People say to me, “Are you playing a lot more golf since you retired?” But now that I can golf every day, what I’d rather do is read. The pandemic crystallized how I wanted to spend my spare time. There was nothing on TV. All of a sudden I had this time from 4:30 to 8:30 in the morning, and I thought, “Gosh, I should really spend more time reading.”...
His tip:
Invest time on the front end to gain momentum. If you really want to read a book, you’ve got to get into the first hundred pages, 200 pages. If you can’t, you’ll find reading is really hard. In the old days, I can’t tell you how many books I’d start and read 15 pages one day, and the next day I’d read the same 15 pages, just trying to get into it. If I can get a big chunk of a book started, it’s much easier for me to finish it quickly.
At the link, there are more super-readers with tips. I liked this one:
I’ll read whenever I have time and whenever I’m not around others — so in the morning, when I’m eating breakfast.... Little intervals of time.
I like most of this tip:
I mostly read audiobooks.... I’m always running around.... I pretty much have my headset on all the time when I am around my house, doing chores or making dinner. In an hour, I can get through 3 hours of a book (I listen to everything on 3x. Don’t be intimidated by going fast! You can get there.)
The part I don't like is speeding it up, especially to 3X. How can you pay any attention to these outward activities like cooking when you've got that unceasing blast in your ears? I tend to listen to audiobooks to listen to a pleasing, intelligent voice — to really soak in it — and I want time for my own thinking flowing around the words. If something could be listened to at 3X, it wouldn't be the sort of thing I'd want to listen to. When it comes to reading, I prefer a hot bath to full-blast shower.
And check out this super-reader tip:
I track my reading in a couple of different apps, and I do a lot of book bullet journaling. I have a spreadsheet that I put all my numbers in, and it tracks the percentage I am toward my goal. It also changes colors based on how far behind or ahead I am. Every month as I read, I stack up my books; that visual cue is motivating to me, too.
Good for her. I wouldn't mind watching a documentary about her, but I'm not like that at all. There's the reading itself, and then there's all this other stuff. I understand that it's motivating, but it's motivating within a game of racking up numbers. I'd need to be motivated to think that the number matters before I'd be looking for ways to achieve a numbers goal.
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66 comments:
Now give a list of 400 books worth reading, and be ready to do that for every year coming.
Why in the world would someone want to read 400 books in a year? It's not a hot dog eating contest, measured by quantity consumed.
"I pretty much have my headset on all the time when I am around my house, doing chores or making dinner."
How can you think your own thoughts with this going on in your head? As I've aged, I've even stopped listening to "background" music, because it interferes with my thoughts, which I find much more interesting. I read a fair amount (almost all non-fiction, science and math), but when I read I am focused on what I'm reading. And when I'm not reading, I'm thinking. I doubt this fellow is doing either.
I'd rather read 50 good books than 400 useless ones.
Do you believe, or were you brought up to believe, that you owe it to the book to finish, once you’ve started? If not, how long do you give a book before deciding it’s not worth finishing? Some people think that with many nonfiction books, you can read the introduction, conclusion and a few interesting chapters and get nearly the full benefit of the book.
I keep "libraries" everywhere. Each of my three cars has a library. Each room in my house, including the garage has its own lobrary. Each sail boat has a library. Some are dedicated by area or content. Some - like my automobiles - are randomly populated. I always have 10 books, more or less, going at any given moment. Certain series such as the Aubrey/Maturin canon are reread once each decade. I could go on...
Paul Scott seems to be the only one worth listening to in that article. Sounds like he actually gains content not just a checkmark. He shares what he read too which are more substantive.
I noticed in the past and likely here that when people share they have read a lot of books it's often very simple or vacuous stuff. Romance or cheap crime.
I'm a quick reader when I want to be but I don't usually want to. I like savoring a fiction book, spending time with the world and the characters. Probably why I like long fiction.
Reading is my relaxation. Why would I want it to be yet another expression of frenzy and competition?
