sure to explore the sidebar suggested subreddits
  - facepalm 12y ago
    Thanks, checking it out right now!
peteretep 12y ago
I feel very lucky to have been brought up in a house where reading was never fetishized, or necessarily encouraged, but my parents and siblings did it incessantly. Reading was a leisure activity, rather than some kind of moral imperative. As a result, I tend to ditch books I'm not enjoying after ~ 50-100 pages, and I tend to reread books I've enjoyed a lot. I used to have a slight issue with continuing to read books where I wanted to know what happened, but wasn't enjoying them. Films too. Wikipedia plot summaries have solved this!
edpichler 12y ago
Living in a abundant world, I know that I will not have time to enjoy it all. My strategy is to prioritize. I realized that I will not have enough time to read all the books I want, watch all the Youtube videos I like, play all the games I want, do all the things I wish. Every time I finish something I ask to myself "What is the most important subject to me at this moment", and I watch, read, play about it. If I'm on a cinema, or reading a book that I realize it's not good or I'll not like, or just lose interest, I simply leave it, because life is too short for bad books, or bad movies.
sireat 12y ago
In the end it does not matter whether you re-read A. Christie's complete works thrice and did not finish Brothers Karamazov or vice versa. Personally, I have a hard time not finishing a book, for example I can't decide whether I want to continue reading Gone Girl past half. This book is written cleverly yet somehow disappointing after the first big twist(it came too early imho). One strategy I employ is reading three or four books at a time, one sci-fi, one mystery, one science, one philosophy one political and so on.

83 points by bootload 12y ago

thret 12y ago

"I only enjoyed about 700. The other 300 were books I felt I had to read; classics that everyone told me I was a fool to miss..." Classics are just the books that millions of people, over dozens of generations and hundreds of years, have enjoyed more than other books. Of course that is the list you should start from.

throwawaymsft 12y ago
To paraphrase Twain, many classics are books people want to have had read.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  "'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read."
  - walterbell 12y ago
    Classics are often a function of their socioeconomic milieu. It's harder to identify older books that are more relevant to modern times than the time of their original publishing.
    - dublinben 12y ago
      On the contrary, many books that now live in the literary canon as "classics" were barely appreciated or noticed in their own time. It is almost certain that even a commercial success like Great Expectations or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer enjoy more readers in the 21st Century than the 19th.
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        That seems like a certainty. Isn't it true that there are more people alive now, than have every lived before? Geometric growth works like that. So conceivably, everything is more popular in absolute terms, than it can every have been in history.
        dublinben 12y ago
        Only works that are still remembered would be more popular (in absolute or relative terms). There are countless authors whose works were enjoyed at their time of publication, but have been completely forgotten. This is the fate of almost every one hit wonder.
      - walterbell 12y ago
        As long as a critical mass of copies were printed and migrated forward. If a book received a strong negative reception, not many copies would survive for evaluation by future audiences.
ashark 12y ago
I'm wary of anyone who dismisses classics en masse like that. My experience has been that if I don't like a classic, it's usually my fault, not the book's, and if I wait a few years, read and learn some more things, and try it again I'll likely get a lot more out of it. [EDIT] A closer reading of the linked article has revealed that only some of those 300 were what the author had been told were must-read classics, making my criticism less relevant.
learc83 12y ago
I don't think that's true at all. Sure many classics are great, but what is and isn't considered a "classic" is dictated to a large extent by what literature teachers choose to teach, and it is heavily biased towards what literature teachers find enjoyable. Classics definitely aren't picked because millions of people over dozens of generations have enjoyed them more than other books. If that were the case, high school students would spend a year just reading Agatha Christie. And I can count on one hand the number of science fiction and fantasy books we read in high school and college literature classes (1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451).
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  The criterion isn't 'enjoyable' - it's 'improving.' There's a strange belief that reading certain books will make your mind better. (For ''better', read 'more middle class' - at least, that's how it works in the UK.) It may even be true: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/07/reading-good-book-make-better-person-nathan-filer-costa http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/07/reading... There's an entire series of books by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu where he pulls apart culture as a symbol of status and social distinction. He's well worth reading on the topic. (But being middle class, I would say that...) A lot of people miss the fact that literature is about teaching moral lessons. If you read books about novel writing, you'll see that some recommend that you start with a premise - which is a moral point you want to make. You can then use the writing to dramatise the premise. This is more persuasive than stating it outright as an opinion, and also gives the book a focus it wouldn't otherwise have. This is a slightly old-fashioned view now, but I think it applies to many old-fashioned classics - maybe not so much to modern fiction, a lot of which is either escapist or nihilistic or horrific for the sake of it. 1984, Brave New World, and F451 all have a strong premise, IMO.
  - ashark 12y ago
    As a mostly-sic-fi reader who later broadened his horizons to include lots of classic literature, I think a lot of sci-fi fans don't have a great sense of how "good" sci-fi writing compares with the sorts of things that end up in the literary canon. Often the basic craft of the writing isn't even up to the standards of a typical "canonical" work (see: Asimov, with his hopelessly flat characters and dialogue), let alone the finer qualities that take a work from "a fun read" to sublime.

