Start Binge-Reading | Hacker News Reader

Start Binge-Reading

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128 pointsingve38 comments

I think most people nowadays are binge reading. They're just not necessarily binge reading books. They binge read articles on reddit, hacker news, new york times, any variety of quality and less than quality online sources.

Yup, I get this sense too. You also write, "any variety of quality and less than quality online sources."

Is there research that explains what the economics looks like between these two ends of the quality spectrum? How do the highbrow and lowbrow sources work in the marketplace?

That’s an interesting question in itself. Since different processes kick off in the brain in handwriting vs typing on a keyboard. Does this effect quality and therefor economics?

I don't think that really compares. The main way to use social media - at least to my observation - seems to be looking often for short intervals. That would be the opposite of binge reading as it is very superficial, always in the background and seldom with a real focus on it.

Still, people are reading and consuming more information than any time in history. When the alternative is probably no information rather than some.

The fact it's not great information vs what you might find in a well-thought out book is a different question.

The information density is typically much higher though.

I spend 6-10 hours a day binge reading Hacker News, Reddit, Google search results, etc. Is it qualitatively different than reading books? Am I missing out? I feel like books are expensive, repetitive, and take forever to get to the point.

>? I feel like books are expensive, repetitive, and take forever to get to the point.

The self help genre

I read a lot growing up, stopped like high school to late 20s, then really got back into it recently.

I’m not going to pretend that it has somehow rocked my world to spend an hour or so a day reading novels, but... it has forced me to slooooooooow doooooown. A novel comes at you relatively slow compared to reading 15 news articles, Reddit threads, my twitter feed, et al.

It has been a peaceful experience to have a slowform entertainment medium take a chunk of my day.

And I always feel this is worth repeating, but after ~25% of a book if you’re not enjoying it, put it back on the shelf and try something else. We’re (most of us) not in high school anymore, nobody is forcing us to finish a novel. Read something because you want to.

Last note: if you’re having trouble staying focused on a book, put your phone in another room while you read. Game changer wrt the temptation of checking notifications.

Another tip is to force yourself to read in half your normal speed. You’re not going anywhere, and reading is not a competitive sport. Personally this gives me a ethereal and meditative sensation, making literature more impactful.

Like you mentioned this is the opposite of “online reading”, where the point of reading often is to consume the content and move on.

Well, reading at half speed doesn't work for me... Either Like the book and do binge read or don't and I put it back and never finish it. Totally agree that a book is a different thing compared online.

Another thing that helps reading more slowly is reading out aloud. Imagine recording an audio book. I do that sometimes. It's somewhat soothing and also improves my pronounciation, which may seem like an irrelevant aspect but while my english is quite strong and I always read, listen to and watch english content in its original language, it's simply not my native language. Having the chance to read aloud/talk in english is a welcome and somewhat educational change.

>Ben Dolnick. Mr. Dolnick is a novelist.

>Once I’m actually enjoying a book, it really does feel as if the pages are turning themselves; [...] And pleasure is, after all [...] the reason that I read.

Many proponents of reading (like Ben Dolink) don't seem to accept that some people just don't like to read for pleasure the same way they do. People are different.

I love reading and I've read a hundred of the well-known classics including the thick tomes of Moby Dick, War & Peace, and Les Miserables. But 99% of my friends do not read books for fun. I totally understand that because not every brain derives the same pleasure from reading. Therefore, I'm not going to "advise" them that they should be reading more.

On another note, I still heavily read non-fiction tech books but I've stopped reading all fiction more than 5 years ago. I found out quitting fiction isn't that strange as even famous novelists like Philip Roth and Larry McMurtry also quit reading fiction.[1][2]

Sometimes people just quit getting the dopamine hit from fiction -- or never really got it in the first place. They just read whatever was required in high-school and college to pass some tests and that's it.

I know there will still be some confident folks that are sure that anyone can be "taught" to love fiction. My personal experiences make me doubt that. To me, it's like the fitness enthusiasts claiming you'll get "runner's high" and exercise will feel good. But I've been running regularly for decades and I've never had runner's high; running is always a chore. Certain people get a dopamine hit from workouts but I never did. I think people are just different in what activities bring genuine pleasure.

