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Comment by johnnylambada | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine anyone having read everything in this list. It would take more than a lifetime for me at my reading speed.

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Your reading speed would likely improve if you read that much.

EDIT: I'm a bit amused by the downvotes here. I've posted plenty of controversial opinions on HN and rarely get this many downvotes. This one seems pretty non-controversial by comparison: is there really some disagreement that reading a lot will result in becoming a faster reader? I'm genuinely confused.

I am not sure either why you’re being downvoted on a non-controversial comment. I’m also honestly curious. Is your statement being conflated with ‘speed reading’? A quick search finds plenty of similar recommendations. From one of them:

“The more you read, the more you will be better at it. The better you are at reading, the more you will increase your reading speed.” [1]

[1] https://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/10-ways-incre...

FYI, the Guidelines of this site state that one should not complain about the voting on comments. It can change quite a bit over time, so early impressions are likely to be misleading.

I know the guidelines well, nevertheless, thank you. But I’m truly curious why such a straightforward comment by kerkeslager would get downvoted, it would honestly satisfy my intellectual curiosity. It also raises the issue with reading speed and its connotations. Examples: Is reading faster better? It depends on the material; Is speed reading as the extreme form of it of any value or just a gimmick? A gimmick of no value to me.

Bloom was famous for his reading speed and memory: 400 pages an hour for simpler material, and could recite most of Shakespeare's works word by word. For us mortals the canon is meant to take a lifetime to read.

I can't imagine anyone being anywhere close to an expert (meaning, highly familiar with the relevant scholarship) on more than a tiny fraction of this list - and do note that whole areas of world lit (East Asia, etc.) are entirely missing from the list, because they're so hard to even characterize in a useful way. Perhaps this is what illustrates the very real failure of this whole "canon" concept more than anything else could.

Well it is called “The Western Canon” and this is right at the top of the page:

“I have included some Sanskrit works, scriptures and fundamental literary texts, because of their influence on the Western canon. The immense wealth of ancient Chinese literature is mostly a sphere apart from Western literary tradition and is rarely conveyed adequately in the translations available to us."

If you’re looking for an Eastern-focused selection (although obviously from a Western perspective), I recommend these lists:

https://www.sjc.edu/application/files/7315/7307/1179/Santa_F...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Books_of_the_East

> ... because of their influence on the Western canon. The immense wealth of ancient Chinese literature is mostly a sphere apart ...

That's quite debatable though, it seems clear to me that the West did pay quite a bit of attention to Chinese culture, starting in the 18th c. or so. The inadequacy of relying on translations may be closer to the mark, but then again that's just another way that this literature turns out to be especially challenging.

That's why we have Harvard classics so we can skip nonsense that gets irrelevant overtimes

How does reading the classics shelter from engaging with ephemeral works?

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