Alsadius comments on Open thread Jan. 5-11, 2015 - Less Wrong

2 Post author: polymathwannabe 05 January 2015 12:48PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (150)
Tags: open_thread

Comments (150)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 05 January 2015 01:54:42PM 8 points [-]

This is probably like walking into a crack den and asking the patrons how they deal with impulse control, but...

How do you tame your reading lists? Last year I bought more than twice as many books as I read, so I've put a moratorium on buying new books for the first six months of 2015 while I deplete the pile. Do any of you have some sort of rational scheme, incentive structure or social mechanism that mediates your reading or assists in selecting what to read next?

Comment author: Alsadius 06 January 2015 02:39:11AM 3 points [-]
  • I read really, really fast. Like, I've finished some of the largest books in print(Atlas Shrugged and A Memory of Light come to mind here) in a single day before.
  • The longer my reading list is, the less likely I am to add to it, or at least the less likely I am to take my additions seriously(when I have two items it's "I should read that!" When I have 200, it's "Eh, sounds interesting, might get to it someday").
  • My to-read list is about 10 Chrome bookmarks(none short), 20 Amazon wishlist items, plus most of the width of a bookshelf that I've bought and not read, so I'm not sure how well I actually do despite the above.
Comment author: pan 12 January 2015 01:14:31AM 2 points [-]

How did you learn to read so fast?

Comment author: Alsadius 12 January 2015 05:21:33AM 1 point [-]

I read a lot. (I wish I could give you some actionable advice here, but there's nothing I can point to. I suspect it may be innate?)

I think I'm semi-skimming, subconsciously. I've noticed myself missing descriptions of characters before when something relevant comes up later on. That said, I'm still quite fast with reading things like internet essays, where missing words does hurt your comprehension badly, so I don't think that's all of it.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 06 January 2015 04:55:28AM 0 points [-]

Atlas Shrugged in a day? Boy, do I want to see you take Infinite Jest.

Comment author: Alsadius 06 January 2015 05:19:05AM *  3 points [-]

I have to want to read the book for it to work. Looking up Infinite Jest, I'd probably prefer swallowing barbed wire to reading it.

(Atlas was back during my hardline-libertarian phase, so it was a lot more appealing. It also helped that the day in question was the day of the 2003 blackout, so there was nothing to do but read).

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit