A note on reading big, difficult books | Hacker News Reader

A note on reading big, difficult books

bradford-delong.com

146 pointsMaysonL51 comments

Here's the thing: most books, for most people, don't need to be absorbed or understood in their entirety.

If you're a professional in your field and ought to be expected to be able to write a similar book? Then sure, you should understand it 100%. But this is a very rare circumstance for most people.

For most books, the reality is that you only need to know the Big Idea and its main justifications. Or that, depending on your needs, there are a few additional details that might come in handy. But that reading the whole book a) really ensures you'll remember the big idea and its main justifications, in a way that a one-page summary you might totally forget later, and b) lets you skim for specific details that might be especially relevant to you personally.

You shouldn't generally feel guilty that you don't remember enough from a book. You're not supposed to. (Again, unless you have a very specific and necessary professional reason to.)

Fully understanding a book might take 100 hours. In that time, you could read 10 other books in 10 hours each and get the main gist of each. Which one do you think is going to be more productive for your life?

This -> 'most books, for most people, don't need to be absorbed or understood in their entirety.'

I think human nature/marketing is at work here.

If someone wrote the core concepts of a big idea on one sheet of paper, nobody would pay $14.95 to read it.

But if it is wrapped in a 400 page book, it would be reasonable, or even a bargain to charge $14.95.

Same reason meals at US restaurants are getting bigger and bigger. People don't need meals that huge, but...

I don't think this is quite fair, explanatory examples can be very helpful at cementing the point or persuading the doubtful.

What does shit me is the amount of 300+ page books that have at least 50-100 pages of unnecessary fluff. Giving 1 story or example to illustrate your point is one thing, but stacking 4-5 dull dull DULL stories is just a chore to get through.

I wasn't saying that 1 page was the preferred outcome, but I think publishers push authors to a quota of words.

Its interesting how online media might get us away from this. For example, youtube videos can be 30 seconds or 10 minutes, or 8 minutes and 37 seconds.

I am not sure this is true. Meals in other countries are not getting bigger and bigger, and so the reason is likely to be something particular to the US and not universal human nature. So we have no reason to think that human nature incentivises needlessly large meals/books.

Also if you sell a 400 page book, you can sell the condensed version for even more! Value added because someone did the condensing, right...?

>Which one do you think is going to be more productive for your life?

I think it's better to carefully select which books you read, and really get everything that you can out of them. For example, you could read 10 self help books or you could read The Republic and really understand it. And you could probably quickly read 100 self help books and books on leadership in the time it would take you to go through the relevant Plato->Aristotle->Kant->Schopenhauer->Nietzsche books that build on each other. I think you'd be far better off reading the philosophy than the self help books, but that's just me. Those self help books are a garbage use of language relative to works held up as being pillars of modern thought, there is enough extremely high quality literature from human history and text books from the modern era to keep me busy reading carefully and learning a lot for the rest of my life if its all I did, I'm fairly certain.

>You shouldn't generally feel guilty that you don't remember enough from a book. You're not supposed to.

Completely disagree, this might hurt some feelings, but if you can't remember much from a book you read, you wasted your time reading it if you weren't reading it just for pleasure. Either the book wasn't worth reading in the first place or you didn't pay close enough attention.

You say "that's just me" but immediately follow with

>Those self help books are a garbage use of language relative to works held up as being pillars of modern thought

A "garbage use of language"? Why? Maybe people have in mind different books to what I have in mind, which is all the ones I loved and am indebted to. I'm not sure why there's so many comments on HN bagging self-help books. Because 90% are crud? 90% of everything is crud, so what. Maybe you are just comparing the 90% crud self-help to the 0.001% classic philosophy.

I don't think most books have an "objective" value, but a value relative to particular people, at their different levels, abilities, stages, etc etc. Lichtenberg: “When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?” Not to be able to appreciate something is not an ability!

I've gotten an enormous amount from self-help books. Many dozens of them. I owe them my happiness and much else. I read a lot of self-help in my late teens and 20s, healing myself psychologically in many ways, learning to love myself, communicate better, stop the negative self-talk, recover self-esteem etc etc. To name a few: Tony Robbins, early Wayne Dyer, Joanna Field, SARK, New Guide to Rational Living, Emerson, Ben Zander, Peace Pilgrim ... and a lot of self-helpish books from various religious traditions. (Zen, Thai forest monk Buddhism, Sufi, Christian mystic, Hindu gurus etc) Then the psychological/mythical school too. Even New Age and channelled books, some helped me a lot, like dear friends.

