
Ways to Read More Books - submeta
https://hbr.org/2017/02/8-ways-to-read-a-lot-more-books-this-year
======
TTPrograms
This may be an unusual opinion, but I read a lot, and I've found non-fiction
books to just not be efficient means of educating myself anymore. Most topics
can be illustrated and described in far fewer words than a book takes. I get
about a third of the way through a lot of books and say "ok I get it", as the
author basically just continues to say the same thing in different ways. I'm
sure this is incentivized by current publishing structure.

Not only that, but figures and plots provide far more information density than
words, and books don't frequently include them in large quantity. I've found
scientific literature and a number of very high quality bloggers to be a much
more efficient source of reading material.

That's not to say this is always true - biographies in particular seem to have
the most consistently large content / page count.

~~~
alexpetralia
Reminds me of Naval Ravikant who suggested reading books more like blogs - you
shouldn't feel some social pressure to "finish a book" but rather skip the
parts you don't enjoy and drop it whenever you feel like you've gotten the
main point. I've been doing this more recently and found that I don't get
stuck on books anymore, no longer bottlenecked by certain parts which are
boring and redundant.

~~~
bachmeier
This works for me too. I will regularly check a book out of the library, read
three chapters, and then return it to get another. I realized that I wasn't
finishing books because doing so was not a good use of my time.

Somewhat related is that I'll read chapters out of order. Many books follow an
approach of "laying the foundation" before making the point. 40 pages of
laying the foundation is a logical step but unfortunately is not done well in
most cases.

------
kaolinite
I've read more in the past 12 months than in the past few years, purely
because I discovered a company in the UK called the Folio Society[1]. They
sell beautifully bound and illustrated editions of fantastic books, although
at rather high prices (£30-40 on average).

Previously the majority of the books I read came in the form of cheap ebooks
from the Kindle store. As a result, I often abandoned them (or even just
forgot about them), only reading a few chapters. Now though, when I spend £30
on a single book, damn right am I going to finish it.

Plus, as a result of the curation, there isn't a single book on their site
that isn't at least worth a glance. The same can't be said for many physical
bookstores, let alone Amazon, etc.

And, the best part is, I don't really need these expensive books anymore. I've
gotten into such a habit of reading because of them that I'm buying regular
books again and I'm reading for at least an hour or two a night.

[1] [http://foliosociety.com](http://foliosociety.com)

~~~
vog
_> when I spend £30 on a single book, damn right am I going to finish it._

That's an interesting exploitation of the sunk cost fallacy. [1][2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment)

~~~
mamon
That's only works if

a) cost is high enough compared to your income

b) you are a reasonable person, and value your money enough to care

I tried to use this tactic many times, mostly to hone my programming skills -
didn't work. Damn, I recently entered a postgraduate program at the
university, for 2500$ cost - didn't help much, still can't force myself to
spend more time learning things.

~~~
vog
A similar phenomenon are the various ways people try to trick their
procrastination habit, not with money (fake price) but with time (fake
priorities).

However, as you correctly noticed, these techniques don't work well. That's
normal, don't worry if these simple solutions don't work. Maybe you think they
should work, because you often hear from people for whom "that one weird
trick" worked. Or that one complicated technique. But usually these are the
same people who try to sell you their book on that topic.

Instead, you need to the root of this issues, which may involve finding your
true priorities, and may involve actively changing your habits. All this may
be really hard, and you'll fail and retry many times - especially when trying
to do this alone. Heck, there's a whole profession around helping people to
fix these types of issues - some of them are highly qualified, others are
charlatans. (The latter often call themselves "coaches" as that term doesn't
require much qualification, so that they can't be sued if they do a bad job.)

~~~
nfin
How do you find the highly qualified? How are they called? How do you find the
fitting one, without having tons of money to through out like a big manager
would have (but probably enough, specially if the result is promising)

