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Comment by quanticle | Hacker News Reader

gwern points this out in his essay, Culture Is Not About Esthetics [1]. He points that even if he read only the books that won awards, there would still be far too many to finish in his lifetime. Given that, it is no crime to ignore recent books, and, in fact, it may be better for us to stop publishing new literary works and concentrate on better appreciating the old masters.

[1]: http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20Esthetics

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My main issue with this is that I believe there are certain styles of books that don't exist yet because they are created as societies emerge. And I would very much want them to exist. Just like there are movies I would want to exist, and video games I would want to exist. And, in many cases, there are no proper alternatives.

On a similar note, I'm increasingly less interested in a lot of old literature due to the "I've seen this before, we've already talked about this, and this perspective is massively outdated" effect.

For all the talk of how there's lots of everything, there are still whole categories of topics I have never seen at all, or they were covered really poorly.

I think this concerns are better addressed by superior aggregators and niche audiences than by the banning of production of media.

I have a new habit of reading a Princeton University Press book a week, it's good to get a modern update from a professor on the status of Greek history research, and other subjects. For example this book was one of the best books I've read in years the explains why we learn elementary math the way we do currently and how it's changed through history, how it ties into more advanced concepts, how infinity complicates everything. A great read with little noise http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10697.html

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