I'm also a huge philosophy/essayist/aphorism fan, e.g. I've read everything Nietzsche wrote half a dozen times, my copies of him have pencil/pen markings and comments thick on every page. And have spent many years with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Schopenhauer etc. And the vast majority of my university studies were in philosophy. Yet it doesn't seem to me that self-help is an inferior "use of language" or that everyone is "far better off reading" philosophy classics. Far from it, really. The percentage of the field which is of no good use to anyone is probably much higher in philosophy!

If you remember the main ideas of a book or the justifications you can just return to the book when you need more detail than whatever you remember. If you read enough to realize that something is true then it's not always necessary to remember why X is true, you can just rely on your past self, who, while doing the reading, reached a conclusion on X.

Also, I'm curious, what would I be able to do, think, or be after spending 100 hours studying The Republic?

I'm sorry, but I just can't disagree enough.

As someone who has read not just The Republic, but much of philosophy from Aristotle through Rawls and beyond... it's been tremendously useful to me academically and utterly fascinating, but of relatively little value in my personal life (with the sole exception of Aristotle). I mean, the Republic is valuable principally as a historical work, not because any idea within it whatsoever is going to change your life. Its ideas are... quirky, to say the least. Also, most philosophy classics are completely inaccessible to the average reader, and make little sense on their own -- only making sense in a much wider context that you really need to dedicate extensive study to.

In contrast, there are "self-help" books that can fundamentally alter the way you look at and lead your life at a personal level -- your actual day-to-day behavior and the relationships you have with people. Just like any genre, there are plenty of garbage ones, but plenty of invaluable ones as well, written by psychiatrists (e.g. "Too Perfect" or "Present Perfect") and artists (e.g. "The Artist's Way") and literary/philosophy types (e.g. anything by Alain de Botton).

Your thinking seems very black-and-white -- in that philosophy classics are overwhelmingly better than self-help for people today, or that a book must either be worth intense study or else is worthless. In reality, most books are somewhere in between, kind of like a bell curve.

>For most books, the reality is that you only need to know the Big Idea and its main justifications.

I'm not sure what genre/sort of books you have in mind; I can't offhand think of any books I like that have a Big Idea that alone should be retained. Maybe business books or something?

Sure, you can put a book in a nutshell, but everything worth reading about it will be lost.

Reading big difficult books is offered as a way to teach reasoning from first principles. On how to go about it:

"We have our recommended ten-stage process for reading such big books:

1. Figure out beforehand what the author is trying to accomplish in the book.

2. Orient yourself by becoming the kind of reader the book is directed at—the kind of person with whom the arguments would resonate.

3. Read through the book actively, taking notes.

4. “Steelman” the argument, reworking it so that you find it as convincing and clear as you can possibly make it.

5. Find someone else—usually a roommate—and bore them to death by making them listen to you set out your “steelmanned” version of the argument.

6. Go back over the book again, giving it a sympathetic but not credulous reading

7. Then you will be in a good position to figure out what the weak points of this strongest-possible argument version might be.

8. Test the major assertions and interpretations against reality: do they actually make sense of and in the context of the world as it truly is?

9. Decide what you think of the whole.

10. Then comes the task of cementing your interpretation, your reading, into your mind so that it becomes part of your intellectual panoply for the future."

My research involves reading "big, difficult books" all the time. It usually takes me 5 books on the same subject to get a firm grip on the subject.

The first book gives me the important words.

The second book gives me the paragraphs that show how the words are used.

The third book strings together the ideas.

The fourth book shows how the ideas are used.

The fifth book makes sense and I get a grip on the subject.

Breaking into a new area where you don't even understand the words, such as in biology, is a very time consuming task.

Considering it seems like you're just building up your understanding one step at a time, wouldn't you also be able to read the same book 5 times?

Perspectives make the picture. None is complete, and all have assumptions.

But that's not how the process was described. The first book is apparently only for vocabulary, the second for diction (not sure about a better term for this), third for basic concepts, fourth for application, and then finally a holistic understanding of the subject. If the case was looking at various ideas, I'd agree with you, but if the first book only "gives me the important words" and the second "gives me the paragraphs that show how the words are used" then it's not really giving you different perspectives as you're still very much in the "understanding what the book is talking about" phase.

