Stats for nerds
2recommend
9mentions
7people
2009–2022years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Certainly, the majority of books are not worth your time; the same is of course true of YouTube videos, podcasts, blog posts, or any media you may consume. But the best books do offer things you can't get elsewhere.
Crucially, reading book is not just about information intake! Really great books don't just teach you things, they open you up to new ways of thinking, expose new corners of the universe and of experience, stretch your mind, and so on.
If you're reading books filled with "fluff" — read better books! If a book bores you, find a different one! Reading a great book should be a joy.
It's true that most books don't age well — but the converse to this is that books that have been around for a long time and are still popular are usually well-known for good reasons; they've endured on their merits for far longer than any bestsellers of the decade.
Challenge: don't read any more self help books. Instead, read books on education, economics, science, technology, nature, history. Read epics, read science fiction, read poetry.
Do some research on the areas that most interest you, and take time to find the very best books you can find — based on Amazon/Goodreads reviews, suggestions from friends, best-of lists, whatever — and pick just a few to spend time with. And keep in mind it's always a better use of your time to read 10 really amazing books than 100 average ones; take your time and have fun :)
I recently took up a Twitter challenge to post 100 opinions about books and reading, and I wrote a lot about the concept of the "antilibrary" — basically, the value of knowing about books even if you don't necessarily read them, and getting good at curating your reading list. You may find some of this useful for how to think about reading:
https://twitter.com/schlagetown/status/1206268052498780160
A handful of these book thoughts that may be particularly relevant here:
1. Every curious person should be a serious reader. Ever serious reader should build an antilibrary.
(Essential vocab for this thread: your antilibrary = all the books you know about but have not read, designating a sort of potential energy for learning / knowledge / reading)
2. An antilibrary should exist in both physical form (books on your shelves; books browsed but unpurchased at your favorite bookstores) and virtual form (in digital lists; in tweets and reviews scanned; in your memory).
3. An antilibrary should have many levels: books you have an urgent desire to read, books you definitely want to read someday, books you find intriguing but may never read, books you've lost interest in entirely
Categorize not only by topic but by priority / importance / status
8. We should all be more aware of (& deliberately apply) the many different levels of reading that exist — the spectrum from close reading to skimming a book quickly for major themes / ideas.
Different books + different contexts demand different approaches for optimal reading.
17. There aren't that many truly great books you definitely need to read.
While there are infinitely more good books than you can ever read in a lifetime, you can probably get to a surprisingly high portion of those that are both excellent & a good match for you personally.
24. Building your "read really big books" muscle is helpful for practicing sustained attention & deep engagement. Living with a text for months on end, whether a particular story or set of ideas, creates a special type of relationship!
45. You should have a "non-reading practice" — being intentional about not-reading certain books (just as some authors should not-write certain books!)
Abandon more books. Browse many; read few. Choose to engage w/ books & their ideas outside the text itself.
52. Best books I've read in the last year: Underland—Robert Macfarlane How to Do Nothing—Jenny Odell Go Ahead in the Rain—Hanif Abdurraqib Daemon Voices—Philip Pullman Carceral Capitalism—Jackie Wang So Many Books—Gabriel Zaid The Collected Schizophrenias—Esmé Weijun Wang
53. Best books I've read in the last 10 years: The Moonstone—Wilkie Collins Moby Dick—Melville Infinite Jest—DFW Pilgrim at Tinker Creek—Dillard Impro—Johnstone Time and the Art of Living—Grudin Le Ton beau de Marot—Hofstadter Death and Life of Great American Cities—Jacobs
72. There are many books we should know about for reasons other than the story or info (etc.) of the text itself.
Reasons like: important cultural context, influence on future books, significance to people you love… Such books are prime candidates for antilibrary inclusion!
