Read fewer books and feel better about it | Hacker News Reader

Read fewer books and feel better about it

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There are more books than you can read in a lifetime.

There are more books in hypothetical list of “highest rated classic and modern staples” than you can read in a lifetime.

Then there’s all the non-fiction.

You should read for pleasure and as widely as you can. But do not spend a moment longer than necessary with anything you fail to enjoy or isn’t adding value for certain. There is, quite simply, not enough time.

Related: "The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything" (https://www.npr.org/2011/04/18/135508305/the-sad-beautiful-f...)

> If you’re finishing every book you start you’re doing something wrong: you’re probably finishing books not worth your time

This is how you'll have time to read a lot of interesting books: by not finishing all books you started.

If you read half of a book and it still didn't gave you good feelings, the last half probably won't.

Save your time.

I started heavily applying this to TV, movies and video games in recent years. How we spend our time is important. The sunk-cost fallacy is a doozy.

Wishing you and anyone else who reads this a satisfying and fruitful 2024. Be in excellent health.

This may be good advice if you read only to give yourself pleasure, but it isn't very conductive to becoming well-read.

The best books are good all the way through.

I'm an incorrigible book non-completist. I only read to get what I need and I duck out.

Now with ChatGPT-4, I can read and comprehend even faster. For dense books in areas I'm unfamiliar with, I ask ChatGPT to, not summarize, but to break things down for me. For me, it's the new efficient way for doing syntopical reading (Mortimer Adler's technique for reading deeply).

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-get-the-most-out...

what do your prompts look like?

I just keep a ChatGPT session alive and ask it questions. I tell what I’m reading, eg, “the Prince by Machiavelli”. And then i ask it things like “what’s the context of the book” or “what other books deal with the topic in chapter x” or “I don’t understanding chapter y, can you break it dow for me?”

It’s like talking to a partner who’s read everything in the world.

I don't normally ask about the book itself so much as the context of the book (eg more info about this battle in the Napoleonic wars, more info about this historical figure, how much money would £X be worth today?)

These kinds of questions (usually more factual rather than about motives etc) can help me connect what I'm reading to other things I've read in a way that I would otherwise need additional books/encyclopedia entries/etc to help cover

Wikipedia already summarizes books in two sentences. The point of reading is to experience, absorb, etc.

Check out what I wrote again. I repeat, I do not use GPT to summarize.

Trying this with books I was familiar with yielded extremely disappointing and off-base results.

I’m curious as to how?

It lost all the rhetorical force of the argument, got factual things wrong, and failed to point out important misunderstandings on my part.

IMO good books are ones that collide with your priors and compel you to reconfigure your worldview.

I can only describe this GPT exercise as allowing me to mold the book around my priors as opposed to helping (or even allowing) the book to really impact them head-on, how the author knew they ought to be attacked. I think it’s really insidious for someone to do this and come out thinking their prior worldview survived collision with the book.

Interesting. Curious if you were using GPT 4 or the free tier?

I have a different experience. GPT4 has enhanced my reading by allowing me to correlate it with history, sociology etc.

I don’t have the explicit objective of having my priors challenged — I have very complex priors. I seek more new connections that I never made before. GPT4 has been able to do both for me. Take Malthus — I asked it for the historical positions for and against Malthusian hypothesis and asked it to speculate what would happen in a reality where people believed it. It’s a purely intellectual exercise but I was able to see more perspectives than what I could imagine.

As a general presumption, avoiding anything on the non-fiction bestseller list is a good idea. Those books are generally aimed at the lowest common denominator that reads so you probably won't get anything of value out of them. There are rare exceptions that prove the rule and you'll generally know them when you see them. People who tried reading the non-fiction bestsellers and then equated them with "books" are pretty much always the ones saying dumb things like "reading books is a waste of time" or "every book could just be a blog post". And of course people who denigrate "books" should be treated with suspicion because they're usually shallow thinkers.

