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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

Do you really read a book every day? That strains belief.

But I don't understand. What do you mean by "touchy feely" book, and why are you afraid you will be ostracised by your opinions?

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1) I have for a long time. Now with Kindles, I don't have to load 10 paperbacks into my computer bag every time I go on a global jaunt. A lot of time in airplanes and hotels gives you a lot of time for this (on average - which is why I said "per week", not "per day"). But, most under 250 page non-fiction books can be polished off in less than two hours. A lot of people spend two-hours/day watching some Netflix movie - this is the same thing.

2) I guess the ones that are based on subjective interpretation instead of objective fact (whatever that is today). There is a book called "How we know what isn't so" (https://www.amazon.com/How-Know-What-Isnt-Fallibility-dp-002...), and it talks a fair amount about humans can clash by developing different interpretations of reality that they think are really real. I guess this isn't "touchy-feely"; I guess it is just that the reason I got into engineering is that machines are a lot more predictable and understandable than humans (to me). I did not mean to denigrate anyone's choice of book; I just didn't have a better term at hand (I still don't!)

I've spent a long time trying to speed read and I'm still much slower than where I'd like to be. How are you able to read through 2 pages per minute and still have context on what's going on? Do you have any advice for learning to do that?

While there can be advantages to reading a lot and reading fast, I would also suggest that there is value to reading less (but still consistently) and letting your brain mull things over. Some thoughts really do require time.

Reading two hours gives you 22 hours to "mull"

(Not disagreeing at all, btw)

I'm sorry ... I don't!

My father expected me to do so, at the age of 7, so I did. I don't think of it of speed reading - maybe it is. I did lose half my speed when I lived in Japan for a decade (learning to read in Japanese slowed my English input speed,

I suspect a lot of it has to do with the kinds of books one reads.

Many years ago a friend claimed to read a book a day. She was referring to cheap paperback fantasy books, her preferred genre. She could read them very fast because she already knew what was in them. She told me she mostly read the dialogue, which would definitely cut down on the time spent reading.

So perhaps the OP is reading mostly books they're already familiar with -- novels in a genre they like and nonfiction on topics they already mostly know. If so, you might be able to do similar things.

Maybe. I would say that for fiction, this is almost certainly true, but for non-fiction, a lot has been molecular biology, or nonlinear economics. Which are neither native to me. YMMV.

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