What pleasure is there reading 350 books a year? If a book is a work of fiction I want to immerse myself in it. I don't read much fiction but when I do, I either abandon it early on, or I come back to it time and again because it had given me pleasure. If a work is non-fiction, it often creates a metal dialogue with the author. That takes time, as not infrequently causes me read other books on the same topic, and go back and forth between them.
As someone said, if a thing is worth doing it is worth doing well. They did not say it was worth doing in volume.
Besides, after a day reading contracts, I often just want to to spend the remaining daylight working with my hands.
I learned Paul Scott's lesson about getting momentum with That Hideous Strength, the 3rd of CS Lewis's Space Trilogy. Loved the first 2 but couldn't get into that 3rd one. Then after about 3 or 4 abandoned starts high school I got past the first 100 pages when i was in college and loved it to the finish.
Some books though aren't worth it. I'm a picky reader when it comes to style and writing quality.
Not snobbish, I just don't want to be distracted by the writing. I want to get into the story or content.
Roger Sweeney, yes exactly.
I hate books authored by writers who seemingly think that once they've "got you" as a reader they can bore you and waste your time.
I prefer quality to quantity. I’m currently reading Sidney Coleman’s Lectures on Quantum Field Theory. My goal is to finish it before I die (it’s over 1000 pages). It’s not at all clear that I’ll make it, but if I do I’ll start it all over again.
Interesting that the fellow can listen at 3X. I've got a cochlear implant on one ear. And as I work to gain speech comprehension with the device (it's been slow for me) I read a Kindle book synched to an Audible book. But the best I can do--and still comprehend the spoken word is .7 X. Any faster and I have trouble understanding the words. So listening to the Audible book is much slower than reading the printed page (or the Kindle page for that matter).
When I was a teenager some 60 or more years ago the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading technique was the "hot setup". The finger moved down the page, and you really could read and comprehend a lot at high speed. But the next day you might not remember much.
Still several hundred books a year is a laudable goal. I can recall that Karl Rove and George W. Bush had a contest going on for a few years as to the number of books each read in a year. I think they were up in the 600 to 800 books a year range.
Reading a book is different than listening to it. Change my mind
This is closer to my speed.
I read a lot of books, but 350 seems excessive. Doesn't he have any video games, Netflix, or internet porn?....Well, Netflix actually encourages reading. I get so pissed off at the improbabilities and political correctness that I turn to my books in despair.
"I noticed in the past and likely here that when people share they have read a lot of books it's often very simple or vacuous stuff. Romance or cheap crime."
I was thinking the same thing. Genre fiction can be read like popcorn, and it's just as nutritious. Sometimes a single book will give you stuff to think about for months, if it's a good one. "The Glass Bead Game" by Herman Hesse was such a book for me, which I only read last year, but I think about it a lot. It's mostly about the power of meditation and the plot is very disjointed and the ending is rather sudden and unexpected, but you can easily imagine how the rest of it must have gone. I am not recommending it to anybody, I think I was just ready for it, but I wonder how anybody could read 400 impactful books in a year. Maybe keeping my mind focused on an audiobook would serve as a kind of meditation, without the easy ability to go back and reread, like the exercises in that short story on Netflix "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar." Which is kind of a condensed version of the Glass Bead Game, I guess. Audiobooks are hard for me because of my wandering mind, so maybe it would be a good exercise.
Anyway, I can't imagine putting figures on my reading. I did challenge myself once this year to read a book in a day, which was "Kidnapped," by Robert Louis Stevenson, and did it, it was a wet, snowy, windy day, and the copy that I had had been eaten away a little by a bookworm, which made it even better. That book I do recommend. But then one has to think about it for days, if a book is any good at all, and if I am reading more than one book in a day, well, when do you think about what you have read?
Smilin' Jack said...
