
Start Binge-Reading - ingve
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/opinion/sunday/why-you-should-start-binge-reading-right-now.html
======
gms7777
I think most people nowadays are binge reading. They're just not necessarily
binge reading books. They binge read articles on reddit, hacker news, new york
times, any variety of quality and less than quality online sources.

~~~
Grollicus
I don't think that really compares. The main way to use social media - at
least to my observation - seems to be looking often for short intervals. That
would be the opposite of binge reading as it is very superficial, always in
the background and seldom with a real focus on it.

~~~
dmix
Still, people are reading and consuming more information than any time in
history. When the alternative is probably no information rather than some.

The fact it's not great information vs what you might find in a well-thought
out book is a different question.

------
sharkweek
I read a lot growing up, stopped like high school to late 20s, then really got
back into it recently.

I’m not going to pretend that it has somehow rocked my world to spend an hour
or so a day reading novels, but... it has forced me to slooooooooow doooooown.
A novel comes at you _relatively_ slow compared to reading 15 news articles,
Reddit threads, my twitter feed, et al.

It has been a peaceful experience to have a slowform entertainment medium take
a chunk of my day.

And I always feel this is worth repeating, but after ~25% of a book if you’re
not enjoying it, put it back on the shelf and try something else. We’re (most
of us) not in high school anymore, nobody is forcing us to finish a novel.
Read something because you want to.

Last note: if you’re having trouble staying focused on a book, put your phone
in another room while you read. Game changer wrt the temptation of checking
notifications.

~~~
dsco
Another tip is to force yourself to read in half your normal speed. You’re not
going anywhere, and reading is not a competitive sport. Personally this gives
me a ethereal and meditative sensation, making literature more impactful.

Like you mentioned this is the opposite of “online reading”, where the point
of reading often is to consume the content and move on.

~~~
thirdsun
Another thing that helps reading more slowly is reading out aloud. Imagine
recording an audio book. I do that sometimes. It's somewhat soothing and also
improves my pronounciation, which may seem like an irrelevant aspect but while
my english is quite strong and I always read, listen to and watch english
content in its original language, it's simply not my native language. Having
the chance to read aloud/talk in english is a welcome and somewhat educational
change.

------
jasode
_> Ben Dolnick. Mr. Dolnick is a novelist._

 _> Once I’m actually enjoying a book, it really does feel as if the pages are
turning themselves; [...] And pleasure is, after all [...] the reason that I
read._

Many proponents of reading (like Ben Dolink) don't seem to accept that _some
people just don 't like to read for pleasure_ the same way they do. People are
different.

I love reading and I've read a hundred of the well-known classics including
the thick tomes of Moby Dick, War & Peace, and Les Miserables. But 99% of my
friends do not read books for fun. I totally understand that because not every
brain derives the same pleasure from reading. Therefore, I'm not going to
"advise" them that they should be reading more.

On another note, I still heavily read non-fiction tech books but I've stopped
reading all fiction more than 5 years ago. I found out quitting fiction isn't
that strange as even famous novelists like Philip Roth and Larry McMurtry also
quit reading fiction.[1][2]

Sometimes people just quit getting the dopamine hit from fiction -- or never
really got it in the first place. They just read whatever was required in
high-school and college to pass some tests and that's it.

I know there will still be some confident folks that are sure that anyone can
be "taught" to love fiction. My personal experiences make me doubt that. To
me, it's like the fitness enthusiasts claiming you'll get "runner's high" and
exercise will feel good. But I've been running regularly for decades and I've
_never_ had runner's high; running is always a chore. Certain people get a
dopamine hit from workouts but I never did. I think people are just different
in what activities bring genuine pleasure.

