[HN Gopher] Serial Reader: Reading Schedule Builder
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Serial Reader: Reading Schedule Builder
Author : mlschmitt23
Score : 55 points
Date : 2022-12-20 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.serialreader.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.serialreader.org)
| ipaddr wrote:
| I recommend reading a book every three days (on average) and
| doing it for a year. I did this one year and read mostly bios and
| history material. At the end of the year I felt I have so much
| more knowledge in so many different areas and has given me
| different perspectives.
| boppo1 wrote:
| How many hours are you spending reading each day?
| vkdelta wrote:
| How do you do it? That seems a lot and more than 100+ a year
| fedeb95 wrote:
| My two cents, if you have to think hard about how to set aside
| time for reading, you have another problem
| Freak_NL wrote:
| The estimates seem a bit high, or perhaps unbalanced from book to
| book. _The Count of Monte Cristo_ is slated for 208 days at
| twenty minutes per day!
|
| I read mostly just in bed before going to sleep, averaging around
| 30 minutes. _The Count of Monte Cristo_ took me three to four
| weeks (I don 't keep notes on that, so it's an estimate), and I'm
| not a speed-reader. It's just a book that has aged well (i.e., a
| limited cognitive overhead) and is not particularly hard to read
| in the English translation.
|
| On the other hand, it lists _The Canterbury Tales_ for 64 days,
| which seems reasonable given that reading English that old really
| does take a lot more effort (and that 's assuming an annotated
| edition), but way out of whack compared to Dumas' novel above.
| (Also _The Canterbury Tales_ is not a work I read in one go; a
| couple of stories before moving to another book is sensible here
| in my opinion.)
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| The unabridged Count of Monte Cristo is substantially longer
| than the more popular abridged version.
| mzi wrote:
| The first copy I found have 1286 pages, so that means you
| read six pages per day at around three minutes per page.
| babblingfish wrote:
| You may have read the abridged version while the estimate is
| calculated on the unabridged version.
| wazoox wrote:
| > _The estimates seem a bit high, or perhaps unbalanced from
| book to book. The Count of Monte Cristo is slated for 208 days
| at twenty minutes per day!_
|
| I've started reading _Monte Cristo_ one day. I finished the
| 1800 pages of it in one long 48 hours sitting, hardly sleeping
| or doing anything else. That 's how you read this book. It was
| a _feuilleton_ , one page a day in the newspaper, and there is
| a cliffhanger at the last line of every frigging page. You just
| _can 't stop_. It was certainly a big selling point for the
| journal publishing it back then :D
| 5555624 wrote:
| > I've started reading Monte Cristo one day. I finished the
| 1800 pages of it in one long 48 hours sitting, hardly
| sleeping or doing anything else. That's how you read this
| book.
|
| I don't think I could do it in one long sitting. The last
| time I read it, my "serial" approach was to read one chapter
| per day, before going to bed. It was hard to stop; but, it
| was also easy to pick up each day. (Another advantage was it
| sat next to the bed and I didn't have to carry it anywhere,
| since it didn't fit in a pocket.) I'm about to read it again
| and I'm not sure what approach I'll take.
| TylerE wrote:
| If the only translation you've read is the public domain one
| from the 19th century, it was heavily censored/edited. Newer
| translations are much better, and have all the hash smoking and
| lesbian sex. (And yea, I'm being literal)
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > And yea, I'm being literal
|
| highly recommend Ovid then :)
| peatfreak wrote:
| How does the Penguin translation stack up? It's the only one
| I can easily find.
| TylerE wrote:
| Assuming it's the Robin Buss translation - that's the one
| you want! Only version that was fully translated in the
| modern era. The earlier ones were all based off the
| problematic 19th century translations with various amounts
| of the "scandalous" stuff added back in.
|
| Samples:
|
| 19th PD: https://welovetranslations.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/12/st...
|
| Buss: https://welovetranslations.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/12/bu...