I prefer quality to quantity. I’m currently reading Sidney Coleman’s Lectures on Quantum Field Theory. My goal is to finish it before I die (it’s over 1000 pages). It’s not at all clear that I’ll make it, but if I do I’ll start it all over again.
**************
A now elderly-high school classmate told me he doesn't spend much on books.
With his waning memory, he just goes back to Page 1 of the book he just finished, and reads it again....
and again!
I used to be a puritan about finishing books, but no longer.
I've never caught the audiobook bug; my wife listens enough for both of us (although not to stuff I would listen to).
I kept a list one year of books read--about one a week NOT counting grad school assignments. Some fiction, but mostly history.
Nowadays I'm slower but spend a lot of time watching author talks and panels online and on CSpan. Sometimes one of those will inspire me to get the book for myself, but usually I'll like a book first and then see if the author is on YT.
Most recently I finished Rady's "The Middle Kingdoms" and the nicely overlapping "Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land" by Jacob Mikanowski.
Almost done with Ian Morris's "Geography is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History."
Excellent overviews all.
All
well I read through the other Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, interesting the first volume is not as interesting as the rest, I also read the follow up to Terry Hayes I Pilgrim it could use an editor to lop out about 150 pages, toward the end,
A more accurate measure is the number of pages or words. I can read a novella in one sitting. Some of the Robert Caro books I've read are over 1,000 pages long.
I'm not even sure of the last time I actually finished reading A Book. I read and write all day long. Then I type letters on a typewriter. Then I read for a few minutes in bed before going to sleep. Been working on "Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven" for a couple of years now, and switch between that and. . . .
Well, okay, I've read Zen Flesh Zen Bones all the way through, and the Tao Te Ching.
Will never finish The Old Man and the Sea, or On The Road, or Catcher in the Rye or several others because I find them boring (mostly), I don't care how many prizes they've won.
"Reading" just isn't about books.
Look at all you 'readers' acting all superior...
I spend too much time reading the incomparable Althouse blog!
"Almost done with Ian Morris's "Geography is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History.""
I'm interested in a history of Britain's seafaring and colonization period. Any suggestions?
My godmother read about 300-400 books a year for quite a few years. Of course, her only job was teaching for a couple of years while her husband was in med school. She was not a book snob despite having three Master's degrees.
Whenever I had a question about the next book to read, she was the go to person. Back in the mid 70's, I was struggling with life and she recommended "The World According to Garp". It was the perfect book at the perfect time.
Now that I am retired, I probably read 100-150 books a year. It is an extremely worthwhile hobby and I have greatly enjoyed recommending books to others.
Althouse said: "I'd need to be motivated to think that the number matters before I'd be looking for ways to achieve a numbers goal." and most everybody here agrees. And so do I. Ido keep track of what I read and if I hit 50 in a year, that's a lot. I'm not interested in reaching any particular number because that's not why I read. I read for pleasure and to learn something (but even that is a pleasure). I almost always have three books going. The real book I'm reading is always deliberately chosen from my TBR pile (now at approximately 40 books), the two I'm reading on kindle are just the next one in my kindle library. I think reading my kindle books in whatever order they come up is useful. It forces me to read stuff that at some point I obviously thought might be interesting with no chance of it getting overlooked because it doesn't seem interesting today. Right now I'm reading Ian Toll's 3 volume history of WWII in the pacific, the letters of John Keats, and Far From the Madding Crowd.
"Look at all you 'readers' acting all superior.."
Every accusation is a confession.
"War and Peace" - out.
"Run Tip Run" - in.
400 a year? Feh. Piece of cake.
I used to work for Paul Scott when he was a VP at Octel Communications. He and I shared books a few times. He was my favorite boss because, among other reasons, we could have intelligent conversations about a wide range of topics. Too many Silicon Valley executives have a narrow area of focus/experience/knowledge and their decisions often have unintended results because they have no broad understanding of history and human behavior.
He once recommended to me the book "Eve's Tatoo". I highly recommend it to all.
