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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

I’m kind of in your camp. Back when I had a lot of time, I used to read a lot. But it’s such a low bandwidth communication, and books seem to have so much useless filler material. I tried e-books but failed. If I listen to them while I’m doing something else like commuting, I don’t pay attention (since I’m trying to not get killed on I-680), and if I listen while I’m not doing anything else, I fall asleep. Still waiting for someone to invent that The Matrix style “download into my brain” technology.

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A year or so ago, I decided I wanted to read all of the "best" books so I found a few lists of the best literature in English from the past few hundred years and read a few dozen of the books that showed up on most lists, and I realized that really well written books aren't nearly as low-bandwidth as a lot of more pulpy type books are.

Obviously I didn't enjoy all of the books on the list, but even the ones I kind of slogged through felt like they contained more... knowledge (wisdom?)

I'm also really into sci-fi and fantasy, so I've been working my way down awards lists like the Hugos. The books on these lists also seem more high bandwidth, with the bonus of giving you exposure to a bunch of different authors who have mostly all written a bunch of stuff that's similar to whatever won them the award.

N. N. Taleb always says you shouldn’t read any books that are less than 200 years old. If a book survives for 200 years it must have something genuinely valuable to say.

I think this is good advice. I try to follow it for the most part, but obviously I don’t apply that to technical material. Still, I bet if you read Euclid instead of O’Reilly you’d end up a pretty good programmer.

I've read some of Taleb's books and while I find him very smart and with very valuable insights, I'd rather take some of these extreme things he says (like what you pointed) with a grain of salt.

And how old are his books?

Paradoxes are fun, but dangerous to organize your life around.

I find audiobooks excellent when I'm doing something that occupies my body but not my mind. Excercise (whether working out or just going for a walk) is great, as are any jobs you do around the house that are >90% autopilot -- cooking familiar meals, vacuuming, washing up, that sort of thing.

(When driving I think it's better and safer to listen to something you can easily drift into and out of, like music or a podcast you don't feel the need to follow closely, rather than a book.)

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