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That sounds like the kind of people that gamify their life; reading X books per year, running Y miles, doing Z steps on their step counter, counting calories, quantifying sleep, working in 25 minute timed increments and counting how many you've achieved in a day, number of lines written, commits done, github contribution graph colour / activity streaks, etc.

It's like. Maybe you should find a hobby if you need to gamify things to keep doing them.

Their hobby is gamification.

I count calories because I don't want to be fat again, having found fatness limiting. It has absolute nothing to do with meeting an arbitrary number and is not particularly gamified either. I need to track calories because otherwise I'll overeat.

This is a bizarre take on goal-setting in general. Would you complain about people who negotiate a raise of X dollars? No, you understand that money has value. Losing weight has value too, as do cardiovascular fitness and getting enough sleep. "Maybe you should find a hobby" is not an answer to me not wanting to be fat. It's a ridiculous non-sequitur. How on earth do you expect finding a hobby to stop me having a heart attack or losing a foot to diabetes?

1. They are not complaining;

2. They are talking about people who take the "data-driven decisions" to the extreme, where some of the data either doesn't make sense or doesn't help at all.

You kind of projected IMO. Their comment was absolutely not aimed at people like you who have a concrete goal in mind. They address people who constantly journal a ton of data about their lives (and not using most of it, but they wield the stress it gives them as a badge of honor).

"It's like; maybe you should find a hobby" sounds like complaining, or at least criticism, to me.

I read the reply as a straw man or weak man argument against tracking stats. I don't think there are many calorie counters, or frankly many book journallers or any of the other groups, who are doing it primarily for bragging rights. I reckon almost all of them are doing these things because they see real value in them, and some are incidentally bragging as well. The comment wasn't aimed at me, but it was aimed at a caricature or a handful of extreme examples often used to misrepresent people like me.

Or they just dont have as good memory or simply did not found those parts to be worth effort of remembering.

I feel like there's a distinction between _learning something_ from reading a book and remembering plot details.

I am awful at remembering names and characters from books. I'm all good while I'm reading them, but if you asked me "What did you think of John's situation in $BookX" I would find it hard to answer. That said, it all goes into the gestalt jumble of ideas that is me.

I'll say that I mostly read comparitively low-effort fiction that people rarely "test me" on, so it possibly matters less.

Ah, but I am not talking about memorizing stuff, I am really talking about things like "Hey, I forgot what was the backstory of the villain of the book #2 in series X, what was he about?" and then the person proceeded to award me with an empty stare, followed by a hostile one.

If that backstory was not interesting to that person it is likely they will forget immediately after reading. I mean, your own premise is that you forgot too, the stare is hostile because they know the exercise is dishonest.

Nope, it was a very nice positive meet of 8-9 people and I had no goals or agendas, I simply asked because it was long time ago for me. The person projected very hard and I realized I struck a nerve post factum. It was a classic case of being misinterpreted due to the other person's own insecurities.

I think it's worth mentioning some people have differing ability to memorize passively. I can thoroughly comprehend, interact with, and enjoy a book but I won't really remember details after the fact.

I can put in extra, additional effort to commit it to memory, but this is much slower, and generally removes the fun, so I've reserved this for assessed reading.

I think it is an adequate heuristic for many people that if you don't remember details about a book on your bookshelf, you haven't properly engaged with it. But I think it is not universally true.

As another data point, I also never remember the lyrics to my favourite songs unless I study them line by line.

I am very similar to you by the way, and I was mostly talking about just having a recollection of the plot and the main characters / villains, not minutiae.

I don’t know you or the people you talked to, so it’s entirely plausible that you’re 100% correct in your evaluation. Or that you’re projecting feelings into other people.

If someone “hated [your] guts” and “never called again”, I invite you to reflect if they truly got mad because you “dispelled [their] street cred” or because of the way you approached the subject. Especially if that happened multiple times.