Goetz von Berlichingen
I learned to speed-read, and I read all the time. However, I suffered a stroke in February 2023, and so now I am dyslexic. I can read, but only slowly and tediously.
I watch a lot more television. There is plenty of educational television.
People have advised me to listen to audio-books, but I have never gotten into that.
I still do read books, but my pace has to be slow and steady. Right now, I am reading a 2017 book titled Secondhand Time: The Last Days of the Soviets, by Svetlana Alexievich. It's a collection of interviews of people about their experiences during Mikhail Gorbachev's presidency. The book won a Nobel Prize for literature. It's 470 pages, and I figure I will have to spend a month reading it.
I had a big collection of excellent books, but I had to get rid of most of them during the past few months. In the past, I acquired and donated a lot of books at library book sales, but the COVID epidemic apparently eliminated such sales. So, I put most of those excellent books of mine into the re-cycling pile at my curb-side. I had intended to read those books when I retired.
@Narr - Thanks for the recommendation of Ian Morris's "Geography is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History." His "Why the West Rules--For Now" was very, very good.
I enjoy audiobooks too, though at normal speed 1X. Current selection is Homer's Odyssey. It's a pleasure to listen to. Feeds mind and heart.
If you're listening to an audio book X3 speed you're "reading" crap. I was listening to a E. Waugh book and I had to slow down the audio to .9 just so I could catch all the wit and jokes. Of course, the Brit narrator was a fast talker.
I'd never listen to Hemingway or a great author at 1.5 let alone X 3.0. Too much great prose to enjoy. A lot of non-fiction books I'll jack up to 1.5. Like the Romney bio. But if its something dense and well written like "Deadly Embrace" by Read/Fischer or the Memoirs of T. SHerman - I wont go past 1.2x
In any case, I dont see the point in consuming "mass quantities" of books. But if you do, God Bless.
I learned how to read in 5th grade. I knew how to absorb thoughts from words on a page but didn't really know how to read until an Australian architect who was staying with us taught me.
He saw me reading very slowly one evening and asked if he could teach me a trick. I've spent 65 years since trying to remember the trick so I could teach my kids and grandkids and cannot for the life of me remember how.
He taught me to read a page at a time rather than words or lines or sentences as most people read. I can glance at a page for 1-2 seconds and get the gist. I've been averaging 2 books a week since then.
I used to carry a book with me at all times. I'd have one in the car, one in the bedroom, another in the living room, in the office, in the bathroom. 5-10 books being read at any given time.
I never carried a book in my briefcase. I figured if a client came to pick me up and saw me with a book, he would figure I expected to wait.
I've written 3 times as many books as I've read in paper over the past 15 years. My son got me a Kindle in 2009 and I've tried and failed to to read paper books a couple times. The Kindle is just so much better and experience, for me, that I can't read anything else. (I know, I'm a philistine. So sue me)
Now I can have a couple hundred books with me at all times on my phone, and instant access to a million more.
I move between phone and tablet. I used to have different books going on each but syncing has gotten so much better in recent years that I generally read the same book on both. Though I may still have a couple going at any one time.
The other thing I love about Kindle is that I can test drive any book via a sample. If someone mentions a book here of elsewhere that sounds remotely interesting, I download the sample and take a look. If I like it I buy it (via the portal when I remember) or just keep it in my library to read in the future. I probably read 10 samples for every book I buy.
John Henry
Original Mike, try Arthur Herman's "To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World."
About four or five years ago I stopped at page 354, during the Napoleonic Wars (about halfway through the tome) and had forgotten about it. I'll finish it up in the next few weeks I think.
Original Mike, try Arthur Herman's "To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World."
About four or five years ago I stopped at page 354, during the Napoleonic Wars (about halfway through the tome) and had forgotten about it. I'll finish it up in the next few weeks I think.
I love to read and read constantly. But these folks with spreadsheets and schedules and so on make it seem like work rather than pleasure. Not for me.