WalterBright 12y ago

These days I no longer feel compelled to finish a book I started. Most books really aren't worth the time to read.

ssully 12y ago
Out of curiosity what do you find to be worth time doing?
- oh_sigh 12y ago
  Posting on HN, of course.
ytturbed 12y ago
I have to agree. Sometimes I think I'm not disciplined enough. But every now and then I start a book which is so interesting and vital that I'm compelled to go all the way through at top speed, with later re-reads. I'm thrilled and altered as a result. That's what reading is like for me now. Unfinished books no less than unordered books are part of the search and nothing to be ashamed of.
- lugg 12y ago
  I wish somebody taught me this in highschool. I'd be a very different person than I am today.
hellbanner 12y ago
Does reading a thousand lifestyle on the web count for being worth your time?
- WalterBright 12y ago
  No :-) but I had to read it to find that out.

placebo 12y ago

Books are just one aspect of the larger question of how to prioritise what you spend your time on given a limited life span. It's good to refresh that question once in a while...

wallaceblack 12y ago

Life is definitely too short for "We Should All Be Feminists" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

SwellJoe 12y ago

Oddly enough, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and it was Octavia Butler novels that made me think about it (which the author of this article mentions as something she'd like to spend more time on). It struck me that it's taken me nearly half my life to get around to reading Octavia Butler; how that happened for a rabid scifi fan, I don't know. But, she's amazing, in the same class of writer as Asimov, Herbert, Atwood, Clarke, and Bradbury. Though I also like Joseph Heller...so, I probably won't choose Butler over Heller, but I'll continue to read both, until the supply has run out.

ArkyBeagle 12y ago
Heller does not have that many titles. Catch-22 is a towering work but the others are still all good.

mhartl 12y ago

I suggest restoring the original title of the article, which is "Three thousand reasons to choose your reading carefully". The purpose of preventing titles from beginning with numbers is to get rid of things like "10 things you need to know as an entrepreneur", but in this case the number refers to the number of books, so the pattern has overmatched.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
firebones 12y ago
It looks like your suggestion caused this to be flag killed or something. It was on the front page, now it is nowhere to be found in the first 600 entries. Glitch in the algorithmic matrix?
- stolio 12y ago
  currently #13 on the front page
  - firebones 12y ago
    Dang. If I'm logged in, it isn't anywhere to be found. If I'm not logged in, it is indeed #13. I must have posted to this thread too much?
mhartl 12y ago
Now the title has been truncated even further, from "Reasons to choose your reading carefully" to "Choose your reading carefully". Just use the original title, which was fine. In fact, it was better, because "three thousand reasons" refers to the number of books left in the author's reading-lifetime. This context has now been stripped, for no good reason. This sort of questionable title editing is a recurring theme on Hacker News. I might be willing to help with this issue if there's an easy way to get involved. I think the kind of editorial judgment required to make good title changes is right in my wheelhouse.

intopieces 12y ago

I mostly disagree with this article. Reading only what you like is not a challenge at all. The real challenge is reading works that you disagree with, with ideas that make you think and change your perception. In the age of predictive searchand targeted advertisements, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people to stay within their own bubble.

