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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

Is this a wishlist or are these books the author has actually read in the last three months?

The Art of Software Security Assessment is 1200 pages long. Hitler: A Biography is 1000 pages long. Ordinary Men is shorter at around 400 pages, Ordinary Injustice is about 300, Blood in the Water is 750, Reversing is 600, The Box is 550. Combined those are about 5,000 pages.

I'm even ignoring the programming-specific books because they may not be read cover-to-cover (even though they're likely read at a slower pace in order to try their concepts), but that still seems like too many pages to read and absorb in a three-month period.

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I've been tracking just my entertainment reading (fiction and nonfiction/history/biography etc) (not my tech book reading) on Goodreads the last four years, and I'm averaging just over 16,000 pages a year on entertainment reading... (the high point was over 18,000 a couple years ago, but I've decided to take some of my reading time and use that time to write music now) -- ~8000 pages every six months.

I usually read another 1000-1500 pages of tech reading on top of that every six months.

Certainly doable.

I think the important question is, how much of that do you retain?

How do you "retain" things read for entertainment?

If you can't remember what happened on the last page, you're not retaining. If you can't remember the flow of the plot or why a chapter was important, you're not retaining. At that point you're just reading an outline of the plot.

There's plenty of things to retain in books read for entertainment.

Quite a lot -- I actually take notes after each read to remind myself what I thought of the book -- the very act of doing so strengthens recall very well, even if the notes are just a few sentences.

The point of reading for entertainment is to:

1. Have fun.

If you don't like the book you're reading, put it down. Life is too short for bad books.

2. Leave a general impression on you.

For example, some books just change your outlook on life. Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, or Pierce Brown's Red Rising trilogy, or Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastard's trilogy are all great series that take you on emotional roller-coasters, make you change you perspective on life, etc.

Reading makes people more empathic, and kinder. It helps give you different points of view. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315838511_Turner_R_...)

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”

Presumably you can also get this from film and television?

there are not 40+ episodes or even multipart movies of discworld, sadly. And while there are a few adaptions, I don't see how spending less time absorbed into the fantasy would be desirable ;)

Discworld just could not be adapted to the screen... you'd lose the puns, the outrageous descriptions and the hilarity of it all. I mean... maybe if it was stylistically something like A Series of Unfortunate Events with the over-the-top costumes, make up, and set pieces... but it still wouldn't quite capture Pratchett's little piece of un-reality.

The study seems to indicate that reading is more effective / engaging.

My gut tells me that film and television is to reading as a snack is to a meal.

attributed often to Emmerson: ‘I cannot remember the dinners I have eaten, nor the books I have read, but all have helped to make me.’

I used to beat myself up about not remembering details of books, even ones I read only a few months ago. I still try to take notes and revisit those often, but PG's take on this help ed reduced my anxiety about it:

> Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why.

http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html

How much of what you see in your browser do you retain?

I read a fair whack. It feels like I've forgotten more than I learned but then there's a situation every now and then that reminds me about something from one of those many books that turns out to work well.

It's almost like placing the dots and then they'll connect themselves later. It's probably inefficient but I enjoy reading and those situations make it worth it.

Is there a way to get goodreads to give back page number information like that? I track my reading there just like you and have been meaning for ages to get something going to give a page-count for each month / year.

There's a stats view under My Books with both a book and page view. In order for it be accurate you need to include a read date for every book you read though.

I would assume it is actual books read, during the winter when I read regularly in the evenings I average a little over 100 pages a day across time. That is a mixture of fiction and non fiction. That would be 9000 pages in a quarter. Back when I was a more serious reader, for several years I averaged about 50K pages a year. I read fast, but I am by no means the fastest reader I know.

I listen to audiobooks when I’m walking to work and back—that’s an hour a day on average. That counts for at least 2000 pages in each quarter. I also read anything between 10 and 40 pages of technical books every day, which adds up a lot after three months.

That makes a lot of sense. I was trying to do the math between a normal commute to work, actually working, any other hobbies plus a life outside of work, and then trying to cram that much reading into the day, but audiobooks while commuting helps make that math a lot easier.

Let's say you only read Monday through Friday. 5000 pages in one quarter is about 75 pages a day. (If you read weekends too, 55 pages a day.)

For a period of time I was commuting 50 minutes by train in each direction. It was quite easy to maintain a pace like that.

I just finished a 700 page book. It took me 3 evenings. If I did that continually for 3 months I would read 21,000 pages. So... I would say 5,000 is easily doable. My wife reads much much faster than I do so her numbers would be even higher.

Reading at around a page a minute, that's 5000 minutes, or 83 hours. Plenty of people have 83 hours of free time a quarter. I could read that much if I wasted less time online.

A minute has only 60 seconds in it, which gives you around 1 second/line. That's pretty fast!

How much TV do you watch?

Personally I watch very little, maybe one episode every couple of weeks. I have tons of hobbies that occupy my time, and I didn't realize we were counting audiobooks (it didn't click in my mind that you would "read" an audiobook).

I think I read a lot, which means about one 300-400 page book per month. I'd say 1500 pages per month is definitely on the higher end of the scale.

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