Ask HN: How to Read More Books? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to Read More Books?

39 pointsposharma40 comments

I would like to read more books rather than spend time on the Internet. But each time I pick up a book I think I can probably do a little bit of work or practice some interviewing skills like leetcode rather than reading which is not going to give any benefit. Secondly, books are overly verbose so I tend to read 10 min summaries which obviously don't convey the material as nicely as the real book. Anyone find this familiar? How do you commit yourself to a healthy reading habit? (I prefer physical books than another digital device like Kindle).

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leetcode rather than reading which is not going to give any benefit.

Secondly, books are overly verbose

Sounds to me like you have some pretty rather odd beliefs. It's not clear, based on this, that you really even want to read more books. I'm very unsure what to tell somebody who seems to basically be saying "I don't find reading valuable, but I want to read more." Ya get what I mean?

It might be time to work on reframing some of your thoughts about this, which might or might not end up with you deciding to even bother. Not that there's anything wrong with that, whichever way it comes out.

All of that said, the best thing I've ever done to help myself read more is simply to set a yearly goal for how many books I want to read (I use Goodreads to keep track). Having a goal hanging over my head is constant motivation to work towards it. But note that while it's a goal, it's not like the "Goal Books" are all books that are meant to be "productive" in some way. IOW, it's not all about learning, or improving skills, etc. I totally intermingle the books I read purely for leisure with the ones I read for any other purpose (which does, at times, include learning, improving skills, etc.)

How do I downvote this?

Since when did HN posters start talking to each other like this

>Sounds to me like you have some pretty fucked up beliefs

Keep posting constructive comments that contribute to the discussion at hand. You will get there eventually. For now, flag what you think should be flagged and move on.

Also, if you have better advice for the Poster. Feel free to post your own comment.

I edited my comment to soften the tone a bit, while preserving the overall gist of what I wanted to say. Thanks for helping keep me honest.

What I've done and has worked for me:

1. Take the book, leave the phone and laptop at home. Go to a coffee shop, park, bar (a chill kind of bar, not a sports bar or a dive bar) and read. <-- no longer works well for me, I don't live in a downtown so it's not as convenient.

2. Declare a space in the home to be tech-free. <-- Works ok for me in the winter time here when I can't go outside

3. Read after doing some other activity and make that the habit. After I go for runs or mow the lawn, I sit on the back deck and read. <-- this one seems to be the most consistent, but is a spring/summer/early fall thing here, not a year-round approach. In more temperate climates you could do this year round.

The first one is my preferred method. I leave the phone at home and go to a coffee shop with a notebook and a book. I read, ponder and write as I feel like.

I find that not having anything to distract me allows me to absorb more the reading, and when just pondering, the wandering thoughts get to go to interesting places instead of being censored by the urge to check Twitter.

I am still too slow reading books, though, because I don't do this often enough and because I end up interleaving note taking and reading.

I think that is a great advice and insight. An addiction can not bo tackled when your drug is all around you.

What I did: I took the sim card from my smartphone, put it into a dumb phone. So I had no internet during my 30min work commute (train/bus). Then I took a book with me. And I read it. I started this last year in October and I'm at my 9th book now, mostly only reading them during commute.

Another insight for me was: don't do read text books for the sake of "reading more". Go for the type of literature you like, how unintellectual it might be. For me its pretty much any best selling novel.

I setup a bedtime routine where I try to read at least 30 mins or until I get really sleepy. I've been able to finish more books this way and it really helps in retaining concepts.

I was using this technique but afterwards I don't remember that much of what I read. And if I try to read with my "full attention" I cannot fall asleep

I might be the wrong person to answer because I'm obsessed with books and sometimes have been told by my therapist, my wife, my son, etc. to lay off the reading.

Two things I like are: (1) reading on public transit (often physical books) and (2) reading a tablet when doing cardio at the gym.

Also I think there's the matter of finding the right books. Some books really do invite you into a world that takes a lot of effort to get into, say

https://www.lacan.com/beingandevent.html

I find this is a good analogy

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1105469/

It is like going somewhere on vacation or playing a video game or experiencing virtual reality. You get out what you put in.

Ever since I bought an ereader, I notice I've read more. I finished The Pragmatic Programmer and The Effective Engineer - recommended on HN - very recently. With it, I've only read technical books, and am currently reading Rust for Rustaceans, but when I feel like it I intend to read fiction.

You can blame yourself all you want for not practicing skills that will increase your salary, but at the end of the day even the most successful people have hobbies and free time, and you should enjoy it! You probably spend more time at work every week than doing a hobby (because you cook, eat, sleep, shower, commute, ...).

