Optimal Book Dosage

Anything to do with the traditional world of get a degree, get a job as well as its alternatives
Jason

Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by Jason »

jacob wrote:
Wed Nov 08, 2017 5:38 pm
@Jason - Well, insofar the Nobel prize committee wants to, they can paypal me whatever six+-figs they offer these days :-P I still like money for score-keeping. I'll even make a super-rare stratospheric-polluting flying exception for the acceptance speech. The anti-litt. rant will certainly be somewhere between to #truthtopower and #crudenerdincorporated. FWIW, I'll be more opinionated than Bob Dylan as far as Nobels are concerned :roll: And insofar the litterati is concerned, I think I can come up with an algo that pumps out similar prose on demand for the eternal torture of younglings w/o any way out but to play along until they get their sheepskin in the form of laserprint.
Damn. I was hoping you were going to ask me to accept on your behalf. I was picturing myself reading a chapter from your book in front of the Swedish Royal Family.

trailblazer
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by trailblazer »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Tue Nov 07, 2017 2:49 pm
@jennypenny:

+1000

As far as I am concerned, the primary reason to achieve financial independence is to better free up time for reading.
This is why I pursued financial independence. Given enough reading time, all other aspects of lifestyle can be figured out, compromised as needed, etc.
Kriegsspiel wrote:
Tue Nov 07, 2017 8:43 pm
A book a week sounds a lot better than one every 13 weeks. Jacob's scale from the other thread applies: most books you read only impart a new fact, some change your perspective on everything. You don't need 13 weeks to learn something new about Roman history or whatever, you may take 13 weeks to synthesize a textbook, or Meditations.
Over the past ten years or so I've gradually come up with a barbell approach to reading. I have about 10 books that I consider my "personal canon" . . . it's a variety of novels, non-fiction and even a couple movies. I try to slowly re-read these once per year - none are more than 300 or 400 pages. These are the books that had the most profound impact on my thinking when I first read them, and continue to stand up to multiple readings. They exemplify pieces of the life and mindset I want to have. I think of them as ingredients that mix together and hopefully shape my life. I'll continue to add to this list, but few books make the cut. After a lifetime of reading I have ten on the list.

Beyond that, I target a book per week - about half end up being books I've read before. The genre varies depending on my interests at the time. Any book is fair game but I've gotten much better at predicting what I will enjoy and value.
Scott 2 wrote:
Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:43 pm
Reading feels productive. Knowing facts is fun. I'll happily use it to hide from the "hard work"
Currently I'm trying to limit my reading to what I outlined above. Anything more than that and the reading is potentially taking away from other more proactive activities. At a minimum, it's time to get up for an hour and go have human interaction or at least run some errands. Actually, if I want to read more, I was thinking this could be a good place in my personal reading plan to add one or two large, meaty, perhaps technical or reference books that I could peruse over a quarter year or longer.

OTCW
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by OTCW »

I read 20-40 books per year depending on how much free time I have. I enjoy it and learn from it. I personally don't think it is possible to read to much. I don't read any textbooks.

jacob
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by jacob »

Maybe the proper/useful to think about reading [as a techmology, SP intentional] is that reading/writing is a way of translating ideas intentionally across space, and/but mostly time. (Translating across fields, which adds another dimension, remains hard :? :roll: ). Writing and reading is a way to meet [different] humans that would otherwise be really hard to meet, but only if you can find them. Or listen to them. Some are dead [time[. Some are far away [space]. Basically out of your near space-time reach. Bridging fields? So far, little progress.

So, now ... given the emergence of the interwebs ...

This has added a lot of humans which are tooo easy to find ... to the degree that maybe you didn't really wanna meet them insofar you'd spent enough time sorting before engaging. But likely you didn't ...

7Wannabe5
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jacob:

I am horrified and deeply saddened by the tale of youthful abuse you shared with us. I thank the Goddess that I was able to experience the joy of literature for many years prior to being exposed to exposition and subjected to scapular of criticism under rude glare of analysis. IMO, what you experienced was even worse than the summer that 15 year old Jason was forced into part-time job working for his "Uncle" accompanying bordello employees to their gynecological appointments*. Of course, you can't stand to read poetry now, you poor, poor thing :cry:

OTOH, I must admit that there are a handful of genres, such as military history or sports biographies, that I would only choose to read in desperate circumstances. However, I am seriously considering moving Sun Tzu right up to the top of my reading list, because I need all the help I can muster if I ever hope to vanquish my arch-nemesis, J.Bozo :evil:

*Okay, perhaps not factual event, but obvious theory based on critical analysis of his forum posts.

black_son_of_gray
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by black_son_of_gray »

For context of the thread's discussion:

In 2013, adult Americans read: a median of 5 books, an average of 12 books, and 24% didn't read a single book. Survey results found here. There is a pretty good skew to this distribution... meaning there is probably a decent percentage (maybe top %5?) who read a book per week or more.