If you read Mr. Dolnick's self-reported joy of consuming fiction and for some reason, it doesn't inspire you to do the same, there's nothing wrong with you.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=philip+roth+quit+reading+fic...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=Larry+McMurtry+"lost+interes...

I agree that the generalisation probably does not work.

However, considering a lot of people like fiction in most their other forms, except books, we have to be careful not to overcompensate in the other direction. From the 99% person you know that don't like reading, I'm convinced a significant number would actually love it, if introduced to it properly.

Like, I agree that a lot people will never get the runner high from cycling. But the crowd that gets it from hitting the gym should be prime material to convert to cycling.

I blame school. I never got any love of sport from PE. I didn't get the love of reading from reading assignments either (), but society is telling me that not loving sport is weird so I tried again, while not loving reading is expected.

() Up until the day a teacher just had a list that wasn't just all classic and you were not expected to use the reading as a basis for a disertation on some historical or social quirk, or extract profound philosophical meaning about the human nature. I picked a book with a story I liked, first time ever since childhood.

Absolutely. English Literature (mandatory at my school) meant I didn’t pick up a book for pleasure for over five years after that.

Mainly they ruined reading for me with an intense over analysis that I could never get to grips with.

That wasn’t the only thing though. We used to go around the room with one person reading a page at a time, some people could barely read and it was absolute agony because it would take months to get through a book.

Difference between binge watching and binge reading is that reading warrants a good amount of imagination. Watching is pretty much a passive activity, and hence easy to get addicted to. Good article.

There was an article about how reading taps into different parts of your brain, your self, your imagination, calmness, wander.. so much things that are good and lacking today. Binge is almost (done right it can be really nice) exactly the opposite of what we should do.

I agree. I noticed the same thing with reading articles online (or threads from HN), there's no friction and you end up getting a good amount of dopamine after much less time than you would by reading a book.

I would argue that the dopamine from a book is actually higher. You invest more into a book and are thus more likely to manipulated by what the author is saying.

On the other hand a documentary I invest no effort into watching it and thus can remain relatively unbiased.

I guess reading is more fun the more you write. I stop to think about concepts laid in books more often than not, which provokes myself to write immediately. Also, you see the way people write and which words they use, which you can immediately copy. Finally, I don't really know what it is, but if I spend even 10 minutes during breakfast to read a book, I find myself more productive in writing later the day.

I'm going to admit, if I was to buy all the books I wanted, I would be left poor and unable to feed myself. That's why a lot of thought goes into what books I buy. I can be seen frequently taking way too much time at bookstores perusing books often reading a few pages of a book and then making up my mind whether to buy it or not.

I thought E-books and Audible would change the game and make it easier to consume books, but it still requires a lot of mental and physical bandwidth to consume a book. It's very active and requires a 'reading muscle' to get good at reading, or even listening to one (on Audible).

I've tried various tools like Kindle and speed-reading apps, but they fail horribly in that they still require that reading muscle. There is no way out of this; you have to put in the work of reading a book, and the time investment (alongside cashflow to bring in steady streams of curated books for consuming).

More and more I keep thinking about an interview with Jacques Derrida.

[Standing in his home library / office space]

INTERVIEWER: Did you read these?

DERRIDA: No, I haven't read these. I haven't read all the books that are here.

INTERVIEWER: But you've read most of them?

DERRIDA: No, no. Three or four. But I read those four really, really well.

I saw the interview, and it kinda annoys me. Close reading comes from broad reading - it's only after you've read a library of books that you get all the subtleties and references. There are all sorts of orthodoxies around reading propagated by philosophers, often ingenious ones, often trying to make some kind of backhanded point.

Don't forget about libraries!

I recommend John Adairs books to everyone but The Art of Creative Thinking is a particularly good one.

> Reading without reflecting has been compared to eating without digesting. ‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested’, Francis Bacon put it more accurately. One page or even one paragraph properly digested will be more fruitful than a whole volume hurriedly read. Or, as the film mogul, Sam Goldwyn, said to a hopeful author, ‘I have read part of your book all the way though.’ When you come across significant parts – the passages that speak to you – it is worth remem- bering the counsel of the Book of Common Prayer: ‘Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.’

