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Comment by zeeshanm | Hacker News Reader

According to this post - the author's read at least two books per week in 2015. How does one do that? Serious question.

Instead of watching TV, playing video games, surfing Facebook, and solving Sudoku puzzles I read. There's really nothing else to it.

Instead of watching TV, playing video games, surfing Facebook, and solving Sudoku puzzles I read. There's really nothing else to it.

I'm the same way. Friends and students are endlessly amazed that I'm reading a new book every couple days. I'm endlessly amazed at how much time they spend on their phones.

A while ago I wrote "Why fiction? Why reading?" http://jakeseliger.com/2014/03/03/why-fiction-why-reading/ :

Every great book is the result of years or decades of studying and experience, distilled into a volume you can read in a few hours. How could you not want that?

It takes me less than 30 seconds to read the page. Let's be generous and make it 60 seconds. So in an hour you can read 60 pages. 300 pages book in five hours. Two books will take 10 hours. So reading for one hour each week day and 2.5 on weekend will take you through two books a week. There are books however which you just cannot put down and go through them in one or two sittings.

If we assume 300 pages per book, that's ~85 pages per day. Reading speed heavily depends on the material, but I'd say 30 pages per hour is a typical average. So 3h per day...whether you can hit that probably depends on your family situation and how much you like reading. If you're reading undemanding non-fiction you can probably hit 3x that speed.

I suspect it really depends on the person. Two books a week doesn't seem all that difficult _for me_ ... but my wife would have a lot of trouble with it, though she makes up for that by reading for longer periods of time than I do.

I enjoy reading to a ridiculous degree and do so quite often. As a result, I can typically finish a 400-page book in 2-3 days, averaging a couple hours each day. I'm at the faster end of the scale among people I know, though. A free weekend (which is extremely rare with two young kids) usually gives me the time to finish 3 or 4 books on my ever-growing list of fiction to read.

Replace HN/Facebook/Reddit time with reading.

Average american watches 5 hours of tv a day. How long does it take to read a 200 pg book even if you're interrupted by meals and things?

>Average American watches 5 hours of tv a day.

Anyone know where we can get the data for this? It seems to come from the Nielson corporation, who might be biased in the direction of implying people watch more TV. The BLS says 2.8 hours per day:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm

...I'd like to see the histogram of this data. Is it normally distributed? What's the standard deviation? How many people are watching more than 16 hours per day. How many are at zero per day? What the median? How does it break down for different demographics? How about with the seasons? How does it look over the course of a week? Are people binge watching on the weekends?

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/average-american-watch...

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