Thanks!

~~~
vog
Since this is about treating human beings, of course the best qualified people
are physicians. More precisely, medical psychotherapist and related
professions. Among various treatments, behavior therapy is quite common, but
there are others.

There is certainly some stigma around this, because most people think that
going to a therapy means you have some serious mental illness. But that's
nonsense. There's a huge variety of issues, small and lager, and all
physicians are fully aware of this broad spectrum.

The defining criteria is always: Does the person suffer from that issue?
(Sometimes also: Do the people around that person suffer from it?) And, of
course: What's the best way to help them?

Moreover: If they can help people to get away and stay away from alcohol and
other drugs, and are able to talk a violent to cooperation, which are both
much harder tasks than anything discussed here, then they can help with
"smaller" psychological issues as well.

And compared to people with some 3-months crash course, they know exactly what
they do, and have all forms of therapy applied to themselves as well, that's a
vital part of the training.

For reference, I'm talking about the situation here in Germany. But I think
this should be very similar in other countries, too.

------
inops
There seems to something of a cargo-cult mentality underlined in this article.
Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Stephen King and Mark Zuckerberg all read loads of
books (that's how they made their money!)

Unless you have some set goal to know a certain body of knowledge (as I
presume the four above have), reading should be done leisurely -- not a race
to read, and half-understand, as many books as possible.

~~~
hairofadog
I also found the survivorship-biasy part of the article to be a bit goofy, but
I found other parts to be pretty spot on. I have fallen out of the habit of
reading this past year (I think in part due to stress over political news) and
I've been looking for ways to bring it back into my life. These things hit
home:

* While I don't think reading will make me successful, I do find the habitual focus/relaxation aspects of reading to be beneficial

* Regarding paper books vs e-readers, as much as I like the idea of carrying a book in my pocket everywhere, I somehow allow myself to get distracted even on a Paperwhite (I'll start browsing the library and/or shopping for other books), and so I've been thinking of going back to regular old paper books

* Decision fatigue! I spend way more time fretting over what to read next than I do reading

Regarding audiobooks, I enjoy "reading" books in that format, but I have
wondered lately about the downside of constantly being plugged in; it's a
great way to pass the time doing dishes, but I imagine it's also good to give
your brain time to sit quietly without input. It's also a struggle to resist
the temptation lose myself in escapist fiction all the time; there's a thin
line (for me, anyway) between the type of reading that exercises your ability
to focus and the type of reading that acts as a palliative.

On second look, it appears the link was changed from a summary of a Harvard
Business Review article on Quartz.com to the actual Harvard Business Review
article. The summary had lots of survivorship bias, and the HBR version does
not. Thought I had lost my mind for a minute there.

~~~
tristanho
I think the "survivorship bias" argument for reading is a bit overplayed.

There's practically _zero_ of these mega-successful people (Gates, Buffett,
Zuckerburg, Musk, etc.) who don't read. Astonishingly, I can't think of a
single one. While that doesn't prove causation, it definitely points at it! Do
you want to try to be the first successful person who didn't read?

It's not that reading was this one magical trick that caused them to be
successful, but rather that reading was a prerequisite. At least, that's my
take.

~~~
cadlin
Donald Trump?

~~~
tchaffee
Not successful. He just inherited Daddy's money and grew that money at a
slower rate than the market.

~~~
baursak
If you define success solely by the amount of money, sure.

------
ziikutv
One problem is Dopamine. I have learned to get constant Dopamine hits from
Netflix/Youtube/Video Games. When I goto reading a book, it bores the shit out
of me. Its unfortunate really. So for last month or so, I cut down all of the
aforementioned things. I am now able to read much more than I did before,
before feeling sleepy or caving into the aforementioned things.

Why cut down on Dopamine? Relating to Digtal Signal processing, think of your
brain like an Envelope detector. When you keep supplying large peaks of
Dopamine levels, the 'mundane' is considered noise. Reducing peaks the said
peaks will allow you to tune the envelope detector and also consider 'noise'.
Eliminating all the peaks would be ideal but likely un-realistic. Shitty
analogy, but thats how I taught it to my self; relating an idea to a concept I
already somewhat understand.

Happy reading.

Edited: Rephrase.

~~~
therealdrag0
Books can really vary in their excitement/engagement dimension. I'm currently
reading a history of Europe since WW2 and it's quite a bit of work, on the
other hand there's other non-fiction like John Krakauer that I've found pretty
easy to burn through.

------
jonnybgood
The game changer for me was actually learning how to read a book. I no longer
approach books the same way after having read How to Read a Book by Mortimer
Adler [1]. Once you have a method down, you can go through books rather
quickly and retain knowledge. My biggest epiphany is that you don't need to
read a book in its entirety to know all that it has to say.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Intelligent-
Touchstone/...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Intelligent-
Touchstone/dp/0671212095)

