Ask HN: How Do You Read?

Read How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer Adler. (https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Classic-Intelligent/dp/...) I’ve given this book to a bunch of people on my teams as it also helps with communicating ideas which is vital as a programmer.

The wikipedia page for it is a good place to get an overview of what it’s about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book

Since reading it I’ve been keeping a notebook, some people might call it a Commonplace Book, with interesting stuff from the book. I find that I get a lot more from books from the act of writing it down and then reading those notes later when I glance at them while looking something else up in the notebook.

One big big big thing I learned from the book is to not read a non-fiction book like it was a novel. There’s nothing wrong with skipping ahead and finding out what happens later, in fact you should absolutely skim the book first. I end up finishing a lot more books by doing this since so many books aren’t actually worth careful reading. I am able to systematically skim a book including the TOC and index and determine if it’s worth reading carefully. A lot of books are so sparse with ideas that you can get most of them through this method. Only the good books are worth going on to the second and third stages and only the great ones the fourth stage.

I've never enjoyed reading books - right from childhood up to now. I try to avoid it. I have gifts from birthdays and christmases from years ago where the book sits entirely unread on the shelf for a year or two until I give it away once the guilt has subsided.

The thought of starting reading a book from start to finish just fills me with a sense of tedium and of wasting my time. I've not read a single book in perhaps the last 20+ years.

I feel like there is a glimmer of how I feel from this question: "how to get the most out of each book"... are you actually getting anything at all by reading each book? Are you like me and just feel like you should, but actually deep down you just don't really get anything from it?

Am I alone?

(P.S. I am a fluent reader and readily enjoy reading the news & technical docs (and don't really watch TV or movies that much - maybe an hour or two a week), but books - boy oh boy I simply couldn't care any less)

Needless to say, I don’t read a lot. Once in a while I find a book that interests me, and usually it takes me around a week or two to complete (when reading around 30 - 60 minutes a day).

Some times this happens a lot, and I take so much time finishing what I am reading.

Am I the only one, or you guys also have similar experience? Just curious.

For non-technical books, I've very rarely seen any value in taking comprehensive notes (except highlights). I read those on a Kindle, so it's easy to highlight and reference highlights later.

* Voice Dream Reader (available on iOS and Android, but it is much better on iOS)

* Kurzweil 3000 (available on Windows and MacOS), plus Kurzweil3000.com (on any OS)

I have access to an amazing library, which is specifically designed for people with print-related disabilities, called Bookshare.org, which interfaces with both Voice Dream Reader and Kurzweil 3000.

I use Voice Dream Reader on an iPhone when driving or on the go (when I want to be discrete), to read books to me. I can usually understand 99%+ of what is being read while driving.

Also, when I am on the go, I will take my Surface Go with me and use Kurzweil 3000, which gives me a tablet-like experience. I also have a 17" laptop at home which I tremendously enjoy using for immersive reading with Kurzweil 3000. I can also take a bunch of really cool notes on it too. Another cool feature is that I can save super high quality mp3s of synthesized speech to my phone using Kurzweil 3000, if I want to.

The audio quality is stellar on both, but I have a USB sound card that I use on the Windows machines, known as a Sound BlasterX G6, to make it even better. I also have a comfortable gaming headset which I use on the Windows machines.

If there is a book that is not available on Bookshare.org, I will buy a physical copy, go to the local Fedex|Kinko's to get the book binding cut, then I will scan it with a Fujitsu Scansnap iX1500, which has a duplex automatic document feeder.

I mostly read non-fiction. To improve my recall over the past 7 years, I type up notes as I read. It's made the process of reading much slower, but it has helped when I've needed to recall some example or detail or framework of a book.

I did this (selfishly) for myself, but decided to upload my notes at https://github.com/mgp/book-notes. (Shameless plug I suppose?) The README explains exactly how I take the notes – but essentially there's no shortcut. I have my text editor open and simply type notes as I read.

I have a subscription and generally pick up a new book I've heard of that interests me right away either with a credit or just buying it.

This allows me to read while walking and riding the bus and doing the dishes and generally turns uninteresting chores into something interesting while also allowing me to read. Something about having someone read to me is way less difficult than reading it myself.

I generally don't worry about explicitly remembering anything unless there's something particularly amazing. I read nonfiction mostly and my theory is that the goal is to generally educate myself so that my worldview is shifted to be more accurate, and instead of asking "what would that book advise me to do?" I can ask, "What would I do?" and what I would do has been influenced by the book.

