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Comment by Raidion | Hacker News Reader

Problem I have with books is that it's much harder to justify the "time" to get lost in books. When I was a kid, I was near the top of the school's reading program and devoured books. But now, when I do have time on vacation or sick, I'd almost much rather read something that's educational-ish. It's hard to justify the X hours falling into a fantasy world, though it's still almost as fun as it used to be.

Practically I think I have more "ties" to the real world, with a job, family, etc, and it's harder for me to stop worrying about those things long enough to slip inside the mind of a character in a book.

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Be careful with that. It's easy to get overwhelmed when you least expect it. Let yourself relax and get lost on occasion. It will do wonders for your mental health.

> It's easy to get overwhelmed when you least expect it.

I am in process of learning this the hard way. Too much stress built up has lead to lots of physical manifestations.

If you have to justify it, you're doing it wrong. Your free time is your playground. Take half an hour -- or ten minutes -- each day and enjoy those fantasy worlds. They might refresh you.

A problem with fantasy worlds is the escapism is mild, and I develop something like tolerance to it. The tolerance effect makes finishing very long fantasy books / trilogies slow, since it causes me to put them down in the middle if the story slows down at any point. Once I've put it down for a few days, the mild escapism isn't enough to pull me back and I start losing touch with the characters and plot. I experience something like that with video games as well.

This got out of hand. TL; DR: If the fantasy novels you're reading don't work for you, try different styles or even different genres. We don't all have to read the same books.

I'd disagree strongly that fantasy novels have only mild escapism, but that leads me to this point: It sounds more like you need a different genre of book or style of writing. Fantasy may just not be engaging for you, or maybe you need something less Tolkien/Robert Jordan/Steven Erikson style. Something more escapist/lighthearted (Brandon Sanderson is good, R.A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms novels are good, L.E. Modesitt Jr's Imager series, etc.). Or vice/versa - escapism may just not work for you, in which case something more thoughtful like Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen may be worth trying.

I will say I've rarely put down a fantasy series in the middle the way you've mentioned. Scifi will get me to do that though - I have the entire Mars trilogy on my bookshelf, but I've only read half of the first book - it's just too dry for me (and, frankly, I dislike the author's style. Revealing plot points near the beginning of the novel was a very poor choice). On the other hand, I very much enjoy the Culture novels, and Peter Hamilton's work.

For other unrelated genres: I really don't do mystery novels at all, as they don't interest me. Alternate history, I quite enjoy (at least Harry Turtledove's work- I can't say I've read much else)

Incidentally, there's one other thing that just kind of happens, but avoids me avoid dropping a novel - I rarely start a new series with only a short time to read. Get 15 minutes in to a series and go away for the day, and you may not feel that it's interesting enough to come back. Get an hour in, and usually that's not a problem.

If you want to try SciFi that draws you into a world like fantasy, strong recommend for the Ringworld series!

Hard disagree there.

Your 'free' time is valuable currency, and every minute must be invested as productively as possible, or you'll lose to someone else who does in this kill or die monkey knife fight economy [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/].

(edit: corrected link. Thank you!)

Poe's law may be in effect here, especially as I'm unfamiliar with SSC Moloch, but I can't agree with you if you are serious.

I don't need to win a knife fight against an opponent who poisons himself. And, well, we're on HN: as we all know, burnout will pretty quickly put you out of the fight.

There you go: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ :)

I've read that twice now. Just as interesting, funny and depressing both times.

Ah, but read to the end of the essay:

"So be it with Gnon. Our job is to placate him insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and invasion. And that only for a short time, until we come into our full power."

To give everything of yourself over to Gnon/Moloch is to deny Elua, who Scott names the god of art, science, philosophy, love, niceness, community, civilization. One might add to that: the god of play, of gardening – of reading.

I don't think you want to go down this rabbit hole. Free time and relaxing is important investment IMO. My own experience with this philosophy was that it results in heavy burnout. And besides, you never know what you'll get out of a book or a TV show, some of them have been just as impactful on my life as works of philosophy or workout podcasts or what have you.

Hard disagree there.

Free time is for enjoying life, doing things you love, spending time with loved ones,... Not everything has to be about ones productivity.

Our time is way too short to spend everything producing things that will likely be forgotten or not used anymore in 75 years.

We must not forget to live life.

Apparently you think there's not much to be gained from reading fiction. Maybe there's your problem.

Good fiction can teach you more about human nature than any non-fiction. Marginally more knowledge about human nature can get you further than marginally more technical knowledge.

I read about 30-40 books a year but I am the same as you, I don't have the time or patience to cut out a slice dedicated to staring at a page.

Can I recommend you try an audio book? I have found that most of the time I do chores, like dishes, fixing stuff around the place, the treadmill or even the shower can be quite enjoyable when listening to an audio book.

Any automatic mundane task which you are already expending time on can easily be overlaid with audio.

A fun example is that I am listening to "Countdown to Day Zero: Stuxnet" which was recommended here! I ended up enjoying the book for an hour, and at the end of it, the kitchen was spotless.

Maybe you could do history or classic literary fiction to combine the enjoyment with a somewhat educational feel.

I feel the exact same way. I tend to lean towards self-help books but this ranges anywhere from your typical self-help, to dog training books, to biographies, to educational, to technical ones for developing.

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