I read 100 books in the last 2 years – here are 10 thoughts on reading | Hacker News Reader

I read 100 books in the last 2 years – here are 10 thoughts on reading

durmonski.com

39 pointsdurmonski18 comments

Generally love the ideas in here, but strongly disagree with this one:

>At first, if you decide to explore such titles, you’ll blame the author for not using simpler words and for not expressing himself better. And if there are long-winded sections where you don’t get what the premise of the idea is, you’ll most probably ditch the book and find something else to read instead. >But these elaborate creations full of complicated phrases are what you need to level up your thinking.

Simple writing is clear thinking. Yes, limiting yourself to well-written materials will limit your exposure to many ideas. That's how constraints of any kind work.

But don't mistake long, meandering sentences with 10 dollar words as signs of genius.

They're signs of lazy writing, lazy thinking, and a desire to impress the reader with how smart the author is. Writing simply takes hard work. It's easy to write complicated sentences. It's easy to be hard to understand.

Clarity and conciseness are hard.

Hemingway, Vonnegut, Thompson... they wrote powerful, thoughtful works. So do Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger. So did Einstein. Their works be understood by anyone, despite the difficulty of their subjects.

> Simple writing is clear thinking ... They're signs of lazy writing, lazy thinking, and a desire to impress the reader with how smart the author is.

"Simple writing," is perspective-based. If I were to take a introductory book on Economics, anyone steeped in the literature would likely consider it simple, as they've already internalized enough information to consume the book. To a seven year old, however, this is likely out-of-grasp.

> Yes, limiting yourself to well-written materials will limit your exposure to many ideas.

There are plenty of worthwhile things which are either poorly written or require a lot of effort. It's tragic to cast aside anything requiring effort to optimize your consumption of media.

Late to reply here.

I don't disagree with you, but I think you may have misunderstood me. Which is my error for leaving my opinion so open to wide interpretation.

For clarity:

1. In any given field, there is a tendency to write in domain-specific language.

(Heck, I just did it by using the term "domain-specific language".)

To master any field you have to be willing to read that kind of stuff. 100%.

But I still say it's lazy to write in domain-specific language. If it's in any way possible to express an idea in such a way that anyone can understand it, that's the better way to do it. There may be times when that's impossible. But I choose to assume that any time I fail to write simply, the failure is my own.

2. I'm not advocating limiting yourself to reading simply-written things. I'm advocating limiting yourself to writing simply.

And I'm saying that writing simply is the harder thing to do.

For example, I tend to use various readability software to scan my writing. My first draft tends to score a university-level score. I then work very hard to find ways to say everything I wanted to say in such a way that I score a grade 9 level or lower.

3. Finally, back to my original point: Choosing what to read based on how easy or difficult it is to read is silly.

It doesn't prove whether the writer has something worth saying.

Plenty of difficult-to-read stuff is total garbage. Plenty of easy-to-read stuff is gold. The opposite is also true.

He had great advice but lost me towards the end when he started saying "The More You Read, The More You Distance Yourself From Others" and #10.

Seems awfully pretentious to assume that once you read "good" books, you're suddenly the intellectual superior of everyone around you?

I don't think the purpose of reading literature is to box yourself into your own intellectual bubble because you suddenly can't stand to talk about pedestrian topics with others.

Not a fan of taking advice on reading books from someone that's "selling" book summaries. He just comes off as slightly pretentious. As someone that been reading 50ish books a year for years, I'm surprised how much he upsells the fact that he's read a "whopping" 150 books.

I don't understand that sentiment at all. In my experience, as you learn more, you also get more curious. And the more curious you get, the more you want to know and learn about other people, their culture and their philosophies...

I totally agree. The amount of times I’ve been able to craft a more insightful question about someone’s culture or work because of something I’d read prior has almost certainly got to be up there.

And the amount of the times I’ve been able to produce interesting insight on a topic as well.

It seems odd to treat people differently based on what you vs they know, with the exception of maybe I’d be concerned if say my heart doctor didn’t know about arteries or something.

I read few books end to end, but I skim many.

Just knowing about the existence of a book or seeing its cover can bring benefit to one's life.

After that, reading the table of contents and a random passage can also bring benefit.

Reading a small portion of a book will give you a good idea of whether you want to read the whole thing, which is optional.

The best time to start a distributed book collection and library is 10 years ago. The second best time is today.

I definitely agree that there's benefit in skimming books. I've had to get over the idea that I must read every book I'm interested in from cover to cover.

What do you mean by "distributed" book collection?

Put some good books into a box, and give them to a friend for storage and perusal. Next time you visit them, trade for another box. Give the first box to another friend.

I have a 60+ year old friend who has worked at Chapters book store forever. He reads about 200 books a year, has no Internet, no computer, no smart phone.

He's the happiest guy I know.

One thing I find as I get older (I'm 43) is I have less interest in advice from others. Advice is simply what works for that individual.

amen

I tried an online speedreader app on Kafka's Metamorphosis and I remember a fair amount of it and a lot of what Kafka was trying to say (I think).

I really want to use it to crank through a bunch of classics, when I have free time. Oh, that lack of free time.

Anyone done anything like that? I was using 2-4 word groups to increase bandwidth, and my brain seemed to chunk process it pretty well.

Great article. It is amazing how many "best selling" books you read, end up being terrible. Would agree with Atomic Habits being an exception, got the book thinking it would be another overhyped one, but actually really enjoyed it (from the practical habit building formulas it gives)

His episode on the Rich Roll podcast was excellent, highly recommended.

> Things changed when I found out about the existence of the applied psychology category.

Really? That's the epiphany? Um, okay.

Reading is like wine--you need to figure out what suits your palate. I don't understand why teachers don't assign way more short stories to read. This is how you figure out "Hey, I liked that story, what else has that author done?"

However, the real trick to reading is to realize that "Yes, the books you are assigned to read in high school really ARE crap."

"Tale of Two Cities" by Dickens is a wonderful book buried in a sea of irrelevant chapters he got paid by the word to write. "Tom Jones" is basically a 1749 soap opera. Anything modern (<30 years) is almost guaranteed to be crap. (Norma Fox Mazer was big when I was in school and was complete garbage in my estimation. A funny story was I unknowingly told her this to her face when I was in 7th grade--don't ask teenage boys what they think as they may very well tell you the unvarnished truth.)

Books that are interesting for a teenager to read are probably 1) lowbrow (ummm, what's wrong with that?) 2) controversial on some axis and 3) quite often outside the level of the average English teacher to comprehend.

I suspect that Number 3 is the worst offender.

"Caunterbury Tales" is satire and needs a teacher who can point things out (Why does a "chaste" priest have the symptoms of syphilis--a sexually transmitted disease? Erm, that's a touch controversial, no?) Anything having a slight science bent is just completely beyond most English teachers--so sci-fi simply isn't on the menu (even though you have stuff like "The Forever War" which is basically an indictment of the Vietnam War). And, heaven, help us, if the book has even a hint of human sexuality about it GASP--especially if such hint isn't precisely mainstream.

This was a very interesting article! (I'm just to going to keep it plain and simple) I would encourage everybody to at least quickly glance at his article, that wants to read more books.

Yes, really good books are hard to find.

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