~~~
adrift
Could you give a summary of what you learnt from it?

~~~
rvern
There is a good summary on Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book).

------
rdl
My biggest aids to reading more books have been technical:

1) Goodreads to track books, maintain a to-read queue, share reviews, etc.
Plus the "reading challenge" feature, which shows if you're on-track or not
(2016: 52 originally, then 68. 2017 goal: 78, but possibly 104.)

2) Kindle -- not having to physically deal with books while traveling, and
having access to my entire collection.

3) Audible -- when driving, flying, trying to fall asleep, etc., audiobooks
are preferable to text (at least for me). Certain books work very well as
audiobooks (better than text, even), and some are worse.

4) Synced audio/kindle -- being able to switch back and forth on a single book
between the two formats on demand

~~~
CPUstring
I've made the mistakes of reading more scientifically inclined books on
Audible, but I've recently realized there are three strong categories (1)
history books, (2) history-of-science/scientist type books, and (3) self-
help/philosophy books.

Listening to Marcus Aurelius before bed while brushing my teeth turns out to
be a good meditation.

~~~
rdl
I really like fiction in audiobook format, too. I have been disappointed by
the short story collections I've found, but it seems like there could be a
great marketplace for short fiction in audio form.

------
jmartrican
This article is geared towards reading more books like its a race. It would
seem better to reread a few books to really grasp them. I think there is
something to be said for rereading versus reading more new books.

How many times were we discussing something we read and all we can really say
is "I read a book on it. something to do about blah blah. I forget the
details." No real insight or grasping of the material in one read.

Maybe a book club that focuses more on grasping fewer books very intimately
over constantly reading new ones. Just a thought.

~~~
british_india
When you get comfortable reading a lot, you don't need to re-read books.
Certainly, a rare few books benefit from multiple readings but not all. I
retain a surprising amount of details and can describe passages from Dickens
and the main argument of David Cay Johnson's "Perfectly Legal" or the amazing
survival story of "Mawson's Will" or an amusing passage in Ernest Hemingway's
journalism story "A Free Shave" or the images of the amputation tent in
Tolstoy's "The Sebaastopol Sketches--to name a tiny few.

Once your reading is not going "put-put-put" and your unbroken attention span
reaches an hour, you may feel like you need to re-read. Certainly, it's a nice
experience but it's really a waste of time re-reading everything.

~~~
jmartrican
I agree wholeheartedly for fiction, where reading for enjoyment is concerned.
But even good fiction deserves multiple reads. Where rereading is more of an
essential is with non-fiction. Especially non-fiction that is read for the
purpose of obtaining and using the information. A few examples would be The
Selfish Gene, How To Win Friends And Influence People, Better Angels of Our
Nature, and of course The Art of the Deal. Ok maybe not that last one.

------
ssijak
I found out that for many books on amazon when you buy kindle version that
for, usually, 3-5$ you can add audible narration of the same book! Audio books
enable me to read more books in mindless situations where reading paper or
kindle is not easy or not possible (example when running, in store..). Just a
note, I tried (and paid) for blinklist.com before, but I am not using it
anymore, I feel like I miss much out of the books that way.

~~~
Pandabob
THIS! Subscribing to audible has been a game changer for me. And once you get
used to it, listening on fast forward has made the experience more pleasurable
and you go through the books faster.

On a side note, I wish audible would make downloading the accompanying figure
PDFs less cumbersome. Currently,it seems to be impossible​ to get them through
the mobile app and one needs to use the website to download them.

------
acdha
1\. Add “127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com” to /etc/hosts

2\. Get your tax dollars’ worth out of your library card

~~~
endentru
> 2\. Get your tax dollars’ worth out of your library card

To add to this, shoutout to the Overdrive app/site which makes borrowing
ebooks/audiobooks from libraries extremely easy.

[http://overdrive.com/](http://overdrive.com/)

------
smnb
How to read more books: Speed listen to your books with adobe reader 9.5
plugin called texthelp PDFaloud 3.0 and high quality SAPI5 voices from acapela
infovox, nuance realspeak, or neospeech.

