I had a very ambivalent reaction to this blog post. Most importantly, I find the author's relationship to reading quite odd. Basically, all he talks about is reading self-help books. Not really any reading for pleasure, nor does he discuss reading to learn about other non-self-help related topics that might interest him, just for learning's sake.
So he seems to approach reading primarily from a "how is this going to improve my life", usually from some sort of productivity-enhancing, "always be hustling" mindset. So I'm not surprised at all that he's found diminishing returns in this endeavor.
Don't mean to sound too harsh, but I actually did read his entire post and throughout the whole thing I kept thinking "Maybe try chilling TF out and just reading something you enjoy."
Reading too much fiction also leads to diminishing returns. The number of works that can be considered of high quality is not infinite, and it diminishes exponentially in relation to the number of books read. After a few hundred or thousand, fiction will be like cigarettes - forestalling a craving but providing little to no pleasure.
Here I am despairing at the 90-95% of Bloom’s Western Canon list that I bet I’d love and find moving and sublime, and would each form a new little piece of me, but am definitely never going to get to, and that’s not even close to a list of all the excellent books that exist (mostly, but not all, fiction in that case) given its explicitly limited scope and the implicit limits from its having been assembled by one person (and perhaps a few of his students, IDK, but seems likely)
Unless all one does is read fiction, I don’t think hitting seriously diminishing returns or running out of top-tier material are likely problems. Mere mortals with other interests and hobbies who achieve low-tens of books a year, and not all in that meaty very-high-quality bunch, need not worry.
While I don't agree with your premise (I think there are plenty of high quality fiction books out there such that if you read 20-40 a year you could read pretty much only great fiction for a lifetime), more importantly is that I'm not talking just about fiction.
Why not read into a nonfiction topic just for interest's sake, like a layman's accessible book on quantum physics, or the battles of WWII, or the development of Western music, or whatever topic makes one just go "Hmm, that's cool, I want to find out more about that."
I really doubt anyone can read all the "high quality" fiction out there in their lifetime. If you're reading 12 books a week, sure, but I think that's really too fast.
You don't need to read all of them, just all within a certain discoverability threshold not sharing the same archetypes. At that point, the rate of encountering high quality works which are not stale will fall to almost nothing.
Reading fiction isn’t about the books, it’s about yourself. The books are a stimulus to introspect about your relation to the text.
As long as you keep changing, the quantity of books to read is infinite. I like the analogy of the article that books are like a stream and just dip in and pick the one of the moment and let the rest float by. It’s only people who don’t change enough who consume too much from the same point in the stream and feel the effects of water sickness.
You can get pleasure from reading things other than fiction. I agree, though, that stories of made-up people that aren't intended to illustrate any particular idea are as profound as a series of random numbers.
If you think novels, especially good ones, are "stories of made-up people that aren't intended to illustrate any particular idea", then you're missing quite a bit.
Yeah I mean if I find out someone has read a thousand novels I'm not going to judge them about what they choose to read next.
Though actually. Stopping to think about it now for the first time I think I'm about there at this point. It has definitely changed what sorts of books I seek out and what I expect to get from them. But I still find reading fiction rewarding.
I have read significantly more than a thousand novels, and there's so much granularity, so much variation in voices, so many weird thoughts to explore.
I worked in a video store for years and watched many thousands of movies as well, and while I am almost completely burnt out of watching movies because there's so little innovation going on I could not imagine that being applied to books, the direct interaction with someone else's mind is too interesting.
The only problem with modern books is there's so much trash along with the treasure, there's never been a lower bar for self publishing.
Some people only read self-help books and popular biographies that they have been told will inspire them. It's how the modern version of a religious education is delivered. Through sheer volume of inspiration, they will be delivered into success.
Please read more fiction. Why should everything be about becoming a 'better' person? Why not enjoy a good story? Unconsciously you will learn something, even from fiction.
Fiction gives me so much more than the "science-light" books mentioned in this blog post.
I don't think these books are bad and without ideas or merit, but many of them show an idea in the first two chapters and then repeat it for the rest of the book. It's like an expanded blog post with adequate but average writing. Reading 40 of them in a year is going to leave most people not remembering anything significant. Kind of like people that say they travelled to 40 countries in a year. You're not going to get anything other than surface-level understanding and some jetlag.
Yes! Fiction tends to be much better written and in many cases is an excellent window into understanding people whose lives have been very different from your own. If you want to improve your social awareness and better understand the human condition, fiction is a must.
If the author's goal is to live better rather than read about how to live better, I don't think the solution of reading make-believe fits. The same rejoinder exists: the author would be better served by actually meeting new people and learning from them rather than reading pretend.
Yeah exactly. I guessed pretty early that the books he was reading were productivity-branded self help and pop science. These can be fun but 2-3 per decade is probably plenty.
At 40 non-fiction books per year I'd throw in the towel too.
Fiction on the other hand… I think I average 40 a year without it being an effort at all. Just read a bit in bed before sleeping and on holidays. That's not an abnormal number for anyone who reads for leisure.
Was the author conflating the two? I can't imagine properly processing the contents of 40 non-fiction books in a year.
If you'd read the article, you'd understand that the author was discussing the diminishing returns of reading yet one more book over spending time absorbing and putting the lessons to real-world use.
