Comment by austinl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by austinl | Hacker News Reader

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People also expect too much after reading a book just once. Reading a book once isn't enough to make a lasting impression, if you're able to remember anything at all — especially for a complex book like Thinking, Fast and Slow.

The books I truly love, I've read at least three times, with pages full of highlights and notes. Re-reading a great book is worth more than reading the latest trends. Seneca wrote a bit about this nearly 2000 years ago:

Be careful, however, that there is no element of discursiveness and desultoriness about this reading you refer to, this reading of many different authors and books of every description. You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind.

I often quote this line from Nabokov “Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.” [1]

Also, these books mentioned, as all non-fiction books do, include a bibliography. If someone wants to learn more, they simply should read more.

We can’t expect any device, book or otherwise, to do the work for us. If someone is not getting what they want out of it, I would suggest that they work harder.

“I believe that learning at its best is the antithesis of comfort.” Ruth J. Simmons, 18th president of Brown University. [2]

[1] http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/goodre.htm...

[2] https://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2001-02/01-...

What you're describing is part of the point the author is making

I think that you are correct on the value of reading a book twice. I have a shortcut that still gives some of the multiple reading value: when I am reading a book on Kindle/PDF/etc. I hilite useful snippets. When I want a refresher on a book that I previously read, I start by just reading the hilited snippets and sometimes this is sufficient to remind myself what I need to know.

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