|
| (Not any spoilers really...these are both the 1st page).
|
| Even here, notice the heavy abridgement...two whole
| sentences axed from the first 3 paragraphs alone!
|
| The Buss just reads so much better and more idiomatically,
| even ignoring the censorship issues.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| It's harder (but more rewarding) reading certain books the
| umpteenth time because they are so complex or require other
| reading to fully grasp and appreciate. For me some examples
| were
|
| J. Joyce Dubliners
|
| Dante's Divine Comedy
|
| several others.
|
| The hard work makes the journey meaningful (for me) and I'm
| absolutely bored ticking check boxes just to brag about having
| speed read through 60 classics in a year.
| dustincoates wrote:
| Your comment reminds me of a description I once heard of the
| Divine Comedy: "once you've read the Divine Comedy, you're
| ready to read the Divine Comedy."
| [deleted]
| nu11ptr wrote:
| Reading War and Peace in 20 min/day increments? Would that be a
| good experience?
|
| disclaimer: I have not read, but normally very long books are
| best absorbed in larger chunks as they tend to be more
| descriptive and take longer for plot to unfold
| branweb wrote:
| I haven't read War and Peace, nor (presumably) have I tried
| this app, but I will gladly come into the comments and shit on
| it. Gotta love hacker news.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| A bit lost. In what way did I shit on it? And why do I need
| an app to understand how much reading 20 min a day is? I'm
| simply suggesting larger, richer books are often best
| absorbed when you have more time to enjoy them and get
| involved in the plot which often takes longer to unfold. I
| could be wrong it just struck me as a bad fit for a 20
| min/day. exercise. I could be wrong.
| babblingfish wrote:
| There are really short chapters and really long chapters. I
| agree that some of the longer chapters, especially the
| battle scenes, are probably too long for a 20 minute
| reading session.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| I have read a lot of classic books and several of them are quite
| dull. I have no idea why you would read both _Wuthering Heights_
| and _The Count of Monte Cristo_ just because they are "classic".
|
| For people that really want to read through some these books, I
| actually recommend the abridged versions first. It is a lot
| easier to read the details of the full novel if you have read the
| abridged versions, and know that you enjoy the story.
|
| Another suggestion if you just want to get used to reading long
| books is to start with something more modern like the Game of
| Thrones books, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter.
| northwest65 wrote:
| I low key enjoyed COVID, it gave me a week of free time to read.
| FvKdgxD wrote:
| Does anyone know of a more generic piece of software for this? I
| want to be able to input my own books to read and get a schedule.
| ikesau wrote:
| readinglength.com can give you an estimate based on page count,
| which, if you wanted to build your own tool, is freely
| available for most books via Open Library's API.
| martzy13 wrote:
| That seems like it would be a fun side project to work on...
| Thanks for the idea!
| karaterobot wrote:
| I devote part of my time to rereading books, on the basis that
| you've read a book for the first time only on second read. One
| benefit is that I get a lot more out of them, another is that I
| remember more of them. This is useful when the book is
| complicated, or more is going on than is obvious at the surface:
| many classics benefit from this strategy.
| OriginalPenguin wrote:
| Nice. Can you talk a little bit about what this is written in and
| how the development process went?
| mlschmitt23 wrote:
| This web project is Python Flask web server backed by MongoDB,
| mostly written as Jinja template HTMLs and forms instead of any
| slick JavaScript which was fun to try!
|
| The mobile apps are Objective-C for iOS (with very small
| amounts of Swift, boy I have been slow to pick that up and
| start migrating my codebase) and Java for Android. Backed by a
| Flask API and MongoDB.
| mokash wrote:
| one piece of advice for anyone about to read war and peace: the
| number of chracters are vast and you'll find that the names used
| to refer to each can often change with no warning. different
| names can be used interchangeably, even in the same piece of
| dialogue. it can get very confusing. best to have a map of
| character names before you start.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Don't be discouraged from "War and Peace", because it says that
| it is 235 days (probably it is much less). When I finished it, I
| wished it had another 1,000 pages.