- Mindstorms, by Seymour Papert - for understanding the relationship of learning and technology; a smart, humanist, empathetic approach to education [See also: The Children's Machine; Deschooling Society]
Clock of the Long Now, by Stewart Brand - for the concepts of deep time and the long now; appreciating a sense of how we experience time and our place in history [See also: Time and the Art of Living]
Flatland, by Edwin A. Abbott - creative parable that's very helpful for conceptualizing abstract concepts of topology and higher dimensions
Thinking in Systems, A Primer, by Donella Meadows - great introduction to systems thinking, which is a useful lens for appreciating the complexity of all sorts of complex phenomena
A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander - great work of urban design, useful framework for looking at design systems and how pieces fit together on different scales [See also: Death and Life of Great American Cities]
Oulipo - A Primer of Potential Literature - nice introduction to the Oulipo and ideas of constraint as creative / poetic device [See also: Exercises in Style; Eunoia]
Impro, by Keith Johnstone - great primer on improvisation, really made me appreciate its impacts beyond just the theater, for example the importance of status in social relations
The Power Broker, by Robert Caro - unbeatably rich and compelling look at how power and politics actually work, for better (power gets things done) and for worse (power blinds and corrupts)
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard - beautiful, meticulously observed study of the natural world close at hand; made me appreciate the power of looking deeply and persistently
Le Ton beau de Marot, by Douglas Hofstadter - remarkable exploration of language and translation, in all its magic and complexity…both deeply personal and deeply researched, a must-read for lovers of language
The Library at Night, by Alberto Manguel - turned me on to the various lenses through which we can conceive of and appreciate libraries; their vast power and potential
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville - for really hammering home the grand, powerful potential of great literature and well-wrought language [ See also: Don Quixote; Infinite Jest]
- I read The Inner Game of Tennis based on Alan Kay's description in a youtube video. It is an excellent book.
I am glad to see Csikszenmihalyi on the list as well. Flow is a very powerful concept; we all know it, but understanding it and using it effectively is a different matter entirely.
After reading The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, I realized that all three books are actually talking about the same subject from different perspectives.
To this list, I would add:
anything by Robert Grudin, but especially:
Time and the Art of Living and The Grace of Great Things
How to solve it by G. Polya
Conceptual Blockbusting by James Adams
Nice to see the Mortimer Adler recommendation as well, but I think his How to Read a Book should be a prerequisite for serious reading.
As I've gotten older, I've come to the conclusion that true understanding requires the kind of depth that comes from knowing one's self intimately. It's a lot harder than it sounds, especially for a technologist.
- Found this on a deep man page, but I can't remember which one:
Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months, are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time, to make it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have done better than handing down our present system. It is like a set of trapezoidal building blocks, with no vertical or horizontal surfaces, like a language in which the simplest thought demands ornate constructions, useless particles and lengthy circumlocutions. Unlike the more successful patterns of language and science, which enable us to face experience boldly or at least level-headedly, our system of temporal calculation silently and persistently encourages our terror of time. ... It is as though architects had to measure length in feet, width in meters and height in ells; as though basic instruction manuals demanded a knowledge of five different languages. It is no wonder then that we often look into our own immediate past or future, last Tuesday or a week from Sunday, with feelings of helpless confusion. ... --Robert Grudin, 'Time and the Art of Living'.
- From the GNU coretutils doc [1]:
Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months, are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time, to make it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have done better than handing down our present system. It is like a set of trapezoidal building blocks, with no vertical or horizontal surfaces, like a language in which the simplest thought demands ornate constructions, useless particles and lengthy circumlocutions. Unlike the more successful patterns of language and science, which enable us to face experience boldly or at least level-headedly, our system of temporal calculation silently and persistently encourages our terror of time.
… It is as though architects had to measure length in feet, width in meters and height in ells; as though basic instruction manuals demanded a knowledge of five different languages. It is no wonder then that we often look into our own immediate past or future, last Tuesday or a week from Sunday, with feelings of helpless confusion. …
—Robert Grudin, Time and the Art of Living.
[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Date...
- In “Time & The Art of Living”, Robert Grudin structured his chapters and verses after this calendar.
In the last (or so) chapter he explicitly discusses decimal time, and the beauty of being able to calculate and reason about the calendar.
He also made some suggestions on using 20-hour days as a way of making it slightly more compatible to the 24-hour day.
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