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Comment by Yhippa | Hacker News Reader

Just curious, what's everybody's pace around here? It took me about a month to casually get through "Ready Player One" (great book BTW), and that was for a book club. It seems like a lot of the people I respect get through about a book a week. Either they're lying or have such good focus to avoid distractions other than books. Maybe I could put down the HN for a bit.

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When I read for light entertainment, [that's how I read Ready Player One] it's roughly a replacement for watching movies/TV. It gets chunked into multi-hour sessions over two or three or so nights. If the book doesn't motivate me to read at least 100 or so pages the first and second evening, odds are I won't finish it. I used to worry about not finishing books, now I don't.

On the other hand, recently I have started rereading a few books by some favorite authors and those I have read slowly. Not everything is worth savoring or caring about much beyond the general idea.

Reading is habits and my habits around reading for several hours formed when I was a child. On the other hand, my beloved only really started reading for fun after we were living together and its taken a couple of decades to get to reading several books at once or sometimes finishing books in a few days.

I mostly read business management books, but since most of them can be summarized in a couple pages (or a single big blog post, really) I just skim and skip through the hundreds of uninteresting anecdotes and simply stop reading after I grasp the concept of the book. Takes me a couple of hrs in total per book.

When I'm reading to learn, I take notes - and if I get through a chapter or two without taking any notes I will probably abandon the book.

Right now I am averaging 1 to 2 books per week (because I'm only working part time this summer), working full time it would be more like 0.5 to 1 per week.

I find for something with a narrative structure, in a normal book format, I expect to spend about 1 minute per page -- very approximately.

For example, I bought "Night Train To Lisbon" at 2AM last Saturday night to read as I was falling asleep, and I finished it around 2AM last Sunday. At 470 pages, ~ 8 hours of reading, not that different than a normal work day worth of "effort" on Sunday.

For me, the most important thing is finding books that interest me -- that is why I would decide to spend an evening reading instead of other solo downtime like watching tv or a movie, or gaming.

I used to commute 3 hours a day, I used to finish 1-2 books per week. 3 hours of solid reading every single day.

Now, depending on the book it can be 1 week to 3 months as I don't commute and when I'm at home it's quite hard to drop everything read for one hour.

So I think it depends on people's lifestyle, if you are commuting 3 hours a day reading a book in a week is very very easy.

I write a lot while reading. Sort of like having a conversation with the author.

I read less books this way, but the knowledge in the books become much more internalized. I tend to implement them much faster too. And aren't we reading, in part, to better our lives (short-term pleasure or long-term changes)?

Of course, I read fiction just for the pleasure as well (like Ready Player One).

This method of reading also sharpened my bullshit detector. If I am not writing a lot, this indicates lack of insights. Either a bad book or a bad time for that book. So either way, a bad book for me.

I'd be very curious to hear more about this. I've flirted on and off with note-taking on books for all the same reasons you mention, but I invariably feel guilty about progressing too slowly. In a weird way, I think this a quintessentially American affliction - like our obsession with throughput and productivity washes into our real lives as well. I'm just wondering what you do to fight that instinct. Specifically, I think the two things that get me are : (1) feeling bad about not reading enough and (2) worrying about being ultimately disappointed with a book and having wasted my time taking notes.

I feel much smarter after reading more slowly. When someone asks me, "What are you reading?" I feel much more confident in answering that question.

And the knowledge is less flimsy as well; I become a master, not a slave, of the material. I do not place the source material on a pedestal. I take what I need, and discard the garbage.

I can also cook the material much better. I am able to merge ideas from the book with my previous interests. The products from mental fusing turn out to be solid business ideas and mental models.

Very interesting. I always had this fear in the back of my mind that reading books about personal development is useless since I can't retain the information long enough to apply at the right time.

Your method might just be what I need to do to get better at this.

To implement what you read, employ the method of Directives[1]. These days my notes look like the following (from "The Inevitable" by Kevin Kelly):

----------

You hate updates? Get used to them. Because in the future, living — for most surrounded by technology — will be a constant stream of updates.

1. Embrace being an Endless Newbie; don't be embarrassed if you don't know something!

In the era of constant updates, we will be newbies — forever. Something else we have to get used to. You won't have time to master anything, really. Most of the technologies that will play a large role in the next thirty years have not been invented.

...

We are living in the golden age. We just don't realize it. The last thirty years has created a great starting point. It is the best time ever in human history to begin.

You are not late.

2. Study AI and Hardware. Go out and slap AI and sensors to everything.

----------

The numbered list is my list of Directives. These imperatives seamlessly organize my notes well; all other pieces of information turn into arguments for these assertions. This info-gathering process feels very intuitive. Our brain must be good at gathering evidence for a piece of advice.

Besides the general Directives, I use org-mode for my tasks. The end goal is to develop sensible systems, not drain your willpower performing these directives. So when I have an idea for implementing a sensible system, I write it down in org-mode (which has a numbered list of all my tasks).

[1]: https://sivers.org/2do

I use a similar but somewhat simpler method: whenever I read something, immediately after I have a finished I try to write down everything I remember. That has helped me a lot to internalize the material. Another method: in subjects I'm deeper interested, before starting to read, I scan the chapters and headlines and write down what I expect to learn and what I already know.

That is awesome. Reminds me of Barbara Oakley's Mind for Numbers; she tells her students to practice recall rather than rereading the material for learning.

When I am reading to converse, I am inclined towards not looking at the original text while writing notes. This helps me capture the material into the right context, as well as remember in the long-term.