| danielodievich wrote:
| I am an avid reader, reading 2 or 3 books at a time, alternating
| between history and economics to fiction and fantasy, with
| detours into science and periodicals (like The Economist). I
| think I exceed this 50 books/year goal easily, but I never bother
| counting. I am also lucky to read in more than one language, for
| a nice variety. Incidentally, I read Moby Dick this year and
| found it a mixed experience, but more on a pleasure side.
|
| Anyhow, it's been very interesting to see changes in myself the
| attention span required. I have to consciously put my phone and
| get cozy in reading chair so I am not distracted.
|
| For my teenage children, once phones and high school was
| introduced, their reading dropped quite a bit. They still read
| but they seem like madly dancing gadflys in their approach to it.
|
| Yesterday we visited with friends and their 12 year old daughter
| was on chapter 3 of Count of Monte Cristo and was complaining
| that it was dull and when it was going to start being awesome. We
| (her parents and our family) were cheering her to stay with it
| because the epic tale of escape and revenge (served quite cold)
| is really good.
| izzydata wrote:
| I find that part of the reason a book can feel so great is
| because of the time investment. If you could somehow read Count
| of Monte Cristo in 5 minutes and absorb all the information I
| don't think it would have the same impact. So basically you
| need the "dull" or at least more mundane parts of the story so
| that the climax can exist and actually feel climactic.
|
| Semi related, but I feel like this is one of the reasons that a
| lot of Japanese RPG games are 80-100 hours long. It feels much
| more like a long adventure and despite a large percentage of it
| being mundane it really adds to the emotional investment in
| what you are doing.
| danielodievich wrote:
| Yes, that's right! In many ways a good book experience is
| like a really nicely made and presented dinner. Sure, you can
| wolf down a nicely made steak and drown a glass of wine
| quickly, but you would have missed out on a nice conversation
| and enjoyment.
|
| Lots of modern literature for youths is all about crash boom
| bang getting right into it tiktokiness algorithm wise - hey
| if something isn't flipping on the screen quickly it's no
| good. I enjoy that occasionally, like at the beach or by the
| pool, but not always.
| mlschmitt23 wrote:
| > Incidentally, I read Moby Dick this year and found it a mixed
| experience, but more on a pleasure side.
|
| Same here! Enjoyed more than not, but not at all what I was
| expecting. Much funnier than I had thought it would be. I did
| get a chuckle at how quickly things wrapped up at the end and
| how I had completely forgot the narrator was actually a
| character on the ship.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Let those kids watch the recent-ish movie. Then, after tell
| them as good as it was, it sucks compared to the book, because
| it does. I love that movie but there's just not enough time for
| everything in COMC
| roughly wrote:
| I had an extended sabbatical during the lockdown where I made
| an effort to rekindle my reading habit - one thing I noticed
| about my attention was that it came in waves. Within a minute
| or two of really sitting down with a book, my attention would
| wander; if I ignored it and attended to the book, I was fine.
| Fifteen or so minutes later, my brain again started wandering;
| getting past this mark gave me another 45 minutes to an hour of
| focused reading. In previous years at work, I'd find that if I
| didn't succumb to distraction at that 45-60min mark, I could
| usually get another hour and a half or two hours of serious
| focused work in.
|
| I had a solid year of sabbatical in which I was able to really
| get to know my attention span - it's much harder to maintain
| and cultivate now that I'm working again, but learning those
| patterns has given me a lot more confidence in my ability to
| exercise my attention span when needed.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| > Yesterday we visited with friends and their 12 year old
| daughter was on chapter 3 of Count of Monte Cristo and was
| complaining that it was dull and when it was going to start
| being awesome. We (her parents and our family) were cheering
| her to stay with it because the epic tale of escape and revenge
| (served quite cold) is really good.