They give the example of reading many books about exercise vs reading one book and doing the exercises it describes. The latter will end up fitter than the former.
I can give another example: take 2 novice chess players. Have one of them read 40 books in a year without playing chess. Have the other read 1 book, then spend the rest of the year playing chess. Who do you think will be a better chess player?
I try not to read too much more non-fiction than fiction. A few non-fiction books have had a great impact on me, but on the whole I've gotten a lot more from the fiction. Not only limiting yourself to non-fiction but further narrowing your scope to self-help books that can be effectively condensed into short summaries is a huge blunder, in my opinion.
100%. Imaginary persons' imaginary lives are instructive too. And if they're not instructive, they can at least be entertaining, or interesting, or lyrical. The treadmill of turgid self-improvement is dull. A lot of non-fiction books were once bulleted lists, used as publisher's proposals, and then expanded to books. The fact they can be reduced to a bulleted list in summary is hardly surprising; and, in my view, of little value. They can't all be right. Do "X" for success. Don't do "X" for success.
Non-fiction is, like most things, best done in moderation. Fiction works differently on the mind. To me, it's more fun. The plot can be summarized of course, but the diction, structure and unfolding cannot be summarized without losing a great deal of the experience of reading.
It reads like it was mostly airport-nonfic hustle trash, to be blunt. Blog-post-expanded-to-a-book stuff. I’ve read a dozen or so of these over the years and they’ve consistently been a waste of time. Easily condensed to five or ten pages, probably mostly lists or bullet points rather than denser prose, without losing any substance whatsoever.
The improving value of reading 40 of those per year versus 0 is approximately identical, so unless you’re finding them entertaining, there’s not much reason to do it.
Yeah, that was my thought too - law of diminishing returns is at play.
Expanding one's area of literary interest is key here. Look at what Bill Gates does with his quarterly reading list - so many different genres, topics, etc. Keeps things fresh at the very least!
I needed to hear this: I have an ever-growing list of books I want to read, with topics ranging from the Mossad, to drug trafficking in Southeast Asia, to how to build better habits, to political theory, and some history.
A few days ago, I tried but failed to remember the name of a (main) character from Narcotopia.
When I'm reading, I'm so immersed in the story that I feel I'm living it. It brings me immense pleasure. But, to get the most out of it, I think I have to switch to studying them in detail, taking notes, etc.
Of course, I'll still read for pleasure, but my reading will have to slow down so I can squeeze more out of it. I hope some other people on HN see this comment and consider it too.
Not everything in life needs to be squeezed for maximum gain. Remembering the names of characters is a lot less important than remembering the lessons learned from the story.
We forget everything, eventually. A whole lot of it over time, and whatever’s left, all at once.
It’s all partial and temporary. A long-lived cathedral made of one’s knowledge is unachievable. It’s a scrap-book with pieces and pages always falling out and you can never collect them all because you’re late for the train and have to hurry on.
>As we know only too well, reading books is considered the fundamental ingredient for moving from mental inferiority to inspiring intelligence.
Lost me right at the first sentence. It's inferior to believe that books are a fundamental ingredient in allaying mental inferiority. Most knowledge is tacit and comes from doing, not reading. The hero who confronts the lion gains wisdom along the way. The nerd in his library merely thinks he's gaining wisdom.
Strong anti-intellectual vibes here. A mature mind can learn from second-hand experience - this is after all why religions have scriptures, why technology has manuals, and why civilizations record their history.
As a parent - and as a former child, too - I'm all too familiar with the childish attitude that you don't need to learn from the lived experience of others. If every adult in your life is telling you not to jump off of the trampoline, you still think "I bet _I_ can jump off the trampoline! What do they know?" And one or two broken legs later, you just gained wisdom the hard way.
Most people outgrow this mentality, and learn to consider and respect sources of experience besides their own.
I think reading books is important for exercising my attention span and imagination (which is why fiction is important).
The caveat there is that I follow Naval Ravikant's advice and if I'm not liking a book, I either skip around to the parts I care about or I discard it and move onto another.
I've discarded a number of reputable, oft-recommended books because they did not click with me, such as Taleb's books, Think and Grow Rich, etc etc.
In my experience self help books are of minimal value. You need to read for fun, general factual learning and historical books for perspective. I don’t read a book if I’m not interested in it and I still get through 35-50 books a year.
For those who didn’t grow up reading and spent years doom-scrolling social media, becoming a good enough reader with decent comprehension takes real effort. You have to accept rereading, losing focus, and the frustration that comes with it. But after about 200 hours of reading opinion pieces over the course of a year, it has now become enjoyable and even addictive, offering deeper insights into life. Social media is now empty calories. I get why most people don’t read. Reading is a skill and like any other you need to actively develop that skill. Scrolling social media takes no effort.
Classic confusion "correlation = causation". If interesting/knowledgeable people read more books does not mean that reading more books will make you more interesting/knowledgeable. It's usually the fact that for those people other intrinsic interests move them to read more books. So reading more books is a "symptom".
So he seems to approach reading primarily from a "how is this going to improve my life", usually from some sort of productivity-enhancing, "always be hustling" mindset. So I'm not surprised at all that he's found diminishing returns in this endeavor.
Don't mean to sound too harsh, but I actually did read his entire post and throughout the whole thing I kept thinking "Maybe try chilling TF out and just reading something you enjoy."