I’ve never managed to do this. I’ve sometimes read a book in a day, but never day after day, although I once heard Jack Cohen) say he habitually read three SF books and three non-fiction books a week.
How many books a week do you read, and what sort of books? (No lists of recommended titles, please.)
I pretty much don’t read paper books—this format and medium might as well die as far as I’m concerned. I listen to ridiculous number of audiobooks on Sansa Clip (in fast mode). The Bay has plenty, or Audible if you can stand their DRM. My favourite have been TTC lectures, which have zero value to me other than entertainment.
The idea for audiobooks was mostly to do something useful at times when I cannot do anything else—but it does use cognitive resources and makes me more tired than if I was listening to music or so for the same amount of time. It’s very reliable relation.
I read about a book a week, almost exclusively non-fiction, generally falling somewhere between the popular science and textbook level. Occasionally I’ll throw a sci-fi novel into the mix.
I’d love to speed this up, since my reading list grows much faster than books get completed, but I’m not sure how (other than simply spending more time reading). Has anyone had luck with speed-reading techniques , such as Tim Ferriss’s?
In some periods of my life I’ve read about a book a day (almost entirely fiction), but I mostly look back at those periods with regret, because I suspect my reading was largely based on the desire to escape an unpleasant reality that I understood as inherent to reality rather than something contingent that I could do something about.
As an adult I have found myself reading non-fiction directed at life goals more often and fiction relatively less. Every so often I go 3 months without reading a book but other times I get through maybe 1 a week, but part of this is that non-fiction is generally just a slower read because they actually have substantive content that must be practiced or considered before it really sticks. With math texts I generally slow down to maybe 1 to 10 pages a day.
With non-fiction, I also tend to spend relatively a lot of time figuring out what to read, rather than simply reading it. When I become interested in a subject I don’t mind spending several hours trying to work out the idea space and find “the best book” within that field.
I’ve never made efforts to learn speed reading because the handful of times I’ve met someone who claimed to be able to do it and was up for a test, their reading comprehension seemed rather low. We’d read the same thing and then I’d ask them about details of motivation or implication and they would have difficulty even remembering particular scenes or plot elements, leaving out their implications entirely.
With speed reading, I sometimes get the impression that people are aiming for “having read X” as the goal, rather than “having read X and learned something meaningful from it”.
The stuff Ferriss covers is normal enough. It’s better to think of it as remedial reading techniques for people (most everyone) who don’t read well than as speeding up past ‘normal’. For example, if you’re subvocalizing everything you read, You’re Doing It Wrong. For your average LW reader, I’d suggest that anything below 300WPM is worth fixing.
After a fallow period I’m back to two-three a month as a fairly regular rhythm. Fiction has been pretty much eliminated from my reading diet (ten years ago it used to make up the bulk of it).
I recently got a GoodReads account—mainly because (a) it’s on my iPhone and (b) it is just a reading list, rather than an owning list, so editions and such aren’t such a hassle.
I’m on LibraryThing here, but I don’t keep it up to date (I did a bulk upload in 2006 and have hardly touched it since), and most of my books that are too old to have ISBNs aren’t there. My primary book catalogue isn’t online.
I read up to 3 books a week, averaging around 0.3 due to long periods of avoiding them. The internet and Netflix are much more immediate and require less work.
I read primarily science fiction and fantasy, but I have lots of classical fiction and non-fiction as well, Great Books style.
I decided the following quote wasn’t up to Quotes Thread standard, but worth remarking on here:
Arthur C. Clarke, quoted in “Science Fictionisms”.
I’ve never managed to do this. I’ve sometimes read a book in a day, but never day after day, although I once heard Jack Cohen) say he habitually read three SF books and three non-fiction books a week.
How many books a week do you read, and what sort of books? (No lists of recommended titles, please.)
I pretty much don’t read paper books—this format and medium might as well die as far as I’m concerned. I listen to ridiculous number of audiobooks on Sansa Clip (in fast mode). The Bay has plenty, or Audible if you can stand their DRM. My favourite have been TTC lectures, which have zero value to me other than entertainment.
The idea for audiobooks was mostly to do something useful at times when I cannot do anything else—but it does use cognitive resources and makes me more tired than if I was listening to music or so for the same amount of time. It’s very reliable relation.
I read about a book a week, almost exclusively non-fiction, generally falling somewhere between the popular science and textbook level. Occasionally I’ll throw a sci-fi novel into the mix.
I’d love to speed this up, since my reading list grows much faster than books get completed, but I’m not sure how (other than simply spending more time reading). Has anyone had luck with speed-reading techniques , such as Tim Ferriss’s?
In some periods of my life I’ve read about a book a day (almost entirely fiction), but I mostly look back at those periods with regret, because I suspect my reading was largely based on the desire to escape an unpleasant reality that I understood as inherent to reality rather than something contingent that I could do something about.
As an adult I have found myself reading non-fiction directed at life goals more often and fiction relatively less. Every so often I go 3 months without reading a book but other times I get through maybe 1 a week, but part of this is that non-fiction is generally just a slower read because they actually have substantive content that must be practiced or considered before it really sticks. With math texts I generally slow down to maybe 1 to 10 pages a day.
With non-fiction, I also tend to spend relatively a lot of time figuring out what to read, rather than simply reading it. When I become interested in a subject I don’t mind spending several hours trying to work out the idea space and find “the best book” within that field.
I’ve never made efforts to learn speed reading because the handful of times I’ve met someone who claimed to be able to do it and was up for a test, their reading comprehension seemed rather low. We’d read the same thing and then I’d ask them about details of motivation or implication and they would have difficulty even remembering particular scenes or plot elements, leaving out their implications entirely.
With speed reading, I sometimes get the impression that people are aiming for “having read X” as the goal, rather than “having read X and learned something meaningful from it”.
The stuff Ferriss covers is normal enough. It’s better to think of it as remedial reading techniques for people (most everyone) who don’t read well than as speeding up past ‘normal’. For example, if you’re subvocalizing everything you read, You’re Doing It Wrong. For your average LW reader, I’d suggest that anything below 300WPM is worth fixing.
After a fallow period I’m back to two-three a month as a fairly regular rhythm. Fiction has been pretty much eliminated from my reading diet (ten years ago it used to make up the bulk of it).
Who else has a LibraryThing account or similar?
I have a LibraryThing here, which I generally do a bulk update of every 2-3 months (whenever I’m reminded I have it).
I recently got a GoodReads account—mainly because (a) it’s on my iPhone and (b) it is just a reading list, rather than an owning list, so editions and such aren’t such a hassle.
I’m on LibraryThing here, but I don’t keep it up to date (I did a bulk upload in 2006 and have hardly touched it since), and most of my books that are too old to have ISBNs aren’t there. My primary book catalogue isn’t online.
Read: 2 books a year :(
Listen on iPhone through audible.com subscription: 2-3 books a month
Plan to read on iPad once I buy it: Maybe one a month, and denser stuff than what they put on audio.
I have read over 5 books a day. I generally read less than one book a week though, as there are so many other things to consume, e.g. on the Internet.
Tyler Cowen also reads voraciously.
I read up to 3 books a week, averaging around 0.3 due to long periods of avoiding them. The internet and Netflix are much more immediate and require less work.
I read primarily science fiction and fantasy, but I have lots of classical fiction and non-fiction as well, Great Books style.