If you read Mr. Dolnick's self-reported joy of consuming fiction and for some
reason, it doesn't inspire you to do the same, there's nothing wrong with you.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=philip+roth+quit+reading+fic...](https://www.google.com/search?q=philip+roth+quit+reading+fiction)

[2]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Larry+McMurtry+"lost+interes...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Larry+McMurtry+"lost+interest+in+reading+fiction")

~~~
gutnor
I agree that the generalisation probably does not work.

However, considering a lot of people like fiction in most their other forms,
except books, we have to be careful not to overcompensate in the other
direction. From the 99% person you know that don't like reading, I'm convinced
a significant number would actually love it, if introduced to it properly.

Like, I agree that a lot people will never get the runner high from cycling.
But the crowd that gets it from hitting the gym should be prime material to
convert to cycling.

I blame school. I never got any love of sport from PE. I didn't get the love
of reading from reading assignments either ( _), but society is telling me
that not loving sport is weird so I tried again, while not loving reading is
expected.

(_) Up until the day a teacher just had a list that wasn't just all classic
and you were not expected to use the reading as a basis for a disertation on
some historical or social quirk, or extract profound philosophical meaning
about the human nature. I picked a book with a story I liked, first time ever
since childhood.

~~~
sefrost
Absolutely. English Literature (mandatory at my school) meant I didn’t pick up
a book for pleasure for over five years after that.

Mainly they ruined reading for me with an intense over analysis that I could
never get to grips with.

That wasn’t the only thing though. We used to go around the room with one
person reading a page at a time, some people could barely read and it was
absolute agony because it would take months to get through a book.

------
sidcool
Difference between binge watching and binge reading is that reading warrants a
good amount of imagination. Watching is pretty much a passive activity, and
hence easy to get addicted to. Good article.

~~~
e_carra
I agree. I noticed the same thing with reading articles online (or threads
from HN), there's no friction and you end up getting a good amount of dopamine
after much less time than you would by reading a book.

~~~
crimsonalucard
I would argue that the dopamine from a book is actually higher. You invest
more into a book and are thus more likely to manipulated by what the author is
saying.

On the other hand a documentary I invest no effort into watching it and thus
can remain relatively unbiased.

------
octosphere
I'm going to admit, if I was to buy all the books I wanted, I would be left
poor and unable to feed myself. That's why a lot of thought goes into what
books I buy. I can be seen frequently taking _way_ too much time at bookstores
perusing books often reading a few pages of a book and then making up my mind
whether to buy it or not.

I thought E-books and Audible would change the game and make it easier to
consume books, but it still requires a lot of mental and physical bandwidth to
consume a book. It's very active and requires a 'reading muscle' to get good
at reading, or even listening to one (on Audible).

I've tried various tools like Kindle and speed-reading apps, but they fail
horribly in that they still require that reading muscle. There is no way out
of this; you have to put in the work of reading a book, and the time
investment (alongside cashflow to bring in steady streams of curated books for
consuming).

~~~
apocalypstyx
More and more I keep thinking about an interview with Jacques Derrida.

[Standing in his home library / office space]

INTERVIEWER: Did you read these?

DERRIDA: No, I haven't read these. I haven't read all the books that are here.

INTERVIEWER: But you've read most of them?

DERRIDA: No, no. Three or four. But I read those four really, really well.

~~~
pasabagi
I saw the interview, and it kinda annoys me. Close reading comes from broad
reading - it's only after you've read a library of books that you get all the
subtleties and references. There are all sorts of orthodoxies around reading
propagated by philosophers, often ingenious ones, often trying to make some
kind of backhanded point.

------
mark_l_watson
Agree. I have been watching a lot of movies in the last month since I retired
but this afternoon I felt like reading a book so I jumped into Liu Cixin’s
“The Wandering Earth” and it was a more satisfying than most of my recent
movie watching.

I have also been binge writing on a new book project, a three hour writing
sprint each morning this week.

There is something satisfying about spending at least a couple of hours in an
activity without jumping to something else, like reading email for a few
minutes. Concentration is a great thing.

------
jcims
I think I’ve somehow wired my brain to no longer be able to read books. I read
almost all of the content I get in a day, no tv, rarely movies, but I cannot
muster the stamina to read a whole book...particularly fiction. It makes me
feel bad b/c I’m obviously missing out on a big part of culture.