Good books I just read more than once. It's much faster for me to listen to a book twice than to read it carefully once. And regardless, someone said something like it's better to read the best book 100 times than 100 books 1 time.

My record is 4 times that I read Antifragile by Taleb. A scarce few are 3 times, several twice. As I once heard, keep reading books until the ideas start to repeat themselves.

Maybe I don't remember everything as much as I would if I took copious notes, but I certainly get a lot of books read this way (sometimes one in a few days if it's good enough) and it's in a way that happens without effort. I've been mulling on the idea generally that best practices that I won't actually follow are inferior to slightly less than best practices that I will do.

It was also recently discussed here on HN[2].

As a serious reader, I took "offense" at first the sweeping title. But when I completely read the article, the author's contention was largely with poorly written books and lectures work ... which wouldn't make for a sensational title.

    - - -

[1] https://andymatuschak.org/books/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19887424

Usually:

  - biography or fiction book that I listen to while driving

  - hard science book when I know I can focus for a few hours. (I.e. Quantum mechanics or advanced algorithms)

  - 1-2 business or technical book that I read on kindle (Either from PC, ipad or my iphone)

  - various blog or pdfs open on my pc / iphone

The hard science are the ones that take the most time.. sometimes it can take me weeks to read a few pages, and I often need to do side research to understand what I'm reading.

I think the fact that I have different choices help me read more because if I'm not in the mood for one thing there's usually something else interesting. If I don't have interesting books then I'm more likely to waste time on reddit / HN / twitter. (I still browse HN from time to time when things are compiling though :D)

For example, I've read thousands upon thousands of papers, I generally accept that I cannot recall all the information in them. What I can do on the other hand is figure out exactly what I need to search for in order to find information on a topic and the re-learning time is greatly reduced.

This general acceptance of not being able to recall precise information about any given topic mostly came from my time in school as a child, where I realized the teachers were not so much teaching us topics for the real world, but giving us the framework to learn any topic.

Another tip for my multi-lingual friends is to install the voices[1] command line tool to quickly switch the language, or use the polyglot[2] tool to do the same thing through the menu bar.

[1] https://github.com/mklement0/voices [2] https://github.com/Fredmf/polyglott

I skimmed through the comments and folks have said they read slowly, but also say they average about a book a week. Is that really true? How many books would you say you finish on average per year?

I read quite quickly but I average about a book every 2 weeks because of other commitments (consistently ~25 per year)

I have 3 windows open side by side: 1 the ebook I'm reading 2 emacs for typing the examples (typing is mandatory no copy paste) 3 Anki to create flash cards of what I've learned. Since I don't want to forget the hard to acquire knowledge I just got.

When I was younger maybe I had time to waste. But now I must make every minute spent reading count.

This might be off topic but let me explain:

On many occasions, I have witnessed people doing pushups, but at the end of their counting, they do half-assed pushups, so you could see that they are more interested in "finishing" their goal of 10, 15 or 20 repetitions than actually doing the exercise correctly (doing the exercise correctly could end up with them doing only 5 correct pushups)

Reading books is the same, most people are only interested in the idea of reading books, like the idea of doing sport, to "keep healthy", but don't actually enjoy the journey. So people would set arbitrary rules of "2 or 3 books a month" for example.

So here's what I do: - I changed my definition of "finishing a book" to "never". I stopped trying to read 2 books a month because it no longer has any meaning in my system, but also, no matter my progress through a book, it doesn't matter at all.

Never finishing a book is actually true: a book chapter can send me in a journey over the internet looking for more information on that particular subject, or re-think about the previous chapter because now I have new insight, etc. So really, I never finish my books and it's exactly why it's cool. It's like swimming because you like it VS swimming to reach the other side.

Finally, I don't remember every word of what I have read in the past years, but it sure shaped who I am today, the choices I made, the interests I have, etc. So it's ok to forget, what matters is the journey and what you get out of it, a book never quits your reading list once it gets there, unless you only care about counting your "done" list.

If it's a book I'm reading in order to acquire a certain skill, then I have to stop periodically and do the thing it says (e.g. in programming, or a foreign language). Not even notes would be enough to make it stick.

I use kindle and take a lot of notes. Then whenever I am in a situation where I don't have a kindle and not much to do, such in public transport, instead of going on social media I use kindle app on my phone a flick though the notes, or turn them into flashcards and basically go over all the main points.

Because you're taking notes throughout the book, you've created a kind of a map so it's very easy to refresh what you've read.

I also like the idea of re-reading the best books again and again. I've got this from Naval's podcast.

