Comment by saberience | Hacker News Reader

Comment by saberience | Hacker News Reader

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I often hear people boasting about their "speed reading" skills and then I ask them what sort of books they read, turns out speed reading and having "good retention rate" is easy if you're reading crap. I could also speed read Clive Cussler, Stephen King, and JK Rowling.

I love Philosophy and classic literature and I've yet to meet anyone that's managed to speed read Proust's "In Search of Lost Time", and then tell give me a detailed description of the plot, themes, artistic merit, and so on. Similarly with books like Ulysses. There's no possible way to speed read that book because it's so rich with allusions, references to religion, art, mythology, and philosophy. If you tried to "speed read" it, you would be missing half the point of reading it in the first place.

Reading great books isn't about numbers, you don't get rewarded for how many classics you read in a year. Reading great books is about slowly absorbing all the riches inside, something that just cannot happen if you're rushing. I've read The Brothers Karamazov and The Magic Mountain 4 or 5 times and each time I learn something new and gain a deeper understanding of psychology and life. I find it more rewarding to read and re-read the classics slowly, writing notes, using a critical guide (or book of companion essays), than smashing through as many crappy novels or modern popular non-fiction books (The Power of Now of any of Malcom Gladwells books are typical fodder for todays readers).

This is legitimately the most pretentious HN comment I've ever read, and that's a very high bar.

I too dismiss things that people enjoy as "crap" because I have such a gigantic brain from reading philosophy and looking down everyone else, and belittle them for believing that they read and understand fast in the wrong type of book.

I actually read and enjoy Stephen King and JK Rowling, but I don't tell myself it's fine art and I'm super "smart" for speed reading it. I don't try and speed read anything because I don't think it's useful or meaningful.

I'm trying to rally against the crowd you always find in any thread on speed-reading who love to talk about how great they are for reading 10 books a day and gaining nothing from it.

One can legitimately spend 20 minutes reading a single page...sometimes it depends on the thought, craft and skill of the author but relies on the reader to actually give a damn - enjoying reading for the sake of reading...

One authors view - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/07/howard-jacobso...

It's not really up for debate that it takes more concentration and time to read Ulysses or Hegel than it does to read the Dark Tower or Harry Potter series.

Edit: And I like all of the above books/authors

Being difficult to read definitely isn't a mark of quality, but all books aren't written at the same difficulty (vocabulary, ideas, information density) level, even if the idea that some things are harder than others strikes you as elitist.

I like King and can confirm that I can read it much faster then books he mentions.

Some books are quick to read, others slow. Ulysses was intentionally written to be difficult and Stephen King put great effort in making his books easy to read.

The post could have been written with a different tone, but I think it makes a good point that can't be purely dismissed as simple snobbery or belittling.

I think the reason some folks get defensive on this topic is that it's somewhat common for someone to claim to be an incredibly fast reader, but on closer inspection it is (almost always) revealed that they are reading very straightforward and simple fiction that is about as close to being designed for speed reading as possible. This makes the claim of speed reading feel disingenuous. There can be truly dramatic differences between novels in terms of the complexity of the language used and the nuance of characters and events. I don't think one should expect a particularly celebratory response if one is making other folks feel like slow readers when they actually have been reading far more complicated material.

>This is legitimately the most pretentious HN comment I've ever read, and that's a very high bar.

Or just one that tells it like it is.

Not everything is of the same level (e.g. Bach and Nicky Minaj or Coltrane and Vanilla Ice), and not everything is equally "subjective". The same that goes for music, goes for literature, cinema, and so on.

Sure, USA was founded on a populist ideology, where no individual's tastes and cultural development is lesser than another's. Well, not all cultures agree with that.

>I too dismiss things that people enjoy as "crap" because I have such a gigantic brain from reading philosophy and looking down everyone else, and belittle them for believing that they read and understand fast in the wrong type of book.

Well, at some point someone has to belittle if not the people, surely the wrong type of book -- in other words, put it in perspective, not everything is a diamond -- else there's no art and no culture, just an indistinguishable blob of different works.

Ever read a Tom Clancy book? Absolute crap. In about 3 dimensions. But, entertaining. Have read them all. Quickly.

I completely agree. I can read incredibly fast however I've attenuated my reading speed over time to appreciate richness of text and think deeply about the ideas that are being communicated. At some point the actual technical part of reading becomes trivial and the ideas become what's important.

Speed reading seems have become a point of pride for many people. I think they see it as a proxy for intelligence rather than a learned ability that is very useful in some (not all) contexts.

I have a similar attitude toward audio books. When someone claims that listening to an audio book is largely the same as reading it, it strikes me that this could only be true of books which aren't especially demanding in terms of comprehension. The idea of listening to audio book of Hegel or using an audio book in lieu of textbooks to study for school seems crazy to me.

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