I guess that's a long comment to basically say that you sometimes should read things just for your personal pleasure, and it's completely fine!

Audiobooks have been a lifesaver in my otherwise busy life. I listen when I drive and when I do chores primarily. Try to alternate fiction and non-fiction, been doing it for probably 15 years now. Last couple of years I've started increasing the playback speed very slowly, training myself to get comfortable with it. Currently at around 1.75x for non-fiction, 2x speed for fiction. More literature covered with minimal loss of comprehension (won't say it's zero, but small enough of an issue given the benefit).

I wish that audiobooks worked for me, but I just can't pay attention to them. I tried listening to one on a long car trip and I couldn't pay attention for more than a few minutes.

Find books that you enjoy.

Set a goal for number of books, pages, or hours per day you want to read.

Find a time of day that you read - I always read fiction before bed. When I read non-fiction, it is usually with breakfast/before work.

Stop sweating the 'opportunity cost' of doing things - just do them if you enjoy them, and don't worry about how you could have been spending your time more effectively/efficiently.

Fond memories of reading many series of books on my Palm IIIxe. The green glow of the backlight made for a relaxing bedtime. HHGTTG, Dune, Gibson.

I lost a Kobo in an airline seat pocket and had enjoyed it for only a year. While it was a bit slow to render Transmetropolitan, it made time go by quickly between YYZ and HND.

I haven’t replaced it yet but I just might, now that I’ve learned the Kindle can be jailbroken.

Get an e reader and take it everywhere. I love my iPad Pro for other media, but your eyes really need eInk to get in the mood. Just accept it - an eReader is a special device meant to provide slow food for the brain. It’s worth having.

I’m curious. Why do you need to jailbreak your Kindle? Which specific features in a jailbroken Kindle do you want?

PDF reflow and night mode

I started reading a lot more when I organised my library using Apple Books. It has the downside of being locked into the Apple ecosystem, but having access across all my devices is really nice. I highlight and take notes on something I'm reading on my phone, and then easily retrieve those notes when I sit down at my computer later. It's handy for technical books where you might want to copy a block of code into your text editor. You can also set reading goals like minutes per day and receive reminders if you're into that.

I actually now track my reading using Kanban. Books I've decided to read go in to Pending. When I actively start reading one it moves into In Progress and when I complete it it moves into Done.

I limit my actively being read books down so that I've never got more than 2 on the go at once, though quite often I'll only have one being actively read.

It has certainly made a difference for me, as I now get through about 60 books each year.

If you're wanting to read shorter fiction books then try looking at some of the older classics, as they tend to be a lot shorter than modern books.

60 books a year? That's insane :) For how long do you read each day?

I usually read for between 1 and 3 hours each day. Monday to Friday I'll normally get 30 minutes to read at lunchtime and then an hour in the evening. Saturday and Sunday I'll usually be able to get an additional hour in on top of that.

I know you wrote you prefer physical books to digital devices but....I recently got a Kobo ([Libra 2](https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-libra-2)) and just by virtue of creating the habit of always having it on my person, I've been reading a ton more.

Phone, wallet, keys, Kobo. That habit was a much easier lift than the guilt-inducing "must read X pages/hours per Y" demands on myself, and it led to more reading.

Same. I have a Kindle Basic (great for reading, bad for pretty much everything else). It can fit my back pocket, so I put it there whenever I go out. Every waiting moment is an occasion to read a few pages of my current book. I've also disable cellular internet on my phone, so it's always the best distraction instead of going to Twitter or Whatsapp status.

I use an ebook reader and a notebook. It has a browser, but the touch interface has enough friction to make it hard to get absorbed into distractions. The notebook helps me take notes and eliminate the "gotta look it up right now" feeling. Also, blocking social media and news sites with host files or at the router (router is preferable, as DoH in Firefox and Chrome bypass hostfile blocking).

You could rip digital books into audio format and listen to them on walks. I did that during the last couple years of quarantine and found it nicer than reading physical books. It works for soft reading but dense, technical subjects were still easier to cover by hand.

The basic idea is: [digital book format] => text => espeak => wav file

Otherwise normal audiobooks are decent too but voice actor skill varies.

Why do you think leetcode is more useful than books?

Keeping your coding skills sharp always helps with interviewing when changing jobs.

Preparing for interviews for specifically those companies that do leetcode style interviews is a very narrow use case and one that's only useful if you actually intend to interview for such a position soonish. I'd say that books are, as a category, incomparably more broadly useful.