Does reading a sample and then not buying the book count as not finishing a book? I do that all the time. OTOH, once I've paid my money, I sort of feel an obligation to get my money's worth.
Some books I get stuck in. A couple years ago I watched the BBC War and Peace series on youTube (this is the 20 parter, with Anthony Hopkins as Pierre) I've rewatched it twice and will probably watch it again. So I figured I'd have a go at the book. I found it really terrific for the first couple hundred pages. Then Tolstoy got into a philosophical mood and I know how the mormons felt coming across the desert. I just got stuck. I still have it on phone and tablet, still mean to finish it, but I just hit a wall.
On the other hand, I've probably read Conrad's Youth 100 times or more (plus listening to readings of it multiple times) I don't really even read it anymore. I just sort of read the first page, it starts playing in my head and I follow along in the book just to keep the beat, so to speak. (Pass the bottle)
John Henry
Someone asked about other books like Aubrey/Maturin.
In the summer of 22 someone recommended Andrew Wareham's "Poor Man at the Gate" Series. Since then I've read (I counted the other day) 82 of his books. Some more than once. I thought all but when I found a complete bibliography I found I missed a couple. The various series take place all over the world in all time periods and there is not a dud in the lot.
Currently rereading the Poor Man series and it is even better than the first time.
Anyway, a lot of his books are about the Royal Navy and run from 1700 or so through WW1 in various series. If you like Aubrey/Maturin, as I do, try the "Call of the Sea" series. 12 or 13 books so far. #1 is "The Man from Bere"
O'Brian has cited C. Northcote Parkinson as his inspiration and I agree. Parkinson is best known for business and organization writings ("Work expands to fill the time available" -Parkinsons law)
But he also wrote a number of naval historical fiction around the Napoleonic Wars. The ones I've read have been excellent.
CS Forrester may be best known for "The African Queen" (WW1, Africa) but he also wrote the horatio Hornblower series. I really enjoy reading 1 or 2 of these but read together they tend to feel a bit formulaic. I guess I would say read the first one and keep going till you get tired of him. Forresters "The General" is also one of the best WW1 novels I've read. Almost as good as Wareham's "Falling into Battle" series.
I did either 102 or 103 (can't remember) a couple years ago during COVID. That is not counting books I bailed on, and I bail on a lot of books. Life is too short to finish bad books. I am not retired, and my time is very limited by other responsibilities, so 300 or 400 during retirement seems doable. Audiobooks while walking or at the gym are key for me. I walk less now, so I think I'm reading at closer to a 50 or 60 rate, but I haven't counted.
Kindle has Kindle Unlimited. I pay $12/month (I think) and I can read unlimited books. I first signed up 5-6 years ago when they announced it but there were so few books I wanted to read that I wound up cancelling 2-3 years ago I signed up again and now the selection is terrific. I still have to buy a lot of books I want to read but I read 3-4 unlimited books each month so get my money's worth. Most of Wareham's books are unlimited, for example.
If you have not checked it out recently, it is worth a second look.
John Henry
We listen to audible on road trips. Trips over 30 minutes, Ut usually takes that long to catch up with each others lives, and confirm schedules for the next couple days.
We listen at 1.5 speed. For some narrators, that is too fast. Working with headphones, takes away from enjoying the book, for me. I can drive and listen just fine. But just yesterday we were road tripping East the Mississippi river. Needed to go south at Cedar Rapids, but blew right by the ramp. Its an easy enough exit, but I was thinking about the flow of traffic, as I enjoyed the book. Obviously this guy can do two things at once. His brain is different from mine, and he very much seems to be enjoying himself. He is also orders of magnitude better at his time management, than I. From 4:30 to 7:00 is my me time
I always keep a volume of the Harvard Five Foot Shelf of Books, which I picked up second hand for $10 many years ago, behind a protective plastic screen by the bathroom sink. I read it for 2 minutes twice a day while brushing my teeth (electric toothbrush). Well, I still get toothpaste on some of the volumes. Recent gem from Carlyle essay on "Characteristics": "The Irish Saint swam the Channel, carrying his head in his teeth; but the feat has never been imitated."
