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The claim “you’ve only got time to read a few thousand books” surprised me, but some back of the napkin math strongly supports it. Assuming it takes a week to read a book and 70 years of literacy only gives you time for around 3500 books. A more avid reader might average, say, 3 books a week—-but then you only get to around 10,000 books. Now, a monk might be able to read 30 books in a week and get to 100,000, but pragmatically “a few thousand” seems to be an accurate accounting for a person who doesn’t dedicate a large portion of their life towards reading.

I recommend “How to Read a Book” by Mortimer Adler. In short, not every sentence, paragraph, chapter, or even book is of equal informative importance. To read all literature as if everything is equally important is really a mistake. Once one recognizes this, it is then ideal to read only at the level of detail and focus as is required for the particular work.

What does it mean to have read a book? To read every single word and symbol? To understand the key ideas and points?

Is every book going to be one hundred percent new ideas to you or are there thematic riffs that allow you to shortcut portions of it without loss of understanding of the entire work?

> What does it mean to have read a book? To read every single word and symbol? To understand the key ideas and points?

To understand what the author thought at the time, what he was trying to say, what he had said really, how he came to his ideas, ... One cannot predict what he'll find in a book before book will be finished. You cannot know what you do not know. The only way is to read it through.

Sometimes I read books twice in a row. From the title to the last page. With all the "thanks", with the contents section, even leafing through a section of literature. Because you never know what you might find.

When I need just key ideas from a book I could find them in internet, because someone have them written in her blog. It would take, probably, 10 minutes to read, and why to bother myself with the book?

Agreed. I would not find this kind of life hack approach to reading satisfying. On occasion certainly but I pick up a book explicitly to inhabit it. I don't pick up books I don't wish to become apart of and have become apart of me. The first 200 pages of Moby Dick were phenomenal to me. The book really drops off when the chapters atomize into non-fiction and lose the story. But I was not going to miss one word of what happened to the Pequod or the friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg. It doesn't really pick that story up as I'd like but I wasn't going to risk it. Parts of 'Les Miserables' felt like a slog but it was worth it to truly inhabit the world. I'll probably never read a 1,000+ novel ever again but I wouldn't have read it any other way.

For a reference book sure. They are often best digested out of order.

> I'm never going to read that thing.

Is surprisingly accesible and easy to follow in fact. Such way to write science using logic and linking obvious facts instead to trying to wrap all in math glitter couldn't happen today.

You get bonus points for the term "math glitter"!

Heck no! We are in a golden age of accessible science communication. You have to avoid the Gladwells and his ilk but there are people out there like Bill Bryson and Siddhartha Mukherjee that take really complex science, research it well and explain it in clear and practical language.

> couldn’t happen today

Well, except for Basic Economics ;)

But is it as easily accessible as "Seeing Nature: Deliberate Encounters with the Visible World"?

The bar of accessible is much much lower than the Origin of Species.

But 'Seing Nature' didn't made the same revolution on our knowledge as 'the Origin of the species'. Neither has the same historical or cultural impact in our society. There are still a lot of people releasing fake news about Darwin for promoting some religious agenda, so educate ourselves in his work to be able to disclose those liars is even more relevant now than ever.

Why not read both books in a row starting with the origin?. Is a reasonable goal, will be intellectually rewarding, and everybody could do it in a month.

s/for promoting /with the purpose of promoting /

It actually holds up really well. Not long, and easy to read. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember being surprised at its simplicity.

Maybe we don't all need to read the original Darwin, but I do think there is a serious gap in most peoples' knowledge of how the natural world actually functions, how all the components in an ecosystem are interdependent and necessary. There is a framework of understanding that used to be common knowledge which now only experts and enthusiasts possess. I fear that most people in positions to make decisions that impact our natural environment have insufficient understanding of the potential consequences.

Our failure to keep people educated on these matters to a base level has probably seriously contributed to the ecological catastrophe we are experiencing and digging ourselves ever deeper into. People have been taught to have more faith in industrial and technological solutions to any problems, rather than appreciating a need to be stewards of the life support systems of this world that we depend on.

> Maybe we don't all need to read the original Darwin, but I do think there is a serious gap in most peoples' knowledge of how the natural world actually functions, how all the components in an ecosystem are interdependent and necessary.

Yes and there are many great contemporary books that cover just these things, from Gould, to Dawkins, to Wilson, to Dennett, to Sagan. It is rare that the originator of an idea is also its best exponent. Though given the praise of its accessibility and interest here I'm willing to give Origin another thought.

> Our failure to keep people educated on these matters to a base level has probably seriously contributed to the ecological catastrophe we are experiencing

I'm not sure this is true. Environmentalism was basically born in the 60s. Conservation some 40-60 years before that.

People used to believe all kinds of ridiculous things about the health benefits of smoke, heavy metals and oil. Americans nearly extincted the buffalo for its industrial uses. An Australian tycoon almost extinct an island chain of penguins and seals by reducing them down to oil which was sold round the world. I could go on as there are many stories of human exploitation of the natural world that go back to ancient times (read about how Roman silver mines in Spain reshaped the Earth into a hell hole there) and beyond.

We are honestly probably at peak -people caring about the environment-. It obviously has to go a lot further if we are to avert disaster and stop the extinction event humans have been driving for 15,000 years. But we are hardly at a nadir for people's understanding and love of the natural world.

+1 For recommending Origin as surprisingly enjoyable and worthwhile. The theory itself is explained clearly and quite interesting, but I think that's more of a bonus, and actually the best part is witnessing an early application of the scientific method, and getting the historical context for how the scientific method was developed. Very helpful context for understanding and thinking critically about modern science.