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Comment by taopai | Hacker News Reader

"Every time someone reads a book a new book is being created."

But not only reading. Try going for a walk while thinking about some book your read some time ago. Look for the underlying ideas or story and reflect about it.

This also applies to memories. Changing, growing up, can make you change how you feel and reflect about past experiences.

I am know reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance while having a part time job delivering pizzas in motorcycle. It's a pretty awesome experience.

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This is something I have been trying to work on lately - just cramming my head full of stuff that can be processed in the ol' background thread.

What I have found is that sometimes, some seemingly innocuous thing I read years ago will pop out at just the right moment, some neural connection forms and all of a sudden I have the basis of a whole rabbit hole of interesting thoughts.

I think it's important to fill your mind with good stuff, things that have the necessary depth and maybe enough subjectivity that they're ripe for that kind of background processing. You are probably not going to have deep interesting thoughts about Twilight (although maybe you will, no judgment.) But philosophy, poetry, great fiction, even religious texts - they're all crammed with symbolism and really reward re-reads and deep thoughts.

A recent example of this for me is Kazuo Ishiguro's book The Remains of the Day. It was mentioned on a podcast I like and so I picked it up on something of a whim during a library visit.

The book is about a butler who served a "great English house" and when I started it I was deeply skeptical that I would enjoy it. But it's a great example of the kind of work that really bears out for thinking on, and since I finished it I've really enjoyed turning things over in my mind. I'm usually a genre fiction guy (sci-fi, horror) and a lot of those books just don't have the same depth.

I don't mean to disparage "light reading" because I'm truly not that kind of. snide intellectual douche. But it's really fascinating sort of watching your brain pick something apart that warrants deep thought, and it's a really cool feeling to be in some discussion with my wife and think "oh my god, that bit from the introduction of book XYZ is so perfect right now, I need to share it and talk about it."

One other book that I've really enjoyed the "post-processing" phase on is The Essential Rumi - the Coleman Barks translation. Those little poems are so rich and full of meaning, and it's seriously rewarding to let your brain go to town on them.

Always love hearing other people enjoying Remains of the Day. I never would have picked it up in the first place if I knew that it was "about" a butler reflecting on their career. But it has ended up being one of my favourite books of all time.

You should maybe try some other Ishiguro work. He has quite a lot of sci-fi adjacent stuff but he uses the speculative elements in a very interesting way that would not really be seen in traditional sci-fi where the speculative elements are often quite background and tacitly accepted by the characters and serve (as I take it) as more of a way of focusing attention on something emotive which is the true point of the book. Some people don't care for Never Let Me Go, but it made an impression on me almost as large as Remains of the Day did.

> I never would have picked it up in the first place if I knew that it was "about" a butler reflecting on their career.

Absolutely same here, and as a matter of fact I did not know this when I first picked it up. All I knew going in was that it was "good" and that the ending made one of the podcast hosts cry.

It is a seriously beautiful book, I wish I was able to put into words all that I feel about it. It's got a sort of meta-layer - the events in the book just sort of pass by without much time for deep reflection by the protagonist. And the way they are described is similarly without much ceremony or reflection, so that by the end you are left with the same feeling as the butler - just this kind of sadness and feeling that things have passed by, irrevocably, to time.

I definitely plan to read more of his work - but now that I've experienced Remains of the Day I am almost hesitant. Sort of like when you hear a really sad song that touches you enough to make you cry - it's beautiful, but my instinct is sometimes to flinch away from stuff that makes me feel that hard. (Maybe I ought to draw a lesson from Stevens about that...)

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man."

I have read Siddhartha quite a few times in my life (every 4-5 years). Every time I align with a different character, or with Siddhartha in the various phases.

Timing is (almost) everything in life. I read 3-4 years ago "Though shall prosper" and "Half-time" and I could not have picked a better timing for both. I couldn't imagine appreciating either 20 years ago, and it would be "too late" reading them at my 70s.

So yes, timing matters.

But there is also 1984, which everytime I read it just hits the (same almost) spot!

Orwell tends to be a clue-by-four precisely because he knows how people can misinterpret political theory to their own liking.

Watch out for those gumption traps!

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