Some books are the condensed life knowledge, to read it once you won't get all the points. With great books, every re-reading you learn something new. It's better to acquire somebody's "life knowledge" in full depth and completely than accumulate a high number of shallowly read books.

Hearing, reading and writing helps memorize. After completing the book you will have a nice summary written in your own words that’s easy to recall if you need it in future.

Haven’t tried with fiction books, but for non fiction works really well.

Now some words about my reading habbits:

- Most of time I read non-fiction books. I read newspapers, interesting articles I've found on the Web and some books.

- I use an E-Reader to read my stuff (for many years I've used a Kindle 3rd Generation which got replaced by a Pocket InkBook 3 [1])

- Everything that I find interesting gets highlighted on the E-Reader. If I'm reading a real (paper) book I'll use my notebook and make some notes in a bullet journal style. [2])

- To organize my highlights I use TiddlyWiki [3] and some really nice plugin [4] to organize books.

Regarding Tiddlywiki: I think this is one of the most underrated tool out there since it can be used for everything. You can filter and tag your content (book highlights, ideas etc.) in a way that fits your needs.

Cheers,

Cyneox

Links:

[1]: https://www.pocketbook-int.com/ge/products/pocketbook-inkpad...

[2]: https://bulletjournal.com/

[3]: https://tiddlywiki.com/

[4]: http://inmysocks.tiddlyspot.com/#%24%3A%2Fplugins%2Finmysock...

In fact, I try to keep as much stuff OUT of my brain as possible. I think of my brain as an index, the smaller it is, the better. In relation to books, this means I highlight anything I find interesting, but otherwise rarely do much else Also just because you don't remember a book doesn't mean it didn't change you. After I read a book, if it was good, it will probably be on my mind for a while as I relate things I learned in it to things I knew.

Later if I want to look something up I'll remember what book it was in, just not the specifics. I don't just do this for books either, I do it for webpages all the time. Currently I am using an extension called Liner to save highlights. For things I'm actively researching for some reason or another, I extract all the highlights out when I'm finished and save them to a note, (I used to do this in Evernote, but I've since switched to Scrivener).

If a book has particularly important information but is dense, and I know I'll need the info later, but later it's very likely I'll forget it, for example, for school, I'll just make nice study-like notes, extracting the useful stuff. In fact, for school, those notes were my study notes, and I would just take exams then promptly forget everything. In case I actually needed the info, the notes existed.

Now that I think about it, this is all why I took to writing lots of comments in my code. Makes it a breeze to drop and pick up projects again. Cannot understand pro-"self-documenting code" people. I've also started documenting any large installs, complicated setups, etc, in gists lately. Very useful.

This right here is your problem. The way to really learn a book is to read it and then solve a lot of problems out of it, referring to it often. If it's a programming book (that's ideal), write programs that do what you read about. If it's a textbook there should be a lot of exercises for you to do. If there aren't any exercises you'll have to make up your own. That's a slow process, but it's still a more reliable route to deep understanding than reading superficially and never getting there.

That said, you remember more than you think you do. You may not recall everything you read, but a lot of that information is in your head somewhere, ready to act as foundation and building material if you ever visit the material again. You'd be amazed how much more you can get out of a book just by skimming it a second time, once you've got the big ideas.

I think you're being a bit harsh on yourself here. If you understand and learn from a text when you're reading it, I would contend that it's likely you've learnt quite a lot from that book without realising it.

To me, the important part is the next book: while reading it, do I understand it, is it interesting? That means that I've come to that book with the correct prerequisites, so I am happy that my previous books have served me well.

Now, to answer your question: I am pretty undisciplined. I generally read programming books and maths textbooks. I jump from book to book. Sometimes I start in the middle, sometimes I start from the beginning. Sometimes I feel the same concept baffles me, so I like to read about it from multiple sources. But once I grok them, those chapters in new books are skippable.

Reading is an experience, not a chore. The value of reading comes from the reading, not from the "have read". The fraction of information you retain from your hobby reading is essentially irrelevant.

As recommended by the book "Your memory: how it works and how to improve it" by Ken Higbee. As I recall, Higbee says there are many reading comprehension methods, but the fundamentals are all the same. The book's dated, but Higbee argues that research backs up the fundamental ideas. I don't know what the latest research says, but I doubt the basic ideas here have been overturned. Maybe they've been refined.

One important thing I learned from the book was that speed is not always good. Your need to process and organize the information to best understand and remember it. SQ3R is basically a series of steps to do just that.

Note that I read almost exclusively non-fiction and SQ3R isn't meant for fiction.