I think this list could be written as "after finishing book one, I have the important words; after finishing book two, I have a grasp on how these words are used", etc.

I.e. the process is additive, each book lets you tease out another layer of understanding, and it's best if these are different books, because then there are more things for your brain to diff, making the understanding process faster.

Totally fair, but given that you only pulled out the basics the first time through the book, why not go through it again to see what the book has to say about those basics? You clearly didn't get everything out of the first book on the first run through.

Sure, after you have skimmed 2 or 3 other books, go back and read the first one more carefully again.

* * *

I strongly endorse this method. Doesn‘t have to be books either. Want to learn about some cutting edge research topic in a highly technical field, but don’t want to first go through 3 years of grad-student-level coursework?

Jump right in, but don’t start with a textbook or a survey paper. Start by skimming 10 or 20 (or more) arbitrary papers about related topics. Don’t worry that many terms seem like nonsense. Try to get the gist (to the extent possible) of each paper quickly. Let the methods and terminology wash over you. After that go back and read the survey paper, which should hopefully start to make sense after prior exposure to some of its ideas. Then if there are parts of that which still don’t make sense, go find the relevant textbook(s).

It’s not worth reading research papers in an unfamiliar community too carefully right off the bat; most of the papers are garbage and without some exposure/context it’s sometimes hard to tell which ones. Sweating all of the details before you have the right high level impression is going to confuse you and waste your time.

As I said - picking a different book lets your brain make a diff. You get to see words/ideas used in different contexts, by different authors.

It's like trying to approximate a relationship between a set of points. It's better to look at many points than to try and sample the same point multiple times.

It's very dangerous to sticking to one book. Because you don't know the field, you don't know which book is the best for you.

Different introductory books can organize the topics very differently. Some introductory books could miss the crucial explanation of the most important concepts.

Sometimes you can just find one single sentence in one book connects all the dots together, and you will be like: this sentence solved my so many questions, why didn't all the other books mention this?

Some book may not fit your mind at the time and you may very well get stuck.

I spent 10 years on a one big abstract algebra reference book. Lots of honest and long efforts: zero knowledge out of it.

Someone here mentioned another book (5$ on ebay). It was an operational view on linear algebra (more data manipulation and applications than dry theory). Took 2 days to get me started. The difference was hard to believe for me.

Since then I never stay with one book on a subject.

Were you then able to understand the book you'd been fighting with for 10 years?

Half way now, you know the issues are mostly conceptual transfer block, morphism, kernel.. I couldn't see the simple idea behind the terminology and the reference book behind very dry let me sink in my own doubts.

Also, to be totally honest, some ideas in functional programming have a similar flavor, so my brain was also a bit more open to these ideas.

I'm wondering if the second book was straight up just written better.

I don't think they can be placed on the same map.

this is the book https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0763746312/ref=dbs_a_def_r...

My ref book is high up in abstraction and concepts, it expects the reader to see the forest behind the notation tree. Williams' book is almost high school level mindset. It just takes your hand and go through the motions step by step. So that the notation's meaning is all but obvious.

People with confidence and a free view of mathematics are probably capable of bridging the gaps in the ref book style. But if you're not in that mood you'll drown.

Could you give some real examples of topics and the books you chose?

How do you decide the ordering of the 5 books?

I spend lots of time to compare the table of contents. I'll try to find the one I feel most logical to me as the first book. And then I will also find the most comprehensive book for reference.

Funny I ended up liking the idea of having multiple authors on a subject to swerve around my misunderstandings. To the point that I thought that a book with two authors (two columns layout) at once may be a nice idea.

Skimming is helpful, especially I think if in a structured way: reading the beginning and the end first, then deciding if more is worth it, and if so, reading the first sentence (or so, maybe last) of each paragraph, and then deciding if more is needed.

The optimal approach might vary sometimes, but I have found this helpful even for some fiction (to relax, but get thru boring parts faster), and to get through more material generally, because things are of very unequal worth.

Also news articles tend to put the most important things at the beginning so there is less reason to read the end, or anything once you get far enough to answer your purpose.

6-9 hours per book seems impressive to me.

That was my reaction too. Maybe this is an argument in favor or reading slower?

Me too. At a page/minute for 360-540 pages. Sounds realistic, but not for difficult reading unless your are already good at it, or at least good at speed reading.