~~~
Curnee
Is this satire?

~~~
vezycash
Upgrading to creators update Windows 10 got me started with text -to-speech.

Edge browser has a button to read eBooks (EPUB files) aloud. The voices
resemble human speech but that's not why I use it.

Edge does something that make me prefer speech-to-text over audio books. I've
got many unread Audio books because it's a passive activity. My body just
itches to do something.

On Edge, the words are highlighted as they are being read. Thus I actively
read as I listen. And most importantly, distraction is no biggie - just spot
the flashing words. Also, it's easy to spot and make up when the voice
mispronounces words.

 __*

I upgraded my phone to the Creators update hoping to use Edge to read on the
go. However, the result was disappointing. They are definitely different
browsers sharing the same name.

Luckily an eBook reader called Freda+ reads aloud pretty well. It only
highlights paragraphs rather word-by-word like edge - better than no
highlight.

Summary.

My eyes tire easily when reading on computer - eye issues, glare, sleep
deprivation... Without speech recognition, I'll read far less books.

Note: Edge works only on EPUB files which is pretty disappointing as EPUB
files are html docs.

------
anigbrowl
Reading this article makes me really question the quality of the reading the
author is doing. Reading is its own justification. Stop strategizing and just
_do it_.

------
Fifer82
I would thoroughly recommend trying some modern Audiobooks if you have not
tried them yet. It may remind you of your grandmother but seriously, they have
replaced most of my entertainment. I even got a waterproof speaker to listen
in the shower! The full cast audiobooks are especially awesome. I have "read"
just over 500 books since 2009 so no idea how many hours I have lost in total!

~~~
aluhut
I wonder how this was not on the list as it is the most obvious solution. I
spend most of the reading time while commuting. In winter by reading in summer
on my bike listening.

It took some time to get used to it but it works!

Can you recommend a speaker? I thought about that too but never took it really
serious.

~~~
Fifer82
I got an Eco Pebble
[https://ecoxgear.com/shop/ecopebble/](https://ecoxgear.com/shop/ecopebble/)

It does the job, I dunno if I would recommend it but I got it for 20 notes.
The only annoyance is after charging, your device won't see the speaker unless
you "Forget Device" and re-pair.

------
gavinpc
> Roald Dahl’s poem “Television” says it all: “So please, oh please, we beg,
> we pray / go throw your TV set away / and in its place, you can install / a
> lovely bookshelf on the wall.”

There's a house 2 blocks from me where an old Volvo is always in the driveway,
with a bumper sticker that says:

> BLOW UP YOUR TV

I always walk by that place and think, those people must be cool. I've never
put a TV set in any place I've lived.

But I've noticed lately when I walk by there at night... they have a big TV
on. I wonder if it has a sticker on it that says

> BLOW UP YOUR CAR

------
tristanho
This article touches on, in my opinion, the 2 great problems with non-fiction
reading nowadays:

* Deciding which book to read next out of the seemingly infinite decision space (which book is optimal?)

* Reading books "well", such that you truly elevate your level of understanding of a topic to that of the author, and then remember what you've learned.

Notably, I think "Read More Books", the title of the article, is more of a
symptom. If people could choose the _right_ books and then read them
satisfyingly enough to truly become smarter and wiser, reading would be such a
great deal that no one would have the problem of needing to read "more".

What's craziest is that these problems are the same ones readers faced
centuries ago. Reading hasn't evolved at all! People still prefer reading
physical books in the world of the internet and data science. And how do
readers choose books? One-off recommendations from people that they may or may
not trust.

I think with technology we can do a lot better. Specifically, I've been
hacking on solving the two aforementioned problems with books such that we can
read and learn like it's really 2017. Would love advice/conversation with any
reading-inclined HNers! I'm tristan@rekindled.io

~~~
gexla
I think finding the topic is the harder issue. Or picking a topic among those
you are interested in.

If you are interested in a specific topic, then usually you can find
discussions of "game changing" books in that topic. Or trace the "tree" of
current books to earlier books in the topic.

If you want to know what influenced an author, take a look at the sources the
book cites. A quick Google search revealed a bunch of sites which offer search
for book / pub citation info. Maybe that's a good place to start.