Blogger RCOCEAN II said...
I was listening to a E. Waugh book
Which one? Scoop and Handful of Dust are both pretty good but most of the rest I can take or leave.
Except the Sword of Honor trilogy. It's another of those books I read over and over and over. In print, on Kindle, as an audio book, as a miniseries. It's All good.
John Henry
Ann, a suggestion for the blog and the Althouse treasury.
I've bought a couple of dozen books over the years after hearing about them in the comments.
Thanks to all for some interesting reads I might not have discovered otherwise.
You should post a note for book recommendations, reviews and comments.
Pin it to the top of the blog or link it in the sidebar so it is always easily available. Put a link to the portal in the note.
Then just let the comments run
John Henry
Hint: Read short books. Dickens is a no go - he got paid by word.
I am re-reading some Osprey books on US and British pre-Dreadnought battleships. The last hardcover was something on the Vikings. I like my fiction light, so Wodehouse is a go-to favorite. Been a while since I dipped into Sherlock Holmes, may need to do that soon.
My personal take on post WWII western novelists is that they are wet blankets and drips, not people to invite over (there are exceptions but most I got exposed to in school were set at gazing upon their navels or something just below.)
People who do a lot of reading - which the culture admires - such as over 300 books a year, always having their nose in a book or listening to audio books, are really not much better than the couch potatoes who watch the boob tube all day and night or those who are on their computers all the time, both of which are looked down upon. All of them are rather anti-social, living their lives in fantasy land rather than the real world.
Discuss.
What controls to prevent reading the same book twice? It happened to me recently. I was cruising along in a good book and then thought something seemed familiar. Sure enough, I had read (and still have) the hardcover from 25 years ago. Now if you read a book a day - it's gotta happen a lot.
400 books in a year? I guess it must go in one eye and out the other. Can they recall what any of them were about? I might read 30 books a year, plus I have old favorites I like to get reacquainted with keep in touch so to speak, so maybe 40 total. even then I forget a salient point or two.
Being retired means you have time to weigh and consider, not just read the book. I find I really need an electronic book these days as I take the time to ensure I really know a word by looking it up that might have just been sloughed over in paper book.
Read not to contradict and confute;
nor to believe and take for granted;
nor to find talk and discourse;
but to weigh and consider. - Bacon
"Which one? Scoop and Handful of Dust are both pretty good but most of the rest I can take or leave."
Put out more Flags.
I just finished "men at arms" and I am also reading 'Vile Bodies'.
"All of them are rather anti-social, living their lives in fantasy land rather than the real world. Discuss."
Define "real world."
I'll check back in a few years.
Thanks, Narr. I appreciate it!
I was a regular customer of the Abraham Lincoln Book Store in Chicago for years and always found good books. Last time I was there was 10 years ago, they have moved since. Then I stocked up on Haskel's Gettysburg, Tucker's Chickamauga, "The Army of Tennessee" by Stanley F. Horn, and Sherman and Grant's Auto Bios.
My Grandmother was a pure Scott and lived off of several houses she rented, but stayed up late at night reading. She was from Tennessee and a somewhat reconstructed rebel. She dispised Bragg. I did not get her books, but I did get from her a 3 inch solid shot cannon ball. She told me it was fired by CSA troops at Shiloh, who knows, she was reliable and honest.
I am reading these books now, currently Horn, a great lost cause author. When I read it now, I read a quarter of a page, and then look up maps and google earth on my ipad to see what the ground looks like now. Then I look to see what happened to all the Generals after the war. Its taking me a long time to get through them, but when I am done it will perhaps be the last time. I am not in a hurry.
I am retired, I guess, but I still do a few days a week of Statistics and Operations Research for a few clients, Keras CNN's and time series LSTMs. I feel like my grandfather, a railroad blacksmith, who trained apprentices at the railroad shops on Friday after he retired. Work half the time, make the same amount of money!