You’ll learn how to discover, interpret and judge books, and how to not waste time on poorly written books or those that don’t contain much substance. The core of the book is part 2: the rules of analytical reading, which are general rules applicable to expository works. Part 3 then discusses their modifications for particular types of literature: practical books, history, philosophy, science, social science, fiction.

Highly recommend it. You don’t want to miss it if you’re serious about reading, that is thinking, growing, educating and enriching yourself.

In addition to taking notes, I started to summarise chapters or the whole book.

This takes significantly more time, but the effect is huge.

Given the amount of great books and my limited human life style, I also sometimes have the feeling of missing something. The FOMO is a concept fundamentally tied to the human psychology. I try to reduce it by categorising my reading list into A, B and C books (where A books get my biggest attention). My policy is to read and summarise A books, speed read B books and rely on someone else's summaries for C books.

Obviously you can't treat everything you read this way, but for a few really good classics this has been a fruitful approach for me. For a novel, maybe you could just memorize a few passages. When you have the words rolling around in your head, you'll find that you recall them at just the right time.

Audiobooks have single handedly fixed all of this for me. I’ve been able to listen to and grasp things like the dune series and how to win friends and influence people (unabridged).

Simply listen to an audiobook in your car or headphones on your way to work or at the gym or before you sleep <3

It's rather interesting that what you're talking about here is a key idea in the Buddhist philosophy. It's that material possessions only temporarily provide happiness. As a result most people spend their whole life moving from one possession to the next to get that temporary high over and over again.

If you're reading fiction to enjoy it like you would a tv show or a movie, that happiness will fade as you find. And honestly, that's okay.

Buddhism's take on it is to seek out enjoyment that lasts, which sounds like what you're doing by posting this post. However, enjoyment that lasts is a different kind of enjoyment. It's not addictive and it's harder to get started, but imho is worth it. It's also more subtle than the addictive kind of happiness. Buddhism's solution is to cut out these addictions and work towards enlightenment which is a life long kind of happiness. However imho, that advice isn't for everyone. It comes down to what you want out of life.

I feel there's so much abundance of knowledge out there that it's important to curate what you read. Sometime you can read the entire book in a day. Sometime even a single page might take you days to read and understand. So it's also about the density of knowledge and content in a book.

Also, sometime, I will read multiple books in parallel based on my requirements or mood. One thing that does help is your highlights/notes (both digital/physical). Having some system to refer back in future always help.

Yes, you will still forget a lot of what you have read but that's ok. We tend to remember the important stuff. And in future if we want to gig deep, we can always come back and read again.

Some of these concepts are also explained by Naval Ravikant in one of his interviews. So you can also watch them.

1. Before starting, take a fresh sheet of paper and enumerate the chapter numbers of the book. Each on a separate line.

2. After finishing each chapter: stop reading, contemplate the main message and try to pen it down at the corresponding chapter numbers of step 1. Focus on writing it in your own words / rephrasing. Key question for chapters >1: what information did I forget to mention in my microsummary until now? Include that in the new summary, don't edit the old one.

3. Turn the page of your sheet after completing the book. Now write a (max) 1-page summary of the book without looking at your other notes.

4. Compare the summary with your notes. Satisfied? Ready! Not satisfied? Get another sheet and rewrite your 1-page summary, taking extra care to mention the missed points of the first summary.

My experience is that you don't really need the chapter notes while writing the summary, since it is now part of your long-term memory because of the writing.

Bonus: 1-page, personal summary of key points in the book you just read. If you forgot the points of a book, take it off the shelf and consult your 1-page summary.

YMMV but it works for me.

* forced to review and outline major themes of the book, or at least why it was worth reading

* could go back and see what I thought about the book later

* helps other people, even if occasionally

My SO uses goodreads and enjoys both the ability to give a review and the score keeping nature of it.

After finishing the book I do another review simplifying the most important parts and then I add them to Anki.

After that using SRS helps me to refresh the knowledge about the book.

Most books I just read once fairly rapidly: skipping over parts I don’t get or find uninteresting. Just a few books ever get an ‘analytical’ reread.

I don’t keep a notebook generally to keep reads portable, I instead talk about what I’m reading pretty aggressively as a strategy to memorize and absorb knowledge.

I do not take notes or highlight sections- I have found that these pull me out of the mindset of thinking about what I'm reading, and instead put me in to the mindset of how best to document what I'm reading. The two points of view do not overlap as much as you might think.

For books I read for enjoyment, I take in the words at a reasonable pace and build the scenes in my mind, just enjoying the flow.