I'd also advise against letting friends and family recommend books to you. They're generally going to recommend books they like or they're going to get what you like subtly wrong. A corollary of that is that you probably shouldn't buy books as gifts.

If you're looking to discover books, go to a bookstore and look around. Maybe read the descriptions on the dust jacket or back cover. If you do that a few times a year, you'll probably have more books than you can read.

Other great sources of books to read are the footnotes of books you liked or the Twitter feeds of authors that you liked. Either of these methods allows authors you already like to recommend other books.

Plenty of times there's a better academic version of a NYT best seller. Like. "FORGED" is a layman's book about pseudopigraphy but the author also has an more than twice as lengthy tome called "Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics". Id recommend the latter

> I'd also advise against letting friends and family recommend books to you. They're generally going to recommend books they like o

Perhaps. But it's also important from time ro time to leave your comfort zone. I occasionally ask other for suggestions just to stop me from always being me. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But I'm okay with risk.

Well said, excellent advice! Also when in doubt what could be of interest I think is not a bad idea to look at classics, at the moment I'm finishing "The Miserables". Can't remember why I picked it but I wished I read it before.

> I'd also advise against letting friends and family recommend books to you.

Family, sure. Friends, no, those are some of my most valuable book recommendations. My friends generally share my interests in at least some categories

I forget which book but a few years ago I ploughed ahead with a (to me) terrible Kim Stanley Robinson book (maybe Red Mars?) as I had enjoyed previous books and figured it would click eventually. I gave up at about 80%, sadly it was too late and it ruined my desire to read for about 2 to 3 years. Prior to that I would happily do 20 a year and enjoy my time reading.

Now if a book isn’t vibing with me I give it one more day and then drop it. I gave up on book 2 of Dwarves just last week, loved the first, second was boring, on to the next book I fancy (Backyard Starship, so far so good)

I had a similar experience with the interminably dull Neal Stephenson slog-a-thon "Fall" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;_or,_Dodge_in_Hell)

I only made it through the book because I ended up skipping the 75%(?) of the book that took place in the cloud, or whatever.

If ever there was an author who did one or two good things early on and has been coasting oon reputation ever since...

What the man needs is a damn editor.

I really enjoyed Seveneves.

Fair. Easily the best of the second tier.

(along with Anathem, although that's another one that could have used a bit of editing).

Anathem is my second favourite NS book but boy was it hard work getting through the first 200 pages of describing the buildings, the wall and the town.

I really enjoyed the first two thirds of Seveneves. Wish I’d quit then.

I think a lot of it is drowning in options. Sorta like how 30 years ago you could listen to whatever FM station was a reasonable genre match for your tastes all day. Now we spend hours combing for just the right thing... and usually never find it.

For me, I want to be OK with putting down a book I’m not loving. I do put books down all the time, but I want to be OK with it. I lose interest and put books down, but they stay on my mental list of books I need to finish for YEARS, often long after I have forgotten the current context and would be unable to continue reading where I left off.

Tip: close the book, close your eyes and imagine any possible ending that makes you feel that the story ended in full. Non-fictional? Read something in Wikipedia.

Not only are there more books in the world than you can read in a lifetime, every year a bunch of new terrific books get published. The hours you spend reading a mediocre book or a book that drains your love for reading are not hours well spent.

If you lose interest and put a book down just forget about it and move on. You will probably never ever finish it, and that's how it should be. You can always read a different book on the same subject or with a similar theme if when the time is right.

It's corny, but: read what you love until you love to read.

This is a great mindset to have. I think it's common to get "stuck" reading a particular title, and as a result stop reading altogether.

I try to normalize putting books down by talking about books I've never finished. People who have read these are more than happy to fill in the details, and I get the Cliff Notes. If the conversation resonates, then I have a reason to pick the book back up with fresh perspective.

> Once you start caring about the progress bar, you’re hooked! Your dopamine-driven brain sees each book as a little trophy of the mind and you want to keep going.