I recall in elementary school being urged to read some number of books over the summer, or over the semester, or over the Christmas break. There was some kind of award - maybe a sticker? - for meeting the goal. School library checkout lists were monitored not for content but for number of books. That it is barely a shadow of a memory perhaps tells me how unimportant are the NUMBERS of books read.
If you like Civil War books, read Ambrose Bierce, you can look him up. He was an Engineering Officer in Hazen's Brigade and a friend of his, from Shiloh to Kennesaw Mountain where he was wounded. His books are about very very spooky blood soaked civil war ghost stuff and army infidelity. Regular for us but odd in the 1860's. In my day everyone in sophomore HS English watched "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" on B/W Bell and Howell film.
My mother-in-law has a cartoon posted on her refrigerator, in which a man says to his doctor: "I need to learn to relax. Can you teach me how to relax faster and better than everyone else?" The cartoon is of course about my father-in-law, who still doesn't know how to relax (he's 92).
Same with the compulsive book-readers. What are you trying to accomplish?
Mea--I am currently reading "The Odyssey" as my bedtime reading.
I feel a lot like Ulysses, desperate to get to the end...
Also--they were very hard on the livestock in those days.
I still can’t get over a book every day.
At some point, is this no different from binge watching a Netflix series?
However, I would think that reading a book over a period of time strengthens the memory. The ability to put away a part of a story, digest that section, then continue the following day, recalling - and relishing the elements in one’s mind - generates also an anticipation for both reading the story and life in general.
There are several books I’ve read five or six times because the story and premise are worth revisiting. There are some, as I’ve grown older and wiser (or not) seem overly simplistic and idealist, and not worth the effort.
Kate at 3/30/24, 10:54 AM already said this, though: it’s not a hot dog eating contest.
My bluestocking aunt Louise (my father's little sister) was the reader in the family, and I still have most of her hardbacks.
Among them, and still in a box around here somewhere, was Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary." That one should be better known. He was an odd and intriguing character.
I don't know where the lines between interest, obsession, and compulsion are drawn, but I know what I like.
I can't stand the book fetish. Reading books doesn't make you a more virtuous person. I'd rather read five good books in a year than 400 "books". Or even no books, and good blogs. Content is everything, and quality vastly outrates quantity.
As Mikee recalls - we always had "book club" contests in elementary school. Always based on quantity. The goody-two-shoes who won the awards (either quarterly, semesterly, or annually) were always reading those skinny, 25-pagers, full of empty-headed content. They could rip through the required number for the free personal pan pizza coupons or the certificates or whatever, within a matter of a few weeks. Me? I decided to take on David Copperfield. Did I get any credit for that? HECK no! I decided pretty early on that some of this award-giving was symbolic and in no way indicative of what those award "winners" were actually capable of. Still true.
I was unimpressed when I saw the person read almost 400 books a year. It sounds like nonsense. I don’t think anyone can read meaningful books, 400 a year, and give the book the proper reverence or thought that it deserves . a friend of mine Tells me he reads 200 or 300 books a year. I was impressed until I found out what books he was reading. They were nonsense. Time wasting books. Not Shakespeare. Not Hemingway. Nothing meaningful. Just silly novels. There’s nothing wrong with reading silly novels. But if you want to impress upon others how important reading is in your life and what a good reader you are, silly novels really don’t count.
Then I went onto read the article and was even less impressed. Most of the books are audiobooks? Those are not books. That is not the same as reading a book. It’s a completely different experience. It is more akin to watching a movie. Would you brag that you watched 300 or 400 movies a year? Nonsense again. The audiobook goes on and on, regardless of whether you paid attention or not, regardless of whether you let those words caress you or not. You do not go back to reread a page or a chapter that you found so compelling with an audiobook. The experience of listening to an audiobook I think is as noted more to watching a movie. Nonsense.
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