

Ask HN: Do hackers (you) read books cover to cover? - digamber_kamat

I realized today that I have purchased 9 books last one month. 8 are about technology and 9th one is "Viral loop".<p>But I realized that I haven't read any of these books from page 1 to page last.<p>Reading cover to cover would have been helpful but if I look at the trade-off between time spent and knowledge gained, I always like to read random chapters on need basis. It takes me a year to eventually go through every chapter.<p>Do you guys read the books same way ?
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Travis
Books that I read for pleasure, I tend to read all the way through. Fiction,
or Malcolm Gladwell type stuff.

Everything else (technical books, what it sounds like you're talking about
above...) I read until I find something useful and applicable. At that point,
I ditch the book and try some stuff out. If that "stuff" works out, I follow
the thread. If not, I either return to the book or pick up another one.

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justin_vanw
I've yelled at people for asking smarter questions than that. Some people read
cover to cover, some will skim. Being a hacker has nothing to do with this,
any more than being a chef would.

Anyway, personally, I almost always read books cover to cover. If it isn't a
'good' enough book to do that, I stop reading it and move on to a less shitty
book. In my experience, authors basically never jabber like morons, then
suddenly have something really important to say, then back to jabbering. Plus,
any good book will progress, explaining concepts as they are introduced, so
your assumptions about what a term means or what any implications are on
chapter 20 might be completely out of whack and stupid, which you would
realize if you had read chapters 1-19. (This just happened to me regarding a
book on futures and options trading).

~~~
digamber_kamat
>Anyway, personally, I almost always read books cover to cover. If it isn't a
'good' enough book to do that, I stop reading it and move on to a less shitty
book.

You seem to be doing something different than most of the people here. No
wonder you feel like yelling as well.

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mindcrime
As you might guess, the answer is "it depends." I tend to read fiction cover
to cover, and if it's short enough (the average Dean Koontz novel, for
example) I often read it one sitting. A Stephen King novel like _Under The
Dome_ might take 2-3 sittings.

Non-fiction is a different story. I tend to read business books cover to cover
(relative to a span of time, like say a week or two), but I interleave reading
multiple books so that, at any given time, I have 3-4 books I'm in the middle
of reading. Which one I pick up to read a few pages of on any given evening
when I have time to read just comes down to a whim.

Similar case with other non-fiction stuff... I have bookmarks stuffed in
probably a couple of dozen books that are in some intermediate stage of being
read. But sometimes one just catches my fancy and I knock it out in a few days
(or whatever time-frame, depending on the length and difficulty.)

The big exception are books that are basically just reference. A tutorial'ish
book like _Grails In Action_ I might go through _almost_ cover to cover, but
at some point when I've learned enough to start "doing stuff" I tend to start
skipping around. Books like that I often never technically "finish." Other
reference books I pick up, skip to the section I care about, read that part,
then put it aside and never touch it again. For example, I'm skipping around
in _Mahout In Action_ now, focusing on the section on clustering.

Sometimes I read just the part I need _now_ then put the book in the "read
this entire book later" pile. Then it just goes in the queue with all the
other partially read books.

So, following this system the time span I spend on any given book might range
from 6-7 hours (like the last Dean Koontz novel I read) to 20+ years ( I think
I started Douglas Hofstadter's _Metamagical Themas_ at least that long ago,
and it's still in the "come back and finish this later" pile.)

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dutchrapley
The real answer is, "It depends."

It really depends on where you are with your learning. When I was younger and
was getting into the industry, I would read books cover to cover b/c the
various topics intrigued me (sql, databases, javascript, etc.) and I wanted to
learn about them.

Today, my reading habits have changed. For just about anything, you can get a
good primer (for free) online. Documentation for most products/projects are
10-fold better than what they were 5-10 years ago.

Sometimes books are still necessary, especially in regards to learning a new
programming language. You'll get way more coverage and if you read several
books on a particular language, you can learn several approaches.

I wouldn't recommend buying a ton of technology books at once as some of them
may become outdated before you get to reading them.

Learn as much as you can, without buying a book, until it hurts. Then, go to
your local book store and compare different books on the same subject (also
compare reviews) and buy the one that you think will be the most beneficial.
That's the approach I take.

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tsuyoshi
If you are able to read random parts of a book on an as-needed basis, then
it's probably a reference book. Of course you don't usually read something
like that straight through.

Most books are difficult to read in random order, though. Maybe you aren't
reading many non-reference books.

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trbecker
It depends. For technical books, yes. For fiction books, I always read it
cover-to-cover (skipping the forewords).

But there's one exception: I've read both books by Robert Love (Linux Kernel
Development and Linux System Programming) from cover to cover.