A conversation requires more than one person and the “3 questions about 5 books” sounds awfully like “oh, you like Nirvana? Name three of their songs right now”. You could ask what they thought about the book, which ideas resonated with them or didn’t, instead of making them answer a pop quiz of shame. Maybe you’d find out they give importance to different things than you do. Or maybe they didn’t pay that much attention to those books because in a sea of 200 others, they didn’t shine bright enough. Perhaps they have a different set of 5 books where they could tell you every detail.

Again, I don’t know you or the other people so it is entirely possible they were the assholes, I just want to make sure that you’re sure.

>You could ask what they thought about the book, which ideas resonated with them or didn’t, instead of making them answer a pop quiz of shame.

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have a coworker that describes exactly this behavior. Most of the (young) people I know who engage in dialog with him immediately regret it and find ways to end it without feeding into his superiority complex but I think it is his way of validating himself which I most often find entertaining and comically pretentious.

I have an aunt like this. Additionally, she'll argue that you've misunderstood the book when she can't remember plot points :P

one-uppers battling one-uppers

I’m guessing it’s perverse outcome of our species being a trophy species, that being educated is now considered pro-social, and that people have to compete against the world instead of just the few dozen in the tribe.

Yeah, if you literally quizzed me on books I read and then acted I am liar just because I dont remember plot point I would dislike you too. I forget plot points of things. It does not mean I did not read those books or did not watched the movie. I hated this test via memory of uninteresting or unimportant plot point in school too.

Almost no one is able to remember whole books after first reading. That proves exactly nothing. You experience them as you read them.

That's fine because I did none of the things you said. I legitimately asked them about stuff I forgot because I read those books like 15 years ago. And it wasn't details, it was major plot points or character backgrounds.

I've encountered this often. Bookshelves are a red flag, change my mind

That's a poor way to look at the world. Also have no interest to change your mind.

I don't disagree. It is a dim view. Yet, I have it for a reason. Thank you for participating

I'm not actually calling for my mind to be changed. I want the readers I encounter to not be as they are.

Yea, yea. Common demoninator. There are plenty I enjoy. I can afford this position.

This is a common reaction to a pervasive phenomenon

Reading is one way people encounter ideas and learn, and so some people who read have a broad worldview and have absorbed the insights from books

People start to notice this, or perhaps those people attribute some other success to reading books. Enough association of this kind makes reading books high-status

Many people want to short-circuit this process to get status, so they optimize for reading a lot of books, or sometimes fake reading books

People who fake reading books for status are shown ridiculous when exposed

People who are allergic to and resent status nonsense conclude that bookshelves mean someone's a poser

This is obviously ridiculous. Many people have bookshelves because they simply need to store some books

The error committed here is, to me, a common one, overfocusing on the most salient case. I agree that it's icky when people do shit like fill shelves with books they've never and will never read as a status symbol. But are we really to assume that this is the most common reason to have a bookshelf? Or is it just the reason to which you have the strongest reaction, and thus stands out the most to you as a hypothesis?

With some additional information about a person, one might be able to conclude this given the bookshelf, but it hardly seems like enough evidence to come to this conclusion by itself

Thank you for taking the time to analyze! You nailed me here:

    People who are allergic to and resent status nonsense conclude that bookshelves mean someone's a poser

That describes me to a fault. Very 'sensitive' to status. Anyone trying to convince is easily removed. I think of it as a credulity compulsion

I don't mean to imply I rule people out solely based on this. Someone with a full bookshelf and little practical experience does get a different path towards judgement, though.

I did say red flag, not checkered...

Do you mean bookshelves as in the place where you put books before, during, and after reading them, or bookshelves as in the online habit of sharing what you've read?

I agree that the latter is self-congratulatory but I don't see why you'd object to the former.

Either in a certain use. I'm fine with them as a place to put things or even highlight values. Less as an ambiguous prop.

One data point among many. I like to see some tools or wear on the hands too

"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.

...we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the ‘medicine closet’ and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That’s why you should always have a nutrition choice!"

-- Umberto Eco (https://fs.blog/the-antilibrary/)

It is foolish to think disguises don't exist. Or assume 'red flag' means 'finish line'