Usually I read a book in one sitting, but if I find myself interrupted, when I start again I'll go back a chapter or two to ensure that I'm back in to things by the time I get to where I left off.

I re-read books I've enjoyed regularly. If anything, it is even more enjoyable than the first time through, particularly when life experience allows you to appreciate a thought in the book that you didn't fully grasp on earlier readings. It's great fun!

For math and computer science books, I definitely like to write code to do things. Particularly in math I have the hardest time remembering which greek letter means what thing in which context, and well formed programming language variable names make things much clearer.

For other stuff, I try to build an outline of the theory of the book and come up with some actions I can take to see how the ideas would work in the contexts I have available to me. It's a little difficult to take notes depending on the context, particularly with audiobooks. Sometimes I will read other people's summaries to see if I missed something.

For fiction and poetry I don't really do anything special except copy down particular quotes I enjoy.

I don't finish a book if it's dull. If I'm constantly getting bored or feel like the information is just someone preaching out of their ass or pointless, I'll either skim the book or just drop it. I don't feel bad about this anymore. My reading list is so damn long, what's the point wasting my time on books I was wrong for picking? Sunk cost fallacy and all.

I've learned my lesson the hardway and I'm very, very careful about business books. Especially the pop-culture ones. I only read it with reviews by people I respect highly and they must be critical of the book. If it's just praising the book, I refuse to get it. Or the book is a few years old and is still respected. So many books in business are such dogshit. It's amazing.

I do keep a reading list in excel and add to it constantly. Sometimes add some notes how I felt about it. A lot of times I add books mentioned in other books I'm reading.

If the book is bought and not from the library, I underline with a nice black Uniball pen and mark the top of the page. Highlighters can get really annoying on my eyes if there's a lot of it. I learned that from high school. My eyes went out of focus with too much highlighter on the page (probably just me). If I'm reading the book with specific purpose, I'll make notes in the book itself.

In the case when the book is side-loaded, I load the highlights using clippings [1] service. The habit of taking notes significantly increases the consumption time, but in the end, I remember much more.

When the book isn't highly technical, such as biographies or self-development books, I tend to listen to the audiobooks with an Android app [2].

[1] https://www.clippings.io/

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.acmeandroi...

I read actively, and am a fan of Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book, mentioned by others. The methods it describes are much as I'd developed on my own, though I've picked up a few pointers.

I consider books resources to aid in an inquiry. I've an idea of the questions I'm interested in, and exploring the development, presentation, and explorations of those questions guides what I read.

My "to read" pile is ... unmanageable. I've collected thousands of books and articles, which I consider not an obligation to read, but a pre-vetted resource to dig into in more depth. Bibliographies, footnotes, annotations, and references within works are very useful at turning up other works. Generally, my highest priority is on foundational works within a field, or revolutionary works which either break new ground or synthesize existing ideas into a new whole. As I've studied, I've found myself generally less interested in the most recent material -- it's often far less substantive than earlier works, much rehashes older concepts (with or without credit or reference), though sometimes in the context of some contemporary crisis or issue. (Much of HN's submissions and discussion fall into this class.)

Cultivating my own discipline to work through material I've alreday surfaced is difficult, though I've at least skimmed through a reasonably large share. Tools for organising and managing a large personal research library are sadly lacking, and progress toward realising the dream outlined by Vannevar Bush in his Memex, or Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu, has been sadly disappointing.

I'm actively looking for tips at improving my tools and methods. Reducing the reading pile being a principle objective.

It's human tendency to forget things. So re-reading stuff I find valuable helps me more than reading lots of new books.

Also, if anyone knows good open source alternative which would work on mobile and web in a way Play Books works - would be great to try. I've seen few libraries e.g epub.js and also NextCloud has its way to display uploaded books, but couldn't find a fully working alternative.

The slow books take me a while to read. Each section I read I like to think about it and write a short blurb for myself to remind myself or apply it to a bigger body of knowledge or put it into use.

The books I skim usually don’t need to be read completely and it is important to just gather the broad overview and take the notes at the end. But for these I try to just summarize the 2-3 major points that the book is making at the end so I can go back and remember them if I need to.

For more technical books like maths I tend to keep workbooks for each one. I do the exercises and distill my understanding in notes as I go.

I'm not claiming this methodology to be original, smart, useful or mature. It's just the answer to the posed question.

[E: also this seems a fair opportunity to quote my favorite author]

Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.