annythesillicat 12y ago
I totally agree. I read various authors in one particular things. I try not to judge whether this book is “good” or “bad” but I try to observe the authors idea instead. Maybe I have lots of time to read and so reading books worth my time. In any books I’ve read, I learned something. Open minded reading changed my life, changed how I think, changed how I perceive. It is also leads me to discover different fields like neuroscience or quantum physics or Python programming. I’m quite surprised because I had always hated math and science in my teenage. Metaphorically, reading helps me see the size of the world as big as the size of the sun. (also helps improve my English)
davedx 12y ago
I go through long swinging phases in and out of my comfort zone, if I didn't I would probably lose interest altogether. For example I went through a phase of "harrowing" books, like Primo Levi's books, books about Stalingrad and drug addiction. Then I needed a break and went back to comfortable, fun sci-fi authors I knew. At the moment I'm doing a historical fiction binge. The current book I'm reading is very easy reading, almost a bit too pulpy. When it's done I'm considering tackling the Koran. We'll see! :)
peteretep 12y ago
> The real challenge is reading works that you disagree > with, with ideas that make you think and change your > perception. I think you're wrongly conflating enjoyment and agreement. I subscribe to The Spectator, which is an exceptionally well-written, urbane and articulate equivalent to Fox News. I disagree with almost everything I read in it: it's Islamophobic, classist, popularist, chauvinistic, misogynist, and I occasionally throw it against the wall in disgust, but I _enjoy_ reading it, because it's well written and well argued. It's challenging, and it forces me much out of my comfort zone, and I enjoy having my thinking challenged, and I enjoy the silent arguments in my head with the authors. Conversely (and ironically, given the source) I stopped reading The Guardian. I agree with most of the politics, but it's so _whiney_. It's often poorly written, poorly argued, and snipey. The article suggests reading books you _enjoy_, not ones you agree with, and the difference is important.

mindcrime 12y ago

I agree with the sentiment of this post, but strangely enough, I can't recall very many books that I've read, that I consider a complete "waste" to have read. Even the books I didn't enjoy quite as much, I usually gained something from reading. And the thing is, you never really know ahead of time what will click for you and what won't. And then there's the issue of "why" do you read. Are you reading for enjoyment? Well then give me Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Lee Child, David Baldacci, Vince Flynn, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Charles Stross, etc. all day long. Are you reading for social commentary? Then read Ayn Rand, Tom Wolfe, Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, etc. Are you reading to "improve your mind" or "broaden your thinking?" Great, read David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, etc. Classics? Sure, read classics if they have value to you. I don't think anyone should feel compelled to read classics just because somebody said they "ought" to have read them. This is where my "life is too short filter" kicks in. I'll read works I anticipate liking, or anticipate gaining some sort of value from. I won't waste my time reading something for no better reason than to satisfy the whims of some judgmental, pretentious asshole.

kevinskii 12y ago
At the risk of sounding like a pretentious asshole, over the past few years I've been reading the classics I was forced to in high school and college and hated at the time, along with many "new" ones. Now books like Moby Dick, The Brothers Karamosov, and even Pride and Prejudice are oddly just as entertaining as the works of Koonts, King, etc. This might simply be because I love fiction but hardly ever read it anymore. Or maybe the relative excitement of everything simply increases as I become more boring in my old age.
- mindcrime 12y ago
  Sure, and don't get me wrong... I'm in no way saying "don't read classics". I enjoy reading a classic every now and then, and - if anything - have been more drawn to them lately than when I was younger. All I'm saying is, don't read classics just because your "supposed to". Read them because you recognize their is some value in them for you, whether it's "cultural literacy" or maybe plain enjoyment, or maybe historical interest, whatever. OR, not. That is, if you feel you are being pressured to read, say, Madame Bovary and every ounce of intuition in your body is screaming "run for the hills", then I think it's fine to take a pass and move on to something else.

jasim 12y ago

It's not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn't serious. So, then, you noticed in a newspaper that "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" had appeared, the new book by Italo Calvino, who hadn't published for several years. You went to the bookshop and bought the volume. Good for you. In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out: the Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages, the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success, the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment, the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case, the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer, the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves, the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified. Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them. With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new). All this simply means that, having rapidly glanced over the titles of the volumes displayed in the bookshop, you have turned toward a stack of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler fresh off the press, you have grasped a copy, and you have carried it to the cashier so that your right to own it can be established. -- If on a Winters Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino.

