
Ask HN: How much time do you spend reading books? - NicoJuicy
I&#x27;m currently not reading a lot, one book a month or so.<p>But there was a topic here about a compiler ( https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14273177 ) where the author wrote a book and some comments there made me wondering how much you ( HN readers ofc) read?<p>Ps. Subject doesn&#x27;t matter, but it would be nice if you included it. I&#x27;m reading mostly tech, marketing and business books
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mindcrime
It varies a lot from day to day and week to week, but off-hand I'd say I spend
at least an hour a day reading most weekday evenings, so at least five hours a
week. Most of the time it'll be more than that though. I'd estimate somewhere
between 5-15 hours a week is normal. But occasionally I may get into something
really meaty and just read non-stop for 8 or 10 hours.

Subjects? Varies... lots of software stuff obviously, but I also read books on
general science, history, business, marketing, biology, electronics,
biographies, etc.

If you really want to see what I read, add me on Goodreads:

[https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/33942804-phillip-
rhodes](https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/33942804-phillip-rhodes)

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csnewb
Out of curiosity, how much information do you retain from all the books that
you've read? Especially when reading technical books, do you take notes and
review them later?

I personally forget the majority of what I read and only remember a few main
ideas. With technical books I take notes in google docs and try to review them
later to cement the ideas in my mind.

~~~
mindcrime
_Out of curiosity, how much information do you retain from all the books that
you 've read?_

That's a really good question, and one I ask myself a lot. I honestly don't
know, and I've read reference to some studies somewhere or other that suggest
that most people retain fairly little of what they read. So my strategy with a
lot of books is to read the book, not take notes or anything really, and at
the end, make a simple "this is worth revisiting" or "this isn't worth
revisiting" decision. If it is, I'll read it again and either do some light
pencil underlining or use post-it page flags to highlight important stuff, OR
I'll do a full-fledged "create a wiki page for this book on my wiki and take
detailed notes" pass.

Sometimes I'll do the "light pencil underlining and post-it notes" thing on
the first pass.

It's an interesting trade-off... I don't want to spend too much time taking
notes and cut into my time for reading _other_ books. But I don't want to
waste the time I spent reading a book and not retain anything from the
experience either!

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WheelsAtLarge
I read 1 hour a day, mainly nonfiction, with the idea that reading is somehow
improving me. Funny, I just recently came to the realization that I need to
apply what I read - learning by "osmosis" is probably just wishful thinking.
Reading without any application is just entertainment.

I've recently cut my reading time and I am spending more time recollecting and
figuring out how to apply what I read.

You said you don't read a lot but I would 1st suggest that you increase the
time needed to understand how to apply what you read rather than just add
reading time.

Make a list of what you want to improve, get a book on that and use it.

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sotojuan
At least two hours everyday. I wake up early to read and I read on both
to/from commutes. Subway commute makes it easy, but if I drove I'd do
audiobooks.

I don't read tech books in these times. Usually history, biography, and art
history. I make another time slot for books like tech books that I ""study"".

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tjalfi
I used to read about 400 books per year but have cut back a lot. I have read
less than 20 books this year. I now spend most of my time programing and
learning how to become a better programmer. Reading fiction may help me to
become well-rounded but it is unlikely to lead me to a better job.

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metaphor
Research literature (ACM and IEEE subscriptions; Sci-Hub fills remaining
gaps), 1-3 hours every evening, depending on how well the topic keeps
interest. There's never any shortage of material: citations in a single paper
almost always lead down deep rabbit holes.

