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Comment by bromagosa | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you in all possible ways.

Counting that your average lifespan will be around 85 years, and you've been reading real literature since you were 14, that gives you 71 years of good reading. That is, if you are lucky enough to preserve your eyesight.

On average, let's say you read about 12 books per year, which gives you the sad total amount of 852 books you'll be able to read in your whole life. In my case, I've still got enough time for 684 more books. Think about this when you go into a library. A whole life worth of books fits into a couple of bookshelves...

There are more authors worth reading than books I'll ever be able to read before I die. So, nope. IMO you should NOT choose to read this over actual literature.

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This is "actual literature". I say this as someone who greatly enjoys world classics as well as modern writers, everything from Gogol, Tolstoi, Kafka, Dickens, Dumas, and so on...

The only point of reading JK Rowling, imho, is to make HPMOR more fun.

Someone so concerned to optimize their reading experience really ought to be reading more than 12 books a year.

If I was reading more than 12 books a year, I wouldn't be so concerned to optimize my reading experience ;)

Anyway, that was just an average, and I was just talking about literature, I wasn't including essays or technical books.

What's real literature, then?

So you're happy to read things other than "literature". (Quite right!)

Which makes it a bit strange to say "don't read this, because it isn't literature". (Not your actual words, but I don't believe I'm misrepresenting your meaning.)

As you clearly appreciate, there are many reasons for reading things. Some of those reasons are best served by reading highbrow literature, some by reading technical books. Is there some general principle that makes it obvious to you that there is no good reason that would be well served by reading HPMoR?

Perhaps you have read enough of it to know you don't like it. Perhaps you've found "fanfiction is always junk" so reliable a guide that it would take an enormous amount of contrary evidence to change your mind in any instance. Fair enough, in both cases; but in both cases the actual reasons are much more detailed than "it isn't literature, so away with it".

According to Goodreads, I've read 438 books so far (it's probably way above that, since it doesn't have that many Spanish language books...), and I'm only 32. So, whomever is reading 12 books a year is being lazy :)

However, most are the literary value equivalent to your average sitcom :)

I think I read that many books in high school. b^)

My rate has really plummeted recently, but it's not as though St. Peter is going to decide my case based on whether I read the seven volumes of À la recherche du temps perdu in the original French. When you read for enjoyment, no one is grading you. The "real literature" thing is odd.

A couple weeks ago, I read 3 books by Lois McMaster Bujold over the span of a week. She writes Hugo winning sf, poignant and thoughtful.

One book a month would be a living nightmare. If that's all I had time for, I would turn my life upside down.

This book really rips after it gets going. It is not for everyone. There are occasional blobs of 'rationality', but nothing like Ayn Rand's interminable philosophical passages. It's a great meta take on Harry Potter. And it succeeds in its own right as an adventure story. Maybe not emotionally, you could argue about that.

Which work of literature is it, I wonder, from which you got this idea that min-maxing your life is the way to happiness and fulfilment?

Which one of my words is it, I wonder, that led you to to think I was taking about happiness and fulfilment and not simply about the way I choose which books I want to read? :P

You could probably pick up one of those leather bound series of 'Greatest Works of Literature' for cheap nowadays. I'd envy your library for its uniformity, at least. I really hate all those different coloured paperbacks...

Why do you use criteria besides your happiness and fulfillment?

>There are more authors worth reading than books I'll ever be able to read before I die.

Since you seem like you would have an interesting opinion on this: What books do you feel I should read before I die?

Well, I don't have an actual list, but I usually choose books I think will still be read 500 years from now.

Is that a litmus test for quality, or do you plan on being alive five hundred years from now?

If you had read my words, you would know I obviously "plan" to live around 85 years, and the verb «think» would have suggested to you that I don't have an infallible way to know what the people of the future will enjoy reading.

I thought you were asking sincerely, but it seems you're either trying to start a flame with your sarcasm or just not reading through my words.

If I want to read good sci-fi or fantasy I'll pick Bradbury, Asimov, or any other brilliant author I _think_ will still be read in 500 years.

Go and read whatever you like, I couldn't care less.

I was asking sincerely, you gave me a non-answer.

If you were asking sincerely whether I was planning on living 500 years, you've read way too much Harry Potter.

I have, in fact.

EDIT: Actually, it doesn't have to be like this. I'm sorry for being unnecessarily snarky when you told me how you evaluate books. If I may, I'd like to rephrase my question too: "Keeping in mind specific volumes, what is a book that you could see yourself feeling sorry for somebody having not read before their funeral?"

Aha, so the bible, quran, torah etc then?

Not quite fitting into the literature category, but I've read the Bible out of curiosity and interest for the origins of our culture.

You don't think them fiction, then? ;)

How do you make that distinction before you've read the book?

For new authors, I follow recommendations by friends whose taste I trust, or reviews from people who have similar standards.

For old authors it's much easier, especially for the ones born more than 500 years ago ;)

You think HPMoR won't be? It has the kind of intensely devoted (not to say cult) fanbase that preserves things and actively recruits new fans. If your view is that Harry Potter itself won't be read 500 years from now, even if that were to happen it's reasonably common for parodies to outlast the original. If I had to bet on a piece of literature from the last 10 years (say) that would last 500 years HPMoR looks like one of the better options.

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