I'd be rich if I had a dollar for every student who told me "I understand the concepts but I can't do the problems" in math or physics and then in debugging their problem solving it became clear that they don't understand the concepts at all.

There is nothing like doing the problem sets when it comes to learning something like math or computer science. If you did the problem sets successfully but didn't read anything else or go to lectures you pass the class.

Lately I decided I was going to completely understand Java Generics (like how exactly the solver works) and found that there weren't any good books or web pages on the subject, instead I was going to have to read Chapter 18 the Java Language Specification as many times as it takes and come up with my own problem set. (I just wish I had a way of making a unit test that "passes" if the function doesn't compile!)

Not my area of expertise, but wouldn't most compiler books have chapters on generics work for general languages? You could use that to reason on how Java generics work.

That's not a bad idea but in the case of Java you have the source code for the compiler and you can just look at that. (e.g. different generic systems are possible, I want to learn how to make the most of this one.)

Keeping your coding skills sharp always helps with interviewing when changing jobs.

So what? How much of your time do you spend changing jobs, versus everything else you do?

Leetcode might help with interviewing, but I’d say that’s about it. I don’t think I’d optimize my general learning and discovery with trying to pass arbitrary interviews.

Real world coding has very little to do with leet code problems. Debugging, problem solving, diving deep into legacy code and reducing or skillfully dealing with complexity. That’s more like real life.

My reading ebbs and flows, but the big motivation for me is that big pile of books I've bought that I've not read yet.

Just buy books at every opportunity. Second hand ones are dead cheap. Get anything you like the look of.

Reading is also social. Pass books around with your friends. Lend/give ones you like to people who might like them. They'll recommend you stuff and reciprocate.

Overly verbose? Indeed for the modern non fiction book. Most are really just 10 page articles expanded to fit in what people perceive as the standard book length.

Honestly as much as this sounds like a joke, make your next book “How to read a Book” by Adler. It changed the way I read books and now I don’t feel bad skimming a book and deciding that it’s not worth my time

Actually, before you even read that book take a look at the Wikipedia page for it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book

> each time I pick up a book I think I can probably do a little bit of work or practice some interviewing skills like leetcode rather than reading

> I tend to read 10 min summaries

You mentioned two things you prefer doing over reading books. Why do you want to read books? Which book do you want to read? What have you tried?

Find book that interest you. A good way to tell is when you can't put down the book and would rather not sleep than stop reading.

just put headphones on your ears and start listening to your favorite books you can use audiobooks also they are useful

I struggle with exactly the same problem; reading (and also playing the piano in my case) feels like a low value-generating activity. My time is more and more limited over the years, and I find myself needing to ruthlessly prioritize how I spend it. This has led to a constant re-evaluation of my values, and have roughly concluded (atm) that instead of reading, I should be sleeping, socializing with friends and family, exercising, outputting/hacking around for fun, or learning about something at work that can make my workweek easier. Or just decompressing cognitively, sometimes in the form of time-restricted TV/games.

Ultimately, after having read/listened to ~200 mostly non-fiction and fantasy books in the past several years, the ROI is non-zero but not that high relative to the other activities mentioned. I think this is partly a byproduct of the times and the culture I'm in (mid-career engineer in silicon valley), where priorities shift a lot towards career and financial successes. Personal output tied to network, skills, and work has a much larger influence on these priorities over a much shorter time frame than reading arbitrary books. If I lived somewhere else or didn't have money needs, I can see my priorities shifting more towards reading. It's not ideal, but I've come to accept this reality. Reading isn't something I have to do, nor is it always the most rewarding activity.

I try to still read every now and then, especially if there is a focused book aligned with my immediate interests, but I've also come to accept the fact that I may not finish a lot of books and that's okay.

I've also come to believe that most books have too many words for my taste given the relative paucity of ideas, and I'm under no obligation to read every word just because an author wrote it. I need to be my own editor of the content I consume; outsourcing this to the writers/publishers makes less and less sense. If I'm bored, I skip a chapter or three. Or I may read a synopsis online and if it is interesting, then I dive deeper. I have to prioritize how I read, not just how much I read. I actually find this makes the reading experience more enjoyable since I spend less time on the parts that feel "boring".

(I have the same attitude to TV/movies; some episodes are not a great use of my time so I scene skip and increase playback speeds).

I've also found myself listening to more audiobooks instead of reading. This is particularly helpful when I drive, do late-night stretches, or cook and it doesn't consume additional time.

I wish circumstances were different and I could just go outside in the shade of a tree and read all day, but at least at this point in my life letting go of the pressure to read definitely has had more stress-relieving effects than actually reading.

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