An interesting service might be to take this a step further and add some sort
of visualization for a given topic.

~~~
tristanho
Interesting! For myself, I tend to already know what topics I care about, e.g
Entrepreneurship, History of Computing, Stoicism, etc. These topics usually
become quite apparent when I look at my goals in life. Can you explain more
about how you decide on topics?

As for the "game changing" books, I definitely agree! It seems that most areas
seem to have those "seminal" books that most of the other books in the genre
reference non-stop. One example that jumps out at me is Flow by Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, which seems to be referenced by every book I can get my
hands on.

The visualization of a tree is definitely interesting: I suppose the goal of
it would to be able to find the roots.

------
nextos
I love reading technical books slowly, and digesting all content.

Relocating around Europe made it quite tough to carry all my book hardcopies
with me: SICP, CTM, TAOP...

Finally, it seems 13 inch eink readers with support for arbitrary formats
(thanks to them running Android, or even capable to process input HDMI video)
will become mainstream. To me that's the way to read more books. Thousands of
technical books in an eye-friendly tablet. I wonder why it took so long.

~~~
omilu
Are you referring to this? [https://www.amazon.com/Onyx-Max-13-3-Flexible-
Handwriting/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Onyx-Max-13-3-Flexible-
Handwriting/dp/B01EVACVHY)

Have you tried it? I personally can't stand reading technicle books on my
6"kindle. If the 13" is a better experience I'm upgrading.

~~~
nextos
Yes, I am referring to Onyx and others. Onyx is probably the best one, and
they will be shortly upgrading to Android 4.4, providing a lower consumption
CPU and more importantly HDMI input.

This last feature is a game changer.

I have tried Onyx 13 inch readers, and its a very good experience on technical
ebooks, which I get on djvu and pdf formats.

------
jcoffland
A lot of people waste their time reading the latest NY Times best sellers when
they could be learning. Who cares how many trash novels you read? You might as
well watch TV. Read for quality not quantity and pursue other avenues of
learning. Kahn Academy has tons of excellent and free courses on YouTube. Or
actually do things. Build something, plant a garden, fix your car, learn a
language, write. Passive consumption is overrated.

~~~
Tomis02
Didn't you hear though? All successful people read. It's obvious that reading
made them successful, not their upbringing or environment. As long as you read
as much as possible, does it matter what you read? Be like Bill. Be
successful!

I was being sarcastic, obviously.

------
xtiansimon
Read more--Yes!

1) It's a habit.

2) Cultivate the garden of your interests.

\- Find resources for reading recommendations (NY Review of Books, NYT Book
Review, POD casts, NPR radio);

\- Devise a system to collect reading recommendations and to revisit (ie. 3x5
cards, *.txt files you can grep);

3) Get books. Find a convenient and impulsive source for books.

\- Visit your public library!

\- Reduce the stress of putting down a book that's boring (unless you're
wealthy, then Amazon to you heart's content).

\- Most public libraries let you search online, reserve, call you when your
book is ready, then just go pick it up.

4) Develop better reading habits (mostly for non-fiction):

\- Can't get into a book? Start at the index (in the most xtreme cases I list
my interests reading the index, then tally which chapters have the most points
of interest and read those first!)

\- Learn the vocabulary.

\- Pencil marginalia. Limited set of what I call "sign-posts". A small check-
mark to flag an important passage or line is sufficient. (Underlining is
awful; don't do it. If everything is important, than nothing is most
important).

\- Keep a piece of scrap paper and write down a great idea you had while
reading--this will clear your mind of your great idea, and let you get back to
reading. And it also keeps your interest, because who doesn't like having
great ideas?

5) Write a brief book review for every book you read for the rest of you life.
Save this as a simple text file. MLA bibliographic entry. Few paragraphs about
the book. Done.

------
mbrd
I've been trying to read more books in 2017, and it's been going well so far
and I've read 24 books since January.

The two things that have made the difference for me are:

* use the library! I only paid for 1 of those 24 books. Of the others 1 was a physical book from the library and the other 22 were library ebooks. I rarely find things I want to read that they don't have in ebook format (although often you need to 'request a hold' and wait as they can only loan out each copy to so many people at once). For context, I'm in Austin, TX

* make reading a deliberate evening activity. I used to only read when I was in bed and then be frustrated with my progress. I've started reading on my lunch break at work, and also in place of other evening activities (TV, internet, guitar etc). If I do 30 mins at lunch, an hour in the evening and then some in bed I can finish a reasonable length book per week.

------
Jugurtha
I think it also comes down to attitude. I remember when we didn't have
internet at home and I was in middle school through high-school, I'd always
have about 20 floppy disks with me so that I could go to an internet café,
download pages so I could read them home.