For technical books, I take notes as I read. Once I reach the end of a chapter, I reword the rough notes and research anything I didn't fully understand. You can read my notes if you're interested: https://notes.eddyerburgh.me/

For fiction books, I highlight paragraphs I find interesting as I read on my kindle . When I finish, I use my highlights to write a short review of the book.

I've stopped reading most self-help/ business books now. I just read other people's notes on them instead.

* this one from Paul Graham: you retain more from reading than you think you do http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html

* this one from James Somers: actively engage (don't read without a pen and paper, explain stuff to yourself as you go) http://jsomers.net/blog/kenjitsu

To my mind, 'what' trumps 'how'. A casual reading of 'Mrs. Dalloway' brings a greater reward than n airport non-fictions.

Then, I'd end up with a stack of index cards for each book, which I'd keep for reference. I rarely looked back at these notes, but the 'chore' of doing this for every chapter really helped the complicated stuff sink in.

I thought I was an outlier, then I met people that do 4 books per week.

80% of the books I read are technical about programming, math, science, etc. 20% are a hodgepodge.

Fiction books I read very slowly, for enjoyment.

My pace has slowed down. Nowadays I read only one chapter per month of "What to Expect: The First Year" and pray that we make it to the next month ;)...Okay I kid, but my pace is now down to about 1 per month.

Always physical books, I've got a Kindle at home but it's just picking up dust. Most of the time I alternate between either a literary classic or some non-fiction, and then a more light read (more often than not a Michael Connelly novel).

Each time I start a new book I snap a picture of the cover and I have a Google Photos album where I compile them all to remember them and to be able to count how many I've read at the end of the year

I found it really useful, but it took willpower to do this, and I soon fell out of the habit. Il have to try it again.

I think I don't read them from end to end. Mostly I read what is interesting to me.

So much of my life is planned and optimized, it's nice to be analog for a bit.

As for remembering, you won't remember everything. I think the commentor that said it's about shaping your mind over time is correct.

It's just like how you want to surround yourself with smart/successful people. You might not remember everything they say or do but it shapes you.

"iron sharpens iron"

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/159985.The_Evelyn_Wood_S...

https://link.medium.com/30JQJa3KBZ

Synopsis: 1. Use a reading list 2. Pay attention to reading environment (what app/device, lighting, noise-level) 3. Use a dictionary 4. Talk about it 5. Follow journalists 6. Increase quality, read less

I feel more hands on. I can fiddle with code for hours and hours and get consumed. Build furniture. Build a model. But reading. Nope.

I use my book reader as a kind of reading list. When I get book recommendations from conversations or HN threads, I'll download the free sample to read later as soon as possible. This way, I never forget about a potentially interesting book.

I also actively hunt for book recommendations in threads on HN, which pop up from time to time. There was a really good one recently, but I've lost the link. They're easy to search for, though.

Usually, I don't start reading the sample right away because I'm already reading another book.

After I'm done with a book, I go through my unread samples, pick one, and begin. If the book hasn't hooked me by the end of the sample, I stop reading. Sometimes sooner if it's really bad.

The second most important part of reading a book is to discuss it as you're reading it. This usually takes the form of in-person conversations or online. I find this helps me retain the material and discover what I've missed.

You'll never retain anything about a book if you don't try to apply it in some way. This means writing, talking, and doing should all be key parts of reading. If the book doesn't lend itself to these activities, it's probably not worth reading.

Also on the subject of retention, I find reading books in a themed series to be helpful. For example:

Sapiens -> 1491 -> 1493

The first book got me thinking about the relationship between human activity and megafauna extinctions. The second book showed me that most of my assumptions about what pre-columbian America was like were almost completely wrong. The last book taught me to take the long view of globalization.

All of these books changed my mind on topics I thought I understood, which is another signal I use when selecting a book. If it can't possibly change my mind, it's not worth reading. Books that don't pass the test typically: (a) lack a well-developed point of view; or (b) approach the subject from a direction I'm already familiar with.

I use Blinkist as a way to “skim/filter” books I _really_ want to learn more about.

I also keep notes (sometimes excerpts, sometimes my thoughts, sometimes a mix) in Bear for each book I read (even from Blinkist).

I read, mostly on my Kindle, mostly at night before falling asleep. I gladly re-read books I've enjoyed and usually get a lot more out of it the second go-around compared to the first.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

People walk around with encyclopedic knowledge of Star Wars. Why? Reps for Jesus!

Other than that, all the best books I’ve read (as in over and over) have been by accident. I just had a feeling about the book. Nothing good ever came my way via recommendation

Non-Fiction: I hop around in the book first, then I read it through from beginning to end making notes in my book of stuff. These notes may link to other books. I also use post-its to mark bits I find most intersting or useful.