zimbu668 12y ago

To any Brits reading this, "pasties" means something very different in the US. Google image search will show you the difference.

rahimnathwani 12y ago
NSFW
lmm 12y ago
The Guardian is a British newspaper, I'm pretty sure the author is using the British meaning.

tmuir 12y ago

After reading a string of books that basically did nothing for me, and then reading a book that completely enveloped me and messed with my head (House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski), I've made a a point of giving books about 50-100 pages to grab my attention, and then moving on if I'm not interested. I do seek out books from lists like "100 greatest books of the 20th century" and similar, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest to say that War and Peace was dry, repetitive, and completely uninteresting, or that Ulysees' and Gravity's Rainbow's prose were so incoherent, I couldn't make it even 50 pages in either book. On the other hand, The Brothers Karamozov is easily one of the top three books I've ever read, so I don't think its an aversion to classic literature in general. I think using other people's opinions of books is a good starting point for finding books to read. But I derive no enjoyment whatsoever from knowing that someone else likes the music, or books, or movies that I like, so why should I feel guilty or question my tastes when I disagree with even the most highly regarded opinions?

acjohnson55 12y ago
At the same time, some books take a while to develop. The first third of Catch-22 was a struggle for me. I found it painfully slapstick. Once I finally got into the groove, the second third was a joy. But the final third was absolutely brilliant.
- tmuir 12y ago
  I think I'd rather miss out on a few slow developers than constantly hold on to false hope that something will get better. It seems to me that the latter is much more common than the former. Being more selective will result in reading more books, and hopefully enjoying more books.
- danieltillett 12y ago
  Catch-22 is a book where your perception of it is altered greatly by your mood. I first read it when I was 16 and thought it was the most humorous book I had ever read. I read it the second time at 20 after a bad break up (I had what I thought was the brilliant idea that it would cheer me up) and I found it the most depressing book I had ever read. I have been meaning to read it a third time to see what age has done.

gdubs 12y ago

Interesting how things keep coming back to Carl Sagan's Cosmos recently -- I don't have the exact episode at hand, but he makes this point while standing in the New York Public Library. Pointing to a shelf of books, smaller than one might imagine, he says something along the lines of "The trick is knowing which books to read."

adamconroy 12y ago

For me it should be careful not to forget about reading books. From ages 10 to 24 I would have averaged at least one book a week. Then my internet addiction surfaced. Since then I have probably averaged 2 books a year, but at the same time I have probably read more words on average per week than before. The problem is that 80% of what I read on the internet is piffle or at best mental chewing gum. I've recently started reading books again and I cant believe I had forgotten how rewarding it is. No time to read anyone else's comments sorry, I'm going back to the engaging story of Karl Ove.