During sophomore year (college, Engineering), I spent a _lot_ of time
commuting (could stack up to 6 hours in a day) so I was reading philosophy,
economics, neuro linguistic programming, psychology, etc. during this time. I
live in a country where I can't just buy any book (low availability) and
electronic payment wasn't introduced until recently and I didn't have a laptop
10 years ago, so I'd print 4 book pages per A4 sheet, then they'd get folded
an make a small book I'd pierce in the center and sort of bind. 500 sheets
were about $5 that time.

I also read everywhere, especially in the toilet, which I think is a habit I
picked up from home (I grew up with a book shelf in the toilet and we used to
call the bathroom the "National Library"). As a matter of fact, I'm writing
these very lines sitting on the throne.

I've never read as much as during my unemployment (I could read like 20 hours
per day, but it's not for everyone).

On my way to work and after work, I reach for my laptop and get stuff done if
I'm fortunate to have a seat. I work on features, do refactoring, etc. If I'm
standing, I get my phone and read an ebook.

By the way, I recently found Aaron Swartz' blog posts in epub format.
[https://github.com/joshleitzel/rawthought](https://github.com/joshleitzel/rawthought)

The takeaway from this is the following:

\- Making the most out of time that would otherwise be wasted: amortizing
commute time, waiting time, etc.

\- Exposing myself to a variety of topics opened up a graph of interest that
sent me to different directions and topics. I've learned a lot of things.

------
waderyan
I go back and forth on if its helpful to set a goal on the number of books.
Sometimes its a good motivation for me. Other times its a distraction to the
goals of why I read: to learn and to enjoy.

The year my son was born I spent hours everyday pushing him in a stroller to
help him stop crying and give his mom a break. I read / listened to 105 books
that year, which ended up being too much. I couldn't remember most of what I
read / listened to. The next year I had to re-read many of the books.

The sweet spot for me is between 40 and 50, although I've adjusted my goal
from number of books to subject mastery. Focusing on a subject I care about
and studying books, articles, etc. on the subject has ended up being more
rewarding. In addition, I have a handful of books I read simply for the joy of
reading.

~~~
dharmon
One downside of tracking the books I read is that I have a subtle resistance
to starting super long books, because I know for that month I'll only end up
reading 2 books instead of 5. It's really stupid but a side effect of tracking
/ counting.

It means I unnecessarily postponed reading excellent books such as "Titan" by
Chernow.

~~~
GabrielF00
I've gotten around this (at least a little) by tracking pages read instead of
books read.

~~~
dharmon
That's actually a really good idea. Might also make me prioritize articles
more if they contribute to a "page count".

------
Jabbles
[Off topic] You can purchase this article for $8.95?
[https://hbr.org/product/8-ways-to-read-a-lot-more-books-
this...](https://hbr.org/product/8-ways-to-read-a-lot-more-books-this-
year/H03FGE-PDF-ENG)

~~~
anigbrowl
Indeed; in what possible world would anyone consider that worth the price of a
paperback book?

------
sanswork
Last year I read over 100 books as part of my Goodreads challenge. This year I
set the target way down at 50 books and my new challenge is to finish all the
books I've bought but not finished. So my rule is I have to finish 2 books
from the unfinished list before I can buy a new book.

My kindle has 470 books on it with 86 of them not complete or that I have only
skimmed.

Audible account is up to 70 with 26 unfinished.

And I have about a dozen paper books to finish too which is from the point
about reading physical books. I find for technical topics I do way better
retaining and studying from paper books than kindle ones so I've started
buying paper again.

------
intrasight
I've started "reading" lots of books now that I have Audible. I listen while
mowing the lawn, while doing chores, etc. Can easily to a book a week this
way.

~~~
jmartrican
I love audio books. They have changed my life. Though I find it hard to
proselytize friends and family over to the audio side. They all give the same
reason, "i tried it and it didn't work" or "i have not tried it and i know it
wont work". IMHO, I think more people should give it a shot, a real honest
attempt. My first audio book was Ender's Game, so maybe starting off with a
bang is the way to go.

~~~
intrasight
What I do is to suggest that they try listening while doing chores that
require no hard thinking. Your brain will be happy to have something to engage
in. Today while spreading dirt and grass seed, I listened to "Astrophysics for
People in a Hurry". Was nice in that it was a one-work-session listen.