I don't understand the need to go to GoodReads, pick a read challenge to be "hooked" and collect "little trophies". It's absurd. For me reading is the exact opposite experience of the author. Take time to pick your book, take your time to read it (not eat it) and above all enjoy it, but reading just because you have to finish the GoodReads "homework", nope.

>> Your dopamine-driven brain sees each book as a little trophy of the mind and you want to keep going

Really?

I've been addicted to chemicals before, but that's not what's going on with people who like to read books.

It's getting really ridiculous. People see dopamine behind everything now.

Books just take too damned long to finish for me to care about a progress bar. And I say that as someone who has played and leveled many characters in MMORPGs over the years (to my regret).

Permutation City is so good! I haven't ran into it in the wild before but excited to check out his notes. It's a favorite and highly recommend.

I like Goodreads for tracking everything I read and collecting all my reviews, which are just unedited thoughts that I can return to later and very rarely helpful to others. It's also fun to see what friends are reading. Just yesterday I was able to pull up my last two years of books to quickly give a friend a few recommendations based on their interest.

I find listening to books far easier but they have to be non-fiction (or a reread of fiction) and not too complicated. Cobalt Red, Outlaw Oceans and There Are No Accidents were all great listens from this past year. But it's the only way I get through the 2hr minimum of exercise my dog needs a day.

There are far too many books[0] and too few hours in a lifetime to not aggressively cut your losses when something awful (or even just mediocre) has found its way before your eyes.

Carl Sagan made this fairly obvious in Cosmos[1] speaking to the number of books one could read in a lifetime relative to the number of books in the library.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeons_law

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuvKdE5e3eo

I pretty much never read fiction and was at a book store some years ago when I thought "maybe I'll give it a go".

I found a book that looked pretty cool called "The Binding" about "book binders" - people that could erase a person's memory by writing their stories in books.

As I read on it seemed to turn into something less about book binding and more into a kind of homo erotic novel.. boy was I disappointed and felt totally bait and switched.

It's totally okay to read a full plot synopsis of any fiction worth reading. Honestly, if a story is ruined by knowing whats going to happen (baring murder mysteries, which are their own animal), it's probably not worth reading. Re-reading is one of the things I most look forward to. There are even some books I re-read at the same time every year (just started my annual re-read of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)!

Thanks for the tip! I'll definitely do that if / when I decide to give it another go.

I read 100+ books in 2023:

[1] https://taylor.town/books

It was totally by accident!

I listened to more audiobooks than usual because I exercised more and did more yardwork and house chores.

Hopefully I’ll be reading a lot less in 2024 and writing a lot more :)

My wife, former librarian, introduced me to the rule of 50 of Nancy Pearl (famous librarian from Seattle Public Library). Essentially, if you aren’t feeling a book after 50 pages, you should feel no guilt putting it aside.

Recently, it seems Nancy has revisited the rule and adjusted for the 50+ crowd. If you are over 50, subtract your age from 100 and use that as your cut off for putting a book aside.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/nancy-p...

I have had to adopt "You dont have to finish every book" a couple of times.

There are books that are challenging and will require considerate amount of work, or sludging through, and in the end it has been a rewarding experience. More so, than a book you just sit down and read front to back.

Yet, there is not always gold at the end of the rainbow.

A well known piece of literature can give a bit of an indicator on if it is worth it or not.

Random literature self published Kindle not so much, yet a couple of self published fiction on Kindle have been difficult but in the end rewarding.

it is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you will get.

Jerry Weinberg mentioned that a filter he uses for choosing what to read is whether three people he trusts have recommended the book. I think his plan was more comprehensive, but this seems like a useful quality filter and it's one I keep in mind.

I read 3 books at a time.

Great fiction for bedtime and leisure.

A nonfiction book I expect to invest significant time with to learn something.

And an audiobook nonfiction or fiction book that is engaging but fits into my brain while commuting.

I think it helps to switch between the different types.

I really liked Scott Adam's (Dilbert comic author) book Reframe your brain.

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