As to @jp and @7Wb5's point, there is some evidence of gender preferences. Apparently, male authors are read equally by male and female readers, but female authors are read mostly by female readers.

Scott 2
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by Scott 2 »

I'm not surprised people here skew higher.

For me - Podcasts and videos have replaced the information stream books used to provide.

Thinking back - my interest in fiction was also wiped out by public education. I loved reading through grade school and middle school. I remember sneaking books under my desk during eighth-grade algebra.

The shift came with freshman year English class. It was my first experience suffering through "great novels". I had no interest in Lord of the Flies or The Great Gatsby, let alone perspective to offer commentary. Unlike Jacob, I figured out how to look up the "right" answers and complied. But I never resumed reading fiction of my own free will.

Algorithms are hardcore reading, but fascinating. Knuth is a great example of a text requiring deep study to appreciate. I still remember the "introduction" book used during my 400 level CS algorithms class. Despite the title, it was over 1000 pages of dense concepts. Algorithms are a topic where expert guidance and experiential learning becomes essential.

trailblazer
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by trailblazer »

Scott 2 wrote:
Wed Nov 08, 2017 11:25 pm
Thinking back - my interest in fiction was also wiped out by public education. I loved reading through grade school and middle school. I remember sneaking books under my desk during eighth-grade algebra.
It might be interesting to re-read one or two of the books you loved in middle school and then explore from there.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@trailblazer:

I think that is an excellent suggestion. The author of the "Happiness Project" had great success with a book group that was based on adults re-reading their favorite young adult, or even intermediate level, novels.

I was also intrigued by your barbell approach. I circle back around to some of my core favorites, but not nearly that frequently. Another barbell method that might prove beneficial for somebody like Scott or Jacob who early gave up on reading literature might be to explore some "Great Novels You Can Read In 1 Day!" lists. I could offer some suggestions later, but I have to catch a bus!

trailblazer
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by trailblazer »

@7w5 - thanks! It actually got me thinking back to what books I loved at what age. At age 7 I would have gushed about Beverly Cleary, teens John Grisham and late 20s, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Today, hmmm . . . mostly blogs, actually.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Okay, here is my first attempt list. Since I had already read a great many modern and classic novels before I was forced to sit through 10th grade English, I knew that the standard selection assigned as reading was pretty crap. The problem is that whatever committee makes such decisions has to choose novels that are at adult reading level (post-8th grade), absent any sort of racy or controversial passages, and possessing a very obvious "theme" to be analyzed. This list is not so much novels that INTJs might like, but maybe more like selection that many intelligent 14 year old boys might like.

1) Motherless Brooklyn- Jonathan Lethem

2) Portnoy's Complaint- Philip Roth

3) The Deerslayer- James Fenimore Cooper

4) Fight Club- Chuck Palahniuk

5) Breakfast of Champions- Kurt Vonnegut

6) The Virginian- Owen Wister

7) The Things They Carried- Tim O' Brien

8) The Big Sleep- Raymond Chandler

9) The Martian Chronicles- Ray Bradbury

10) A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess

Scott 2
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by Scott 2 »

Going back to the books I enjoyed could be interesting, something to consider when I eventually transition from working full time.

OTCW
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by OTCW »

Scott 2 wrote:
Sat Nov 11, 2017 2:57 pm
Going back to the books I enjoyed could be interesting, something to consider when I eventually transition from working full time.
I just reread A Wrinkle in Time because I stumbled onto it at a thrift store.

Could be an interesting past time to go back to what I liked as a kid.

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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by jacob »

@7 - Well, I've read 4 of those already.

Also to note, I read/have read more fiction than a normal person (but that's setting the bar low), but relatively speaking, fiction is low priority on my list ... and more precisely, I still don't get much out of it in terms of personal growth, applied insights, etc. relative to non-fiction.

The bibliography of the ERE book has 5/72 (~7%) fiction books. That's a pretty small fraction.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jacob:

Well, you have me beat since I have only read 18 of the 72 books on your list :lol:

Actually, like many people, I flipped over at mid-life from primarily being a reader of fiction to primarily being a reader of non-fiction. I also made slight flip from INTP to more ENTP, so my interest in real people, as opposed to fictional characters, has increased. That said, I still maintain that there is something to be gained from reading very good fiction that is not directly comparable to reading non-fiction or conversing with real people. Maybe what jennypenny was attempting to communicate has to do with the fact that the reader is more in the passenger seat while reading fiction, and more in the driver seat while reading non-fiction.

For me, the value of having read a great deal of literature is found in the fact that I will often find myself recalling scenes or passages from a novel when I find myself in similar circumstances in my own life, and that act of recollection will make me feel more like I am a part of a greater humanity. The pieces come together just like when any other sort of puzzle becomes more clear. For instance, I read a novel which featured a scene in which the protagonist was exhibiting some rather rough behavior while distributing food to refugee children in Africa, and then a few years later I found myself distributing government food to recent immigrant children in America and behaving in a manner more rough than that I would prefer to exhibit, and I thought "Ah, yes. Now I see."

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