Agree. I have been watching a lot of movies in the last month since I retired but this afternoon I felt like reading a book so I jumped into Liu Cixin’s “The Wandering Earth” and it was a more satisfying than most of my recent movie watching.

I have also been binge writing on a new book project, a three hour writing sprint each morning this week.

There is something satisfying about spending at least a couple of hours in an activity without jumping to something else, like reading email for a few minutes. Concentration is a great thing.

I think I’ve somehow wired my brain to no longer be able to read books. I read almost all of the content I get in a day, no tv, rarely movies, but I cannot muster the stamina to read a whole book...particularly fiction. It makes me feel bad b/c I’m obviously missing out on a big part of culture.

Fortunately the rest of my family all loves to read thanks to my wife’s amazing consistency in getting our girls into it and inspiring them to keep going.

(Edit: I have had a bit of success with audio books as long as the narrator isn’t distracting)

"There is no team of brilliant and vaguely sinister engineers, cooking up ways to get you binge reading."

There is, and it's called an editor. This is especially why a lot of bestselling non-fiction reads so smoothly. I always have a bunch of these lying around for when I want something easy to get into.

I recommend binge skimming of books, blogs, magazines, looking for ideas and viewpoints. "Speed understanding," Asimov called it.

Mark the content that is novel to you, that is beyond your understanding, that you disagree with, that challenges your thinking, that makes you reflect or reevaluate, sparks your imagination.

And so conversely avoid reading further things well known to you, that only confirm your thinking, that you agree with, that is spoon-fed to you, that doesn't demand of you to apply its capital even after the cover is closed.

It's the deliberate practice of synthesis, analysis, and evaluation of reading that is the heart of all creativity.

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. - Gidé

Binge reading to me isn't actually good its just necessary to consume information, we do that already with our feeds and sites like this.

With fiction I want to take my time, so no books can wait.

Netflix to me is this generation's radio, its background noise. It produces some good content but we only truly tune in for that release. On most days it's old episodes of the office, fraiser and the west wing.

I usually like to find classic literature and then find the movie for it.

Some gold ones: -The Stranger, Camus. Bring the book to life -Nabokov novel

When I've got extra time I like to take $5 or $10 and go to the local GoodWill. They've got rows of great books (fiction, instructional, illustrated coffee-table books, etc.)

Sometimes I buy something, sometimes I don't. But it's always fun looking through the titles for treasures.

I used to enjoy doing that on a grey Saturday afternoon, but most charity shops in my area are now much too savvy to leave any treasures in their shops. A volunteer checks any 'interesting' books for value online and sends them up the line to HQ to sell on eBay or Abebooks.

The remaining dross goes onto the shelves for 'five books for a pound'.

It's profitable for them now but in the long term I think itis counterproductive since it removes a lure that used to encourage people to enter the shops.

Would you ever listen to somebody giving a 2 hour monologue? To blindly give somebody that much power over your attention span? I rather not. Get to the point or stop wasting my time. It's why I hardly read books. Just give me the section with the information I need.

I do binge read. It's hacker news and a personal RRS feed with 150 or so sites I track...

Great article! I really like that it's aware of its own limitations, or rather that it knows it's trying to explain something largely obvious.

As with everything, the hardest step is the first one, then each successive one gets easier; and similarly, some things simply aren't enjoyable in bite-sized ADHD-addled portions.

This doesn't make sense. The reason people binge watch (as opposed to, say, bing drink) is that there's no incremental cost to watch an additional episode. I had expected this article would be about a new kindle subscription service that gives you unlimited access to all books. But instead it's about...reading, the traditional regular kind.

FWIW I have subscribed to O'Reilly Safari for years: it gives you essentially unrestricted access to approximately all computer science and programming books. I've found it to be invaluable. I haven't bought a book for work in years. Something similar for all books would be great.

I find my local library does that fairly well.

Also, "approximately all computer science and programming books"? Approximately all? Just how good an approximation is that? I can't help but think a pretty bad one. Maybe "a few books on approximately most of the top fifty or so languages and a bunch of books on fairly common techniques, tools and systems"? Sure, if you just need any book on something, it's going to be something fairly common and they've probably got one.

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