I go in fits and starts; anything from 3-4 books a week to 5 in 3 months. Just find quiet moments; 10 minutes, 6 times a day is an hour all told. I read on the commute, over lunch, whilst waiting for the kettle to boil, when waiting for my partner to change for bed. It adds up.

I am working on Neal Stephenson's REAMDE. I say "working on" as opposed to "finishing" since it's more of a side job than a casual read. You don't really make progress, you just sort of periodically put another hundred pages between you and the front cover, without really budging how far down the binding your bookmark is.

REAMDE is sort of like if someone looked at the average globe-spanning complicated plot and action scenes of a Bond movie, and said, "I guess it's alright, you know, for a short story."

To answer your question, I am changing my metric from "books read per trip the library" to "trips to the library (to renew my loan) per book."

Yep. Stephenson takes me a while. I kept track whilst reading _Quicksilver_ and it ended up taking me 50 days, with the baseline being 50 minutes a day on weekdays during my commute, and the odd extra hour every now and then when I had a bit of time to spare.

Audiobooks are also a good way to blast through content at the expense of a retention cost.

I mostly read nonfiction and usually do it "marker and pencil in hand" so I try to read carefully and soak up new ideas. I commute by train and read about a midsized book/week that way (sometimes I sleep instead of reading, sometimes I do other stuff etc.). For the commute reading I usually pick things that aren't very meaty like popscience (the Ariely books on behavioral economics or Fooled by Randomness are good examples) or intro/overview type of books like Secrets and Lies. Most fiction I read is SciFi, the occasional fantasy and some horror and thrillers/crime.

My reading is a bit odd since I tend to read 3-5 commute books at a time picking the one that I feel like each day.

At home I enjoy the occasional comic book (some superhero stuff but mostly things like Transmetropolitan, From Hell or Criminal) and grind out more meaty books, mostly mathematics or physics and work related stuff (programming, algorithms etc.). Basically anything that involves exercises or long/hard thinking. The pace is rather slow, I aim at one good non-programming related book per month and sprinkle in the work related stuff.

tl;dr I read a lot and enjoy it :D

I think it depends. I take months to finish a book casually, but when a true page-turned like "Ready Player One" pops up, I blazed through it in days. I think there's a need for active reader engagement, where there is incentive ("It's going to be a movie directed by Steven Spielberg and music composed by John Williams!") to enjoy the fruits of being cool before it becomes cool.

Aiming for ~ a book a week, and have been holding steady around that mark for around the past 3 years (avg. 50 books / year). I got through Ready Player One in a weekend when I had nothing else to do, but it took me a good couple months to get through Infinite Jest this year…try to balance it out with a good mix of fiction / nonfiction and easy / hard books. I waste plenty of time online, too, but average something in the ballpark of an hour / day of book-reading.

I don't even really read whole books. At least technical ones, I tend to hunt for the chapters/sections strictly relevant to problems at hand or upcoming. Non-technical books, I tend to skip to the most interesting chapters first and read out of order. Reading this way makes it somewhat difficult to define a pace, though I would say I read slower than average and prefer very detail-oriented reading over skimming.

It depends on the book. For fiction, I usually finish it that night (I'm bad ay delayed gratification).

Non-fiction isn't quite as addictive usually and a week is about average. I usually carry it everywhere and use any free time >1min for reading (i. e. standing in line.

I shot for 1 book per month last year and got through maybe 9.5. This year I've been more productive and have hit 12 already. Granted some of the reads I've done have been small (like the MIT essential knowledge series).

Would you recommend the MIT essential knowledge series?

Usually a book every 2-3 weeks.

If you are looking for a new book and want to ruin your standards for fiction, read the Red Rising trilogy. I can't help use it as a measuring stick for evaluating new books as I read them :/

I've been reading one paperback and one audio book simultaneously. The paper back is slow: one every month or two. The audio book is for when I run, so it's based on mileage.

This year, I've explicitly been trying to read a book every two weeks, and am at 19 for the year, slightly ahead of pace. Previously, I was reading about 5-10 books a year.

Books tend to fill my lengthy public transportation commutes. also I'm not opposed to borrowing some sleep time to get in a few more pages.

I regret reading before sleep. I think I've conditioned myself to sleep anytime I read now. I can rarely get more than a five or six pages before I start to drift off.

I regret reading before sleep. I think I've conditioned myself to think a lot any time I lie in bed now. I can rarely get to sleep within an hour of going to bed.

Less than a day for Ready Player One ;( Not focus for me as much as how much fun I'm having

I tried listening to the RP1 audiobook, but the non-stop barrage of 80s & 90s nerd cred references seemed too forced. It may have been Wil Wheaton's delivery, which seemed to emphasize each and every reference. I gave up after a chapter or two. Does this continue throughout the book or does it ease up?

It only increases.

If you set a goal of about 50 pages per night, you'd be surprised how much you can read.

How fast do you read that though? I'm like the grand parent post, 50 pages is an onerous commitment, something I'll only get done if I'm really really into a book and have nothing else to do that day, or am stuck on a plane. It'll take me around eight hours of reading to finish a short young adult book, for example.

Not particularly fast. I'm probably average for the typical college-educated adult.

Obviously it varies with the density of the material.

You can work up to 50 pages. Start with 10 pages per night. After a week, add 10 pages. Repeat until you hit a number of pages you find worthwhile.

Easy: Spend less time on HN/Twitter/Facebook/etc :-)

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