Two things I want to share with you about reading.
The first is an essay called "On Reading", in which Schopenhauer states that you can read yourself stupid by reading too much.
The second was my university's "suggested literature" section on the syllabus, which recommended reading only a couple of books per class and reflecting on the ideas, rather than reading as much as possible with little deliberation.
Have you ever considered slowing down your reading to get more out of it?
This desu. I'll read a classic in 2-3 days, one if it's short, and then just think about it for a week before starting another book. I enjoy the post-book daydreams, as much as I do actually reading the book
>men
>100lbs
Also Tai Lopez said to read a book a day silly
Same. Also whilst I'm reading a book I pause after every chapter and take a few notes.
That raises a good question, what entails reading a book? Is looking at the contents page and the summary (which is what he does) enough to say you've read something? Dubious.
Of course, I write in most of my books
I don't have anything else to do
I agree somewhat. It is very important to digest what has been read, allowing further thought to take root in the mind.
Writings addressing the same topic or directly addressing the work you just read are very important to read during this period of digestion.
>he doesn’t have a 1k book goodreads challenge
relax op no one here really reads lol we just talk about reading
I also do that, but I find that my reflections eventually "lose steam" if I don't go back to my notes or the book to make sure my train of thought doesn't stop on the rails. Am I a brainlet?
Everything you've ever thought of has already been discussed at length, but arriving at things by your own intuition is what develops your thinking and reasoning.
Everyone who takes part in that just reads 300 page genre fiction or YA
I, um, I sometimes pick up a fiction book, I read a few pages, but I can’t get the thought out of my head that I might as well be sitting in line for death. If I read a fiction book I’m in the same place I was in when I started (hur, den ya dunt read good). In comparison, I know that the greatest thinkers and best souls the world has seen found the value they needed to make themselves Gods in non-fiction. So I put the fiction down out of a respect for life and all that might be holy and I pick up philosophy because it is certainly the right thing to do, relative to reading fiction. Fiction is porn, but it doesn’t have that beautiful aspect that porn does that gives your soul wings, as Plato says. So if it is less valuable than porn and philosophy why the fuck do you allow yourself to own it? Did you ever think it might be sinful to read fiction? Not the Christian type of sin, but the general version of sin that is most involved in vice and ignorance? I mean you could see how that might be? Right? While you consider yourself better than others for something that actually makes you worse? That is a pretty funny possibility, you gotta admit.
Gnawlije
Fiction isn't horror and fantasy - literary fiction can say great things about humanity, psychology, philosophy and more. You need to think out of the context of the plot, you need to be a better analyst.
Damn right. You fucking Americans, please STOP putting that amount of material lists, nobody gets through it, and certainly nobody thinks about what they're reading.
I agree completely, if you do nothing but soak up information and never sit down to process what you've read you'll never actually retain that information.
Although, I'm a big supporter of mindfulness-based meditations and it essentially teaches you what your university was suggesting, it just seems like common sense to think about what you're reading since "speed readers" never seem to grasp what the book was about, from my experience.
This is true. I used to read exclusively for content, but since I've passed into an audiobook phase, that no longer matters. Can anyone post recommendations of authors with good style?
Absolutely, my dude. This Schopy’s quote is also valuable:
“Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.”
Let’s all try to be Anonymous of talent without letting us be embraced by the frayed mantle of useless fatuousness.
reminder that directly thinking about what you read right after you've read it is for brainlets and resembles a little kid being told to reflect upon a text for an upcoming class.
The true patrician way is waiting for your subconscious to digest it until in some way it sticks and becomes a part of you and to think about it in unrelated thought processes in which the content seems coincidentally useful in the advancement of your philosophy.
Haha I thought it was funny that I go on reading lists for American philosophy courses to see what kind of stuff the young ones are studying these days and they have like 30 books per semester.
Here at the best universities (Cambridge) we have MAX two, and maybe one or two chapters from a textbook.
Audiobooks are even worse man. Imagine how low retention is if you can contuinuously feed information into your brain as you're driving or whatever. Totally pointless I'd rather read 1 book a year than listen to 100 audiobooks.
But the latter (learning through osmosis) is literally what everyone does.
When I started reading, at 18, this is what I did for about 2 years. Read maybe 75 books -mostly philosophy and literature- without really feeling that I understood them. When I started university at 20 it all clicked and I felt, erroneously, as some kind of polymath.
Now, at 29, I think I need to read with a purpose and at a slower speed. Maybe I just became dumber.
Americans are obsessed with projecting the illusion they are doing work, when in truth, they are not. This explains why their universities produce nothing of lasting value, outside their bullshit "rankings".
No it's best to read as much and widely as possible, from as young an age as possible, and economise on the time you spend thinking about what you read. You want to develop an unconscious repertoire of different forms and processes for thinking and articulating ideas, which you absorb from literature. Also then remember to always read yourself (as a human shaped text) as you go.
But also obviously make a point of thinking your way through real life problems and experiences. And then also obviously thinking your way through your own work when you come to it.
My 50 cents anyhow
That's true, it just feels forced for me to deliberately sit down and think about what I've read. The closest I get is if I take long walks and then due to the huge amount of time you have and the fact there's nothing else to do you naturally tend to reflect on what you've read.
>post-book day dreams
this man knoows what's up
I agree that speed reading through a mountain of books without retaining or understanding anything is a waste of time, but I think that spending too great a period of time on too small a number of books will prevent you from broadening you're literary horizons in the long term also.
It also depends on the book. A book like Paradise Lost warrants a close reading to fully appreciate and that takes time, but you'd gain more from that time spent than if you were to spend the same amount of time on a larger number of lesser books, so its really a matter of the books that you read and the way that you manage your time reading them.
If you treat a book as something to be raced through and surmounted, rather than something to be savoured, then you'll gain nothing from it, save the ability to tell other people that you've read it, as if that somehow makes you a more cultured and erudite person. (It doesn't.)
>more cultured and erudite person
notice how americans will never admit they haven't read a book.. infantile
I'm trying to do 52 books this year but I mostly read stuff
I just worked out 52 books a year is about 60 pages a day for books averaging 400 pages.
60 pages should take less than two hours depending on font size, but let's overestimate and call it two hours.
Two hours a night doesn't sound like a lot but it just seems forced every day. Like do you watch movies? Listen to music? Socialise? Exercise? Chores?
I don't think I could find two hours to spend a lone every night if I tried, and even if I did, I'd want those two hours to also be spent writing and reading supplementary things, not just the main texts.
Except he reads ""books""
where do you find good supplementary material for any given book you're reading? I have no idea where to start with this sort of thing.
WOKE