I thought when I was younger I couldn't read big, difficult books and (since it never occurred to me that there might be people smarter than me) I concluded that nobody could read big, difficult books. It was quite an epiphany when I actually really forced myself to get through one - and once I had pushed past that first barrier, it's gotten easier and easier to read really meaningful books.

Most of these books are very poorly written. Smith's Wealth of Nations, as an example, is mostly very well-written and abysmally bad through the minority (Marx/Keynes probably the opposite). And meaning isn't really constant either, you read something and then come back to parts of it.

That's a good point - when I think of big, difficult books, I think of Knuth, or SICP (or the bible)... the author's examples are more along the lines of philosophy.

Keynes is known as being one of the best Economist writers of all time.

First, no he isn't. Second, the book we are talking about (again) is a textbook (this view isn't remotely controversial btw - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Theory_of_Employme...). Economic Consequences of Peace is very good, a lot of his stuff aimed at the general public (Persuasion/How to Pay for the War) is good...General Theory is not.

He certainly makes Wealth Of Nations sound compelling. I haven't read it before and want to see how it's structured as an actual argument with premises leading towards conclusions.

It's fun but the English is not easy. Smith has some cool insights (which must have seemed much more novel at the time) and great skill at imparting them. I only read book 1(and the theory of moral sentiments).

As suggested, it's an excellent but difficult read. But like many such books (say The Beginning of Infinity), they reverberate in my mind for years afterwards, with interesting inferences and callbacks.

That said, you might skip the digression on silver (ugh).

This isn't really how most people should read books. You aren't reading a book to learn arguments like a parrot. The meaning of all the books he mentions has changed over time, and you won't have the same understanding the second time you read it (i.e. years after, re-reading it straight after is pointless...it is robotic).

Also, just generally I think the structure of the course is bad. Reading three books cover-to-cover is basically pointless (Keynes esp. so as it was a textbook, I think he would turn in his grave if he thought people were being subjected to this, both Marx/Smith are very dry in areas too). It would be far better to look at the key ideas across more periods and get students to engage directly with those ideas...which is why similar courses in philosophy, theology, etc. do this.

I agree, and I don't think I appreciated this point enough when I was in school. In high school or college, I would do literally what is said here - get assigned a book, and read the book. In my professional reading, or also hobby reading as an adult, I would never approach learning a topic that way. As an adult, I supplement my reading of a text with secondary sources about the text (things people have written about the text, wikipedia articles about the text or things in it, etc.).

To take an example of an edition that does this really well: the "Landmark" series for Thucydides [1] and Herodotus [2] both qualify as "big, difficult" books, but the book comes with additional secondary sources that aid in the reading to orient the newbie in how to approach the text.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Landmark-Thucydides-Comprehensive-Gui... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Landmark-Herodotus-Histories-Robert-S...

Yep, tbh it is kind of wasteful to just go into Thucydides...like you read it, and 95% of it will go over your head (that is a particularly good choice of example because it is at the nexus of sp many important subjects...if you just come in without anything...it is just a normal book).

And, imo, dipping between books is far more effective. Even at university, you are given a few sources and you move between them but it isn't natural. Going between sources naturally at your own pace and based on your own interest/understanding will build far more actual knowledge than trying to shortcut your way there (and yes, Wiki is great for that). It is a shame that doesn't fit into some kind of formal education system...definitely in a subject like history, the end result would be far better work from academics.

Ouch, that really hit home about Thucydides. I was going through the Classics at one point, and did get a lot out of Herodotus and some of the philosophers, but Peloponnesian War just seemed like a list of islands they sailed to, and fought at. I did get a general sense that diplomacy and debate hasn't changed much in 2500 years though.

Hehe I had to stop reading Thucydides because my flatmates were fighting each other at the time, and the book was way too reminiscent of what was happening at home.

One of the funniest things I have heard said about Thucydides.

Were you just like: "Bro, if the Delian League could see you two now?" laughs quietly to self and walks out the room shaking head

There was me and 4 or 5 others renting a huge, cheap Sydney house. My girlfriend and her best friend (early 20s, involved in uni politics) were fighting, and there was a couple in their 40s that had split up, he (a playwright) wanted her out immediately, and she was being hilariously cruel. I came back from visiting my parents to find everyone fighting with each other. I'd just gotten through Herodotus, with great pleasure, but the Melian Dialogue was too much, too in-my-face, sickening.

Realizing you don’t understand the point comes from understanding the point more than you did before you read the book.

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