When I find these new things I use that a stepping stone for further investigation. After a while I totally switch area for a while.

It’s all about connecting the dots, and having a good time while doing it. For me this is also the way I remember it.

Head First books have a lot of good practical tips for how to learn new material, such as "read in bed just before sleeping." I did that a lot in high school and college.

So I decided to take notes. But then I thought of all the notebooks I filled in school (and still have some), and never looked at after the semester was over. Notes in a notebook are not much better.

So I made a blog, and for every book I read, I make blog posts with the highlights. The idea is that it will be on the Internet, and I can review them whenever and wherever I want to. I did this for a while, but noticed I never went back to review my notes. Still, I considered this an improvement.

Taking serious notes, BTW, slowed down my reading probably 3-5x.

Along the way I realized I can't always be near a computer while reading. So I started taking notes in a notebook and transcribing later. Fountain pens for the win!

Anyway, since I still wasn't reviewing my notes often, I decided to take it one step further. I used org-drill[1] to make flashcards of things I would like to retain. I started using flashcard software for other reasons in November, and I can say it's been wildly successful when it comes to retention. I've not done it for much of my nonfiction reading, as life has been busy and I've not read much. But I do plan to make flashcards. I still make more refined notes and put them in my blog, though.

Making flashcards is not a significant effort. Mostly it's copy pasting material from my usual notes blog.

Now this all may seem overkill, and perhaps literally killing the joy of reading books. But as I said, if I'm not remembering 80-90% of a book I enjoyed, then the only reason I'm reading it is entertainment. And fiction provides for better entertainment.

[0] Here's an extreme example: In 2014, I was reading Willpower. It was amazing. I recall several times saying to myself "Wow!". After reading it, I decided to reread Thinking, Fast and Slow and take notes. I had read it less than a year prior, but had not taken notes. Still, I did feel I hadn't forgotten much. What did I find out? Over half of my "Wow!" moments for Willpower were in Thinking, Fast and Slow. So not only had I forgotten so much within a year, I did not even recognize it when reading it again!

(Let's ignore the question of whether most of Willpower is junk science).

[1] Most people use Anki if you don't want to use Emacs. Org drill has the benefit that I type up my notes in Org Mode anyway.

Because of the vast amount of info after reading I create a summary diary so as to absorb the info a bit better.

I've had enough recommendations on HN and IRL to fill up my wishlist for some time. Beyond that, I usually go to a "top 100" fantasy/scifi list. After I've had enough fiction I'll throw in some learning material.

Building an antilibrary

What books should be “on my list”? A while back I started out with making an Amazon wish list and adding any books I found that looked interesting. That soon got overwhelming so I made a smaller, more selective list for my top “antilibrary” picks. Eventually I decided to make a whole website to try to organize this better (https://www.antilibrari.es/).

I think it’s probably worth keeping either a couple lists (by genre, priority, whatever makes sense to you) or at least one high priority list of the books you most want to read. For me it can be helpful to differentiate between “looks super interesting” and “I actually really want to read this soon” — often different! Some books I think are awesome and want to have in my antilibrary but I know realistically I probably won’t read em soon. That’s okay!

What to read next?

I think it can be a good idea to revisit your list(s) every so often and let the ones you’re most drawn to bubble to the top. No need to actually buy more than a few at a time, but you’ll always have something to draw from. I should also note, honestly lots of the books I buy aren’t ones I’ve had on a list for a long time, but rather ones I found at a bookstore and picked up in the moment…serendipity is always great too!

Same goes for actually choosing what to read next…I don’t plan this out ahead of time, it’s always slightly random based on what I have on hand, what mood I’m in, etc. I think it’s useful to own enough books that you always have a variety to choose from, but past a certain point a great antilibrary list can be almost as valuable as your actual bookshelves.

How to read what and when

I like to read several books in parallel. Often with fiction I’ll read one book straight through, but nonfiction…I have like two dozen books in my nightstand that I’ve started, some way through, haven’t necessarily read for a while, but meaning to return to at some point.

I’m not particularly good at the “when to stop reading” part. I have completionist tendencies and always want to at least try to finish a book. So perhaps the “parallel processing” approach is also just an easier way to abandon books without feeling bad about it. Either way I think haphazardly reading lots at once is great. @edouard wrote a cool post that’s on point here, discussing “reading networks” and how books can inform one another and let you build interesting connections between them.

