<story><title>The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently</title><url>https://aliabdaal.com/read-more-effectively/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tines</author><text>&amp;gt; But ultimately you could learn just as much about yourself and the world by doing pottery, woodworking, kayaking, knitting or whatever else you like to do with your spare time.&lt;p&gt;I agree with the rest of your post, but this sentence is a hard disagree. Books let you live a version of the lives of other more intelligent people from almost any point in history. How can pottery and kayaking do that?</text></item><item><author>dawg-</author><text>I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately - there seems to be more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much self-help and &amp;quot;motivation porn&amp;quot; focuses on reading books, as if it&amp;#x27;s a magical activity that will unlock the best version of oneself. It&amp;#x27;s part of the new aspirational message - imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, and &lt;i&gt;reading books&lt;/i&gt;. The people pushing that message get lots of eyeballs on their content because too many people have come to see reading as a lofty, obscure activity only fully accessible to the morally (and therefore financially) superior.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s almost like reading has been elevated to a kind of rare alchemy, whereby you can unlock secret cheat codes to life. The feeling that you&amp;#x27;re in rareified air to actually read books. I think anyone who regularly reads books for pleasure should easily see through this - reading is just a hobby. It&amp;#x27;s a fun, intellectually challenging, infinitely variable hobby with a very long and distinguished history. But ultimately you could learn just as much about yourself and the world by doing pottery, woodworking, kayaking, knitting or whatever else you like to do with your spare time. Making it into such a self-serious pursuit kills most of the joy (and value, for that matter).&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s try to make reading commonplace, something we almost take for granted. Of course I read books, you read books, we all read books. Everybody poops, and everybody reads books. Wouldn&amp;#x27;t that be great? In that world, a Youtube commercial or Medium article promising that you can unlock secret lamborghinis on the moon by reading exactly 18.75 books a week would suddenly be absurdly transparent in setting off everyone&amp;#x27;s bullshit meters.  The question &amp;quot;read any good books lately?&amp;quot; could take on less of a challenging air and more conversational, the way so many people can casually drop 10 quotes from their favorite Netflix show they&amp;#x27;ve been binge watching during their commute to work.&lt;p&gt;Longform reading is magic because it&amp;#x27;s rarer than ever - it&amp;#x27;s an &lt;i&gt;art&lt;/i&gt; now, according to people like this author. That&amp;#x27;s why we have so much performative reading, a cheap replacement for the real thing. I&amp;#x27;d rather reading be boring and commonplace, something we do as easily as breathing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ravitation</author><text>What I think is somewhat interesting, is that there are numerous pieces of his&amp;#x2F;her comment, like the piece you quoted, that essentially imply the need for articles like the one posted here.&lt;p&gt;The idea that you can &amp;quot;learn just as much about [...] the world&amp;quot; from things other than what, until very recently, has been the primary mode of inter-generational human communication is pure absurdity. An idea whose absurdity is illustrated by all of human history. The fact that this requires explanation or demonstration is the reason that the current &amp;quot;trend&amp;quot; of elevating reading to a &amp;quot;rare alchemy&amp;quot; exists, because it essentially is if you&amp;#x27;re coming from a place of treating all activities as equal methods of learning.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently</title><url>https://aliabdaal.com/read-more-effectively/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tines</author><text>&amp;gt; But ultimately you could learn just as much about yourself and the world by doing pottery, woodworking, kayaking, knitting or whatever else you like to do with your spare time.&lt;p&gt;I agree with the rest of your post, but this sentence is a hard disagree. Books let you live a version of the lives of other more intelligent people from almost any point in history. How can pottery and kayaking do that?</text></item><item><author>dawg-</author><text>I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately - there seems to be more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much self-help and &amp;quot;motivation porn&amp;quot; focuses on reading books, as if it&amp;#x27;s a magical activity that will unlock the best version of oneself. It&amp;#x27;s part of the new aspirational message - imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, and &lt;i&gt;reading books&lt;/i&gt;. The people pushing that message get lots of eyeballs on their content because too many people have come to see reading as a lofty, obscure activity only fully accessible to the morally (and therefore financially) superior.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s almost like reading has been elevated to a kind of rare alchemy, whereby you can unlock secret cheat codes to life. The feeling that you&amp;#x27;re in rareified air to actually read books. I think anyone who regularly reads books for pleasure should easily see through this - reading is just a hobby. It&amp;#x27;s a fun, intellectually challenging, infinitely variable hobby with a very long and distinguished history. But ultimately you could learn just as much about yourself and the world by doing pottery, woodworking, kayaking, knitting or whatever else you like to do with your spare time. Making it into such a self-serious pursuit kills most of the joy (and value, for that matter).&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s try to make reading commonplace, something we almost take for granted. Of course I read books, you read books, we all read books. Everybody poops, and everybody reads books. Wouldn&amp;#x27;t that be great? In that world, a Youtube commercial or Medium article promising that you can unlock secret lamborghinis on the moon by reading exactly 18.75 books a week would suddenly be absurdly transparent in setting off everyone&amp;#x27;s bullshit meters.  The question &amp;quot;read any good books lately?&amp;quot; could take on less of a challenging air and more conversational, the way so many people can casually drop 10 quotes from their favorite Netflix show they&amp;#x27;ve been binge watching during their commute to work.&lt;p&gt;Longform reading is magic because it&amp;#x27;s rarer than ever - it&amp;#x27;s an &lt;i&gt;art&lt;/i&gt; now, according to people like this author. That&amp;#x27;s why we have so much performative reading, a cheap replacement for the real thing. I&amp;#x27;d rather reading be boring and commonplace, something we do as easily as breathing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gen_greyface</author><text>Doing pottery and kayaking is a better choice for me than reading someone do pottery and kayaking.&lt;p&gt;Edit: and not everything can be learnt from books</text></comment>