Hacker News Reader

Comment by andsoitis | Hacker News Reader

> … I go through five or ten books a day. And which parts of them I’ve read you can debate – maybe it washes out to be two or three books a day. Some good nights you can get through five whole books…

Smells like BS.

View on HN

From TFA:

> People feel compelled to finish books they’ve started – that’s just a tax on your reading. Why would you do that to yourself?

He clearly doesn't finish "five or ten books a day". It also sounds like he doesn't read a single book until it's done. He hops from book to book, even if they're good books. I've heard a lot of people do that. On an episode of Would I Lie To You, Victoria Coren Mitchell said she's in various states of completion on 7-8 books at a time.

If you want a laugh, here's the segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHbSBjuoVE4

I’ll juggle a few pieces of any media at any given time but my goodness, 7-8 books at a time?

I’ve got ADHD and that still gives me anxiety.

Not that hard if you have good memory. Mine works my association. I can forgot all about a book, but as soon as I saw the cover I can give you the rough plot. If I saw the table of content, I can give you a summary of each chapter. I don’t hope between books as I don’t force myself to finish what I don’t like. But I can only reread books after a good deal of time (3 years mostly). Earlier than that, I just find myself skipping ahead as I remember stuff before I read them.

I think when he says "go through" he does not mean cover to cover, but either skim parts or only read part of the book, and maybe some of the books are short. It does seem sorta ridiculous.

If you’ve listened to Tyler Cowen, he seems to have a deep erudition about a broad range of topics. Maybe most people can’t pull it off, but he can.

Some people are just really gifted readers. Whether through some combination of learning to read early or just being able to skip the ‘sub-vocalization’ part of reading, many are able to get through hundreds of books a year. It’s a kind of super-power if you think about it.

I don’t think I’ve gotten faster at reading as I’ve aged, but I’ve certainly gotten better at skimming through texts. If you’re relatively familiar with a subject you’ll know which sections of text you can skim over and which sections are worthy of careful reading

I don’t subvocalize and haven’t for many years, but when I did (and more so now), the speed-limiting factor was never the time it took to read the word, but to comprehend what’s on the page in the sense of understanding it. You can probably get away with 200+ pages per hour if you’re not reading for comprehension, but it’s hard to imagine getting anything out of a difficult text at that speed.

I think that’s an important point, and not all texts are made equal. Reading and understanding 200 pages of Heidegger is very different than reading 200 pages of Harry Potter. Part of reading well is know what to spend the time on.

Heidegger was a Nazi, besides, and Being And Time and the concept of Dasein are rubbish -- he was a circular reasoner and a poor communicator -- and B&T really doesn't purport any new claim that hasn't already been made in some form or fashion since Socrates. 200 pages of Aristotle makes more sense. I would just watch Sugrue's Princeton lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaobMHescwg&t=476s if you're interested in getting the gist of Heidegger without having to slog through his nonsense. It all goes back to the Overman in some form or fashion. I'm rambling now.

200 pages of math text is probably a year of full time undergrad study.

depends hugely on the math book

It's sometimes called photo reading, and it's likely genetic and correlated with high IQ (which Tyler certainly possesses). Someone described it as not having to process the letters or words individually but as a chunk. For example, when you see a McDonald's logo, you don't have to mentally recite the word "McDonald's" but you instantly know what it is. So with photo reading, this can apply to entire sentences. I think this how some people can speed read and not sacrifice comprehension.

I’m not sure avoiding sub vocalisation is an advantage unless your only priority is speed. If you’re reading poetry or rhetorical writing, i.e. a speech, and if you’re neither sub vocalizing nor reading aloud, then you’re missing most of what’s on offer: the careful arrangement of rhythm and sound to create literary effect.

I remember I read one book when I was a child that promised to raise your IQ by reading pages of a book within seconds like you're looking at an autostereogram. LMAO! These crooks, I tell yah.

I also call BS. If he only did two of the three, he'd be far more interesting than he is.

If there’s one thing Tyler Cowen is not it’s uninteresting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com