Different modes / approaches to reading

Also worth thinking about different ways of reading a book…not just the approach to choosing books but the actual practice, because it can be surprisingly varied.

I think in some ways it’s easier to evaluate non-fiction books (vs. fiction, poetry etc.) because they tend to have more structure. Often I can read a couple pages of the introduction, scan the chapter list, and flip through the book (physically or digitally if I’m able e.g. on Amazon) to get a decent overall impression.

I try to read a good number of reviews, on Amazon + Goodreads when available, otherwise see what Google turns up. Of course have to take everything with a grain of salt but it’s usually helpful to see the range of perspectives. Often I think a book with a good number of extremely enthusiastic reviews but some that hate it will be a better pick than one with consistent blandly positive reviews.

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To plug my own site - I started a small forum for talking books, libraries, and reading, and a few discussions come to mind that are very on topic here (and that I've drawn from in my above post):

- Developing a reading strategy: https://athenaeum.antilibrari.es/t/developing-a-reading-stra...

- Reading non-fiction: https://athenaeum.antilibrari.es/t/reading-non-fiction/93

- Personal library organization: https://athenaeum.antilibrari.es/t/personal-library-organiza...

- Developing a “non-reading” practice: https://athenaeum.antilibrari.es/t/developing-a-non-reading-...

Then find one good book in this field and read it carefully while doing practices.

Find other books in this field to broaden your thinking.

Stuff that's not engaging me stays in the pile, and anything I've started but haven't picked up in a few months migrates back to the shelf. Sometimes this is because it's a bad book & not actually worth reading, but more often, it's because the place I'm at in my life is getting in the way of enjoying it (for instance, it's too dense right now because work stress is eating up all my cycles & I need to stick to something breezy, or it engages with topics that hit too close to home right now & I'm too emotionally drained to deal with it at the moment, or I really need to read a different book first in order to make sense of it).

Ebooks work the same way for me, but I read them under different circumstances. The ebooks I have on my phone get read during breaks at work or during mandatory social events -- situations where I don't have reliable internet or access to my bookshelf but also am liable to be quite bored. The ebooks I have on my computer at home get read when I'm sitting at my computer but would rather read them than twitter or something (which is unusual, but this still happens whenever I do a periodic social media fast, which I have to do every few months for a week or two for the sake of my sanity).

I've always had a pretty good memory for things I read so long as they're nonfiction, and while I can't remember fiction narratives to save my life, I don't think that's the purpose of fiction. (I can recite the first five or six pages of Neuromancer, having read it hundreds of times in high school, but I can barely tell you a plot synopsis because my brain just doesn't work that way: narratives are an alien thing, and they wash out of my memory like rain off a duck's back.) This means that I can generally pick up a nonfiction book after not touching it for five or ten years & have no problem continuing it, but that I have to read fiction in one sitting if the plot matters at all to the enjoyment. (This basically means that I only end up finishing works of fiction that are enjoyable for their stylistic qualities -- novelists who are secretly poets or humorists, like Gibson, Stephenson, Dellio, Eco, or Wilson. I have read a lot of PKD, but it's always a struggle.)

One reason I might remember nonfiction so well is that, by habit, when I read I'm constantly summarizing & rephrasing in my head. This slows me down a lot when I start shouting at the author in my head instead! But, it means that I have at least connected what the author's saying to other things I know & integrated it into some kind of ontology.

As for programming (probably for anything you treat as a profession), I've noticed that you cannot beat practice, but if the topic is new to you, it's better to read the whole book first. It's much faster because you see what to expect and don't waste time when you practice on stuff that is easy and not as powerful as something else. Also you don't waste comfiguring tools only to discover that the tech doesn't really interest you anyway.

I usually try to switch back and fourth between fiction and non-fiction. I'll read two or three fictional novels and then maybe some non-fiction. I'm not a huge fan of non-fiction. A lot of them they draw out a 100 page book into a 300 page extended essay because that's what publishers want to sell books at the current market prices. I'd rather they sell 150 page non-fiction if they could get the same point across. (Sam Harris brought this up when he self published the short book: Islam and the Future of Tolerance, which is on my list).

I think at one time I might have switched between two books throughout my reading, but today I usually read one all the way through.

I do want to read more. Here's what I finished last year:

Books 2018:

  Cibola Burn

  Nemesis Games

  The Dictator's Handbook

  The Mythical Man Month

  Ready Player One

  The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

  The Fountainhead

  Wrinkle in Time

  The Men who Stare at Goats

  The Coddling of the American Mind

  Babylon's Ashes

  The Strange Death of Europe

  Persepolis Rising