------
overcast
I've been digging through Hacker News posts, hackernewsbooks, etc. It was a
non-ficton book, about the loss of power/money/wealth in New York? I believe.
It was like 1000+ pages, and only around $15, and I can't for the life of me
remember what the hell it was. Had a picture of the guy on the cover, that's
about all I can remember. But I know I wanted it!

~~~
lucas3677
"The Power Broker" by Robert Caro?

~~~
overcast
Will you marry me? This is why I love Hacker News.

------
piccolbo
As an aside, the research on ego depletion that he quotes in uncritical terms
has been completely discredited. The phenomenon does not exist. Of course, to
know that you need to read science blogs, not books. But there are books about
ego depletion, several, filled with lies. When the container is more important
than the content, I suppose truthfulness is a secondary concern.

~~~
kristianp
Interesting. HBR has a recent article on the topic, so they don't think its
dead:

[https://hbr.org/2017/05/your-brain-can-only-take-so-much-
foc...](https://hbr.org/2017/05/your-brain-can-only-take-so-much-focus)

------
tombert
For me, I started reading a lot more when I moved to New York and started
taking the subway everywhere.

Public transit makes a good excuse to read, since I find it a rather difficult
place to do "real" work, but there's also a lot of downtime.

Also, despite what this article says, I found that purchasing a Kindle really
made reading a lot less of a chore.

------
vinceguidry
I use Pocket, and one of the things I wish I could do is to break books down
into chapters and feed the individual chapters into Pocket. If I ever want it
bad enough, I'll hack together some kind of solution. But getting text out of
an Kindle ebook seems like it'd be tricky.

~~~
wodenokoto
It's actually quite easy. Simply strip it of drm (software is easily
googleable )

From there you can unzip it and the chapters exist as basically html files.

~~~
vinceguidry
Thanks! I'll keep that in mind.

------
captn3m0
What worked for me was setting smarter goals. Instead of a X-books-in-a-year,
I switched to 3-books-in-a-month, which is far more easier to track because I
need to finish a book once every 10 days.

I track everything on Goodreads, and it has been working out great.

------
frequent
I'd add joining a reading circle. Forces a monthly/bimonthly book on me I'd
likely not have picked up by myself, discussions afterwards are usually quite
insightful, plus you can frequent and support your local bookstore.

------
j_s
Ancient Kindle (I use the keyboard edition) text-to-speech. Not as good as
Audible but much more affordable. Also weird using the same narration for all
books!

Humble Bundle sometimes has audio book bundle deals, usually Dr Who.

------
edpichler
Lots of people writing good comments about audiobooks. Anyone knows if it's
benefits are the same of reading? Instead of listening someone narrating?

~~~
jstandard
From personal as well as shared experience from several avid "audiobookers",
retention is dramatically decreased with audiobooks.

Many folks will use audiobooks while multi-tasking (driving, cleaning) where
the brain is partially distracted from absorbing, reflecting on, and
internalizing the book contents.

I reserve audiobooks for fiction, autobiographies, and other light materials
where I'm not learning so much as consuming content.

------
vijayr
Do you guys use any tool to keep track of your books? to find new books to
read?

~~~
sanswork
I use goodreads for tracking and the recommended books section of the kindle
store which I think gives better recommendations than goodreads.

------
drc0
the deal breaker for me is actually picking up a new book to read, often I
stop at the "searching a good book to read". when you start often is inertia.

~~~
jonaf
It sounds like maybe you need a better network of strong recommendations that
you would personally find interesting. For me, my interests lie in non-fiction
literature, and I have many colleagues who share those interests, and so I
often find myself with more interesting literature on my list than I have the
free time to read and digest. However, I think that I have a much better
problem than you do.

I'm certain that there are quality book clubs, social or even recommendation
engines that might help you get started finding more literature that's
personally interesting to you. Maybe the HN crowd knows of some quality
sources for personally interesting literature?

~~~
swah
Also, the classics, lists of great books, influences of the authors of your
favorite books...

------
theprop
Stop reading. Start acting.

------
douche
Start reading a long series by a prolific author - like Bernard Cornwell or
Patrick O'Brian on Kindle. Watch your bank account dwindle.

------
dang
We changed the URL from [https://qz.com/963692/how-to-read-more-books-this-
year-accor...](https://qz.com/963692/how-to-read-more-books-this-year-
according-to-harvard-research/), which points to this.