Fortunately the rest of my family all loves to read thanks to my wife’s
amazing consistency in getting our girls into it and inspiring them to keep
going.

(Edit: I have had a bit of success with audio books as long as the narrator
isn’t distracting)

------
askthereception
"There is no team of brilliant and vaguely sinister engineers, cooking up ways
to get you binge reading."

There is, and it's called an editor. This is especially why a lot of
bestselling non-fiction reads so smoothly. I always have a bunch of these
lying around for when I want something easy to get into.

------
kthejoker2
I recommend binge skimming of books, blogs, magazines, looking for ideas and
viewpoints. "Speed understanding," Asimov called it.

Mark the content that is novel to you, that is beyond your understanding, that
you disagree with, that challenges your thinking, that makes you reflect or
reevaluate, sparks your imagination.

And so conversely avoid reading further things well known to you, that only
confirm your thinking, that you agree with, that is spoon-fed to you, that
doesn't demand of you to apply its capital even after the cover is closed.

It's the deliberate practice of synthesis, analysis, and evaluation of reading
that is the heart of all creativity.

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore
for a very long time. - Gidé

------
koiz
Binge reading to me isn't actually good its just necessary to consume
information, we do that already with our feeds and sites like this.

With fiction I want to take my time, so no books can wait.

Netflix to me is this generation's radio, its background noise. It produces
some good content but we only truly tune in for that release. On most days
it's old episodes of the office, fraiser and the west wing.

------
HNLurker2
I usually like to find classic literature and then find the movie for it.

Some gold ones: -The Stranger, Camus. Bring the book to life -Nabokov novel

------
RickJWagner
When I've got extra time I like to take $5 or $10 and go to the local
GoodWill. They've got rows of great books (fiction, instructional, illustrated
coffee-table books, etc.)

Sometimes I buy something, sometimes I don't. But it's always fun looking
through the titles for treasures.

~~~
dingaling
I used to enjoy doing that on a grey Saturday afternoon, but most charity
shops in my area are now much too savvy to leave any treasures in their shops.
A volunteer checks any 'interesting' books for value online and sends them up
the line to HQ to sell on eBay or Abebooks.

The remaining dross goes onto the shelves for 'five books for a pound'.

It's profitable for them now but in the long term I think itis
counterproductive since it removes a lure that used to encourage people to
enter the shops.

------
bartimus
Would you ever listen to somebody giving a 2 hour monologue? To blindly give
somebody that much power over your attention span? I rather not. Get to the
point or stop wasting my time. It's why I hardly read books. Just give me the
section with the information I need.

------
ivolimmen
I do binge read. It's hacker news and a personal RRS feed with 150 or so sites
I track...

------
theon144
Great article! I really like that it's aware of its own limitations, or rather
that it knows it's trying to explain something largely obvious.

As with everything, the hardest step is the first one, then each successive
one gets easier; and similarly, some things simply aren't enjoyable in bite-
sized ADHD-addled portions.

------
dboreham
This doesn't make sense. The reason people binge watch (as opposed to, say,
bing drink) is that there's no incremental cost to watch an additional
episode. I had expected this article would be about a new kindle subscription
service that gives you unlimited access to all books. But instead it's
about...reading, the traditional regular kind.

FWIW I have subscribed to O'Reilly Safari for years: it gives you essentially
unrestricted access to approximately all computer science and programming
books. I've found it to be invaluable. I haven't bought a book for work in
years. Something similar for all books would be great.

~~~
EliRivers
I find my local library does that fairly well.

Also, "approximately all computer science and programming books"?
Approximately all? Just how good an approximation is that? I can't help but
think a pretty bad one. Maybe "a few books on approximately most of the top
fifty or so languages and a bunch of books on fairly common techniques, tools
and systems"? Sure, if you just need _any_ book on something, it's going to be
something fairly common and they've probably got one.