nsomaru 12y ago

There's a great essay by Schopenhauer called "On Thinking for Yourself" which deals with this and related themes. I'll post it here for your benefit (from the great Penguin translation titled "Essays and Aphorisms": On Thinking for Yourself 1-- As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power. You can think about only what you know, so you ought to learn something; on the other hand, you can know only what you have thought about. Now you can apply yourself voluntarily to reading and learning, but you cannot really apply yourself to thinking: thinking has to be kindled, as a fire is by a draught, and kept going by some kind of interest in its object, which may be an objective interest or merely a subjective one. The latter is possible only with things that affect us personally, the former only to those heads who think by nature, to whom thinking is as natural as breathing, and these are very rare. That is why most scholars do so little of it. 2-- The difference between the effect produced on the mind by thinking for yourself and that produced by reading is incredibly great, so that the original difference which made one head decide for thinking and another for reading is continually increased. For reading forcibly imposes on the mind thoughts that are as foreign to its mood and direction at the moment of reading as the signet is to the wax upon which it impresses its seal. The mind is totally subjected to an external compulsion to think this or that for which it has no inclination and is not in the mood. On the other hand, when it is thinking for itself it is following its own inclination, as this has been more closely determined either by its immediate surroundings or by some recollection or other: for its visible surroundings do not impose some single thought on the mind, as reading does; they merely provide it with occasion and matter for thinking the thoughts appropriate to its nature and present mood. The result is that much reading robs the mind of all elasticity, as the continual pressure of a weight does a spring, and that the surest way of never having any thoughts of your own is to pick up a book every time you have a free moment. The practice of doing this is the reason erudition makes most men duller and sillier than they are by nature and robs their writings of all effectiveness: they are in Pope’s words: For ever reading, never to be read. 3-- Fundamentally it is only our own basic thoughts that possess truth and life, for only these do we really understand through and through. The thoughts of another that we have read are crumbs from another’s table, the cast-off clothes of an unfamiliar guest. 4-- Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. – You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost; it is like deserting untrammelled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes. It may sometimes happen that a truth, an insight, which you have slowly and laboriously puzzled out by thinking for yourself could easily have been found already written in a book; but it is a hundred times more valuable if you have arrived at it by thinking for yourself. For only then will it enter your thought-system as an integral part and living member, be perfectly and firmly consistent with it and in accord with all its other consequences and conclusions, bear the hue, colour and stamp of your whole manner of thinking, and have arrived at just the moment it was needed; thus it will stay firmly and for ever lodged in your mind. This is a perfect application, indeed explanation, of Goethe’s lines: Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen.* For the man who thinks for himself becomes acquainted with the authorities for his opinions only after he has acquired them and merely as a confirmation of them, while the book-philosopher starts with his authorities, in that he constructs his opinions by collecting together the opinions of others: his mind then compares with that of the former as an automaton compares with a living man. A truth that has merely been learnt adheres to us only as an artificial limb, a false tooth, a wax nose does, or at most like transplanted skin; but a truth won by thinking for ourself is like a natural limb: it alone really belongs to us. This is what determines the difference between a thinker and a mere scholar. 5-- People who pass their lives in reading and acquire their wisdom from books are like those who learn about a country from travel descriptions: they can impart information about a great number of things, but at bottom they possess no connected, clear, thorough knowledge of what the country is like. On the other hand, people who pass their lives in thinking are like those who have visited the country themselves: they alone are really familiar with it, possess connected knowledge of it and are truly at home in it. ctd...

austerity 12y ago

So she was already reading while driving and then started reading compulsively. That's some serious book addiction. I'm an exact opposite of the author: can never pick a book because of fear it won't be "worth my time" and end up looking at pictures of cute animals instead.

hiperlink 12y ago

It reminds me of a somewhat similar article from NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/21/135508305/the-sad-beautiful-fact-that-were-all-going-to-miss-almost-everything http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/21/135508305/the-...

known 12y ago

If you don't read a newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed.

facepalm 12y ago

To me it is a very difficult problem to discover good books to read. At present I am without a good book. How do you go about it?

ryan-allen 12y ago
http://reddit.com/r/books http://reddit.com/r/books is a good start! edit: also check out http://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook http://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook and make sure to explore the sidebar suggested subreddits
- facepalm 12y ago
  Thanks, checking it out right now!

peteretep 12y ago

I feel very lucky to have been brought up in a house where reading was never fetishized, or necessarily encouraged, but my parents and siblings did it incessantly. Reading was a leisure activity, rather than some kind of moral imperative. As a result, I tend to ditch books I'm not enjoying after ~ 50-100 pages, and I tend to reread books I've enjoyed a lot. I used to have a slight issue with continuing to read books where I wanted to know what happened, but wasn't enjoying them. Films too. Wikipedia plot summaries have solved this!

edpichler 12y ago

Living in a abundant world, I know that I will not have time to enjoy it all. My strategy is to prioritize. I realized that I will not have enough time to read all the books I want, watch all the Youtube videos I like, play all the games I want, do all the things I wish. Every time I finish something I ask to myself "What is the most important subject to me at this moment", and I watch, read, play about it. If I'm on a cinema, or reading a book that I realize it's not good or I'll not like, or just lose interest, I simply leave it, because life is too short for bad books, or bad movies.

sireat 12y ago

In the end it does not matter whether you re-read A. Christie's complete works thrice and did not finish Brothers Karamazov or vice versa. Personally, I have a hard time not finishing a book, for example I can't decide whether I want to continue reading Gone Girl past half. This book is written cleverly yet somehow disappointing after the first big twist(it came too early imho). One strategy I employ is reading three or four books at a time, one sci-fi, one mystery, one science, one philosophy one political and so on.