|
| It _is_ really good, but one thing I have learned to appreciate
| is that some books just don 't work for many teenagers yet.
| Classics in particular! You need quite a large frame of
| reference (history, geography, societal issues and classes) to
| be able to appreciate a novel written in 1844 which takes place
| in France in the decades before that. If a book doesn't work at
| 12, just let it be and find something more accessible for her.
|
| Nothing kills a long time habit of reading better than being
| forced to read novels that don't (yet) work for you.
| danielodievich wrote:
| You are absolutely right.
|
| I was one of the teenagers who read everything that was in
| front of me and I think when I read the Count of Monte Cristo
| at ~12, I already had an understanding of at least a general
| outline of the Napoleonic wars and some inkling of the
| geography.
|
| My brother hardly read anything as a kid and laughed at my
| nose being the book a lot. I remember him calling me when he
| was in his early 30ies and saying - hey, I am reading this
| Monte Cristo book and it is REALLY GOOD. I was like YEAH IT
| IS REALLY GOOD, I told you so! But he couldn't have
| appreciated it before he was ready...
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > It is really good, but one thing I have learned to
| appreciate is that some books just don't work for many
| teenagers yet. Classics in particular!
|
| I think it was Forster who wrote (I'm paraphrasing) that
| trying to teach teenagers literary novels is almost
| pointless, and more likely to piss them off than enlighten
| them, because they simply don't have the highly-developed
| sense of empathy to appreciate them yet.
| ozim wrote:
| I was under impression that reading novels was 'to develop
| sense of empathy' not to enlighten them.
| smu wrote:
| It's pretty much about stretching yourself but not
| overstretching. The classics might be the latter for a
| teenager. I guess it depends on the person.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| It depends strongly on the person. Blessed are those who
| have/had a teacher that could recommend them the right
| books for them at any given time. I didn't start reading
| for leisure again until my late twenties when _The
| Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy_ drew me in, despite
| growing up reading everything from Franco-Belgian comics
| to Karl May.
|
| High school kills any interest in reading more often than
| not.
| susam wrote:
| In 2021, I did an experiment to find out how long it takes to
| read classic _technical_ books if we spend 40 minutes a day. It
| turned out that our small book club could read and understand a
| complete analytic number theory book in 120 days. The complete
| meetup logs are archived here:
| https://susam.net/club/meets/iant.html
|
| I am currently doing a similar book club meetups for Mastering
| Emacs. If this sounds interesting to you, you are very welcome to
| join us. Meeting link, schedule, and other details are available
| here: https://susam.net/club/mastering-emacs/
| erksa wrote:
| This sounds very interesting. Might come lurk a couple of times
| if the scheduling works!
| constantcrying wrote:
| In my experience reading frequently, even if just for short
| periods, is easily the best way to read a lot.
|
| Ten thousand pages in a year might seem like an enormous ammount,
| but it is actually quite manageable if you dedicade one part of
| every day to doing so.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Sadly this doesn't include many books. Probably going by free
| ebooks library or such.
|
| Would Love to hear from other's book recommendations fiction or
| non.
|
| Those looking for inspiration I'd recommend (not in order)
|
| * Ray Bradbury
|
| * Pearl S. Buck
|
| * John Wyndham
|
| * Fyodor Dostoevsky
|
| * Frank Herbert - Dune
|
| * Terry GoodKind - Wizard's first rule
| yamtaddle wrote:
| It's caught some shit over the years, but it's hard to go wrong
| picking almost anything off Bloom's (IIRC somewhat reluctantly-
| compiled, at the request of the publisher) list from the
| appendices of _The Western Canon_.
|
| There's another pretty good one, that includes more science
| writing and such, at the end of Adler's _How to Read a Book_.
|
| Bloom's:
|
| http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html
|
| Adler's:
|
| http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtadler.html
|
| And that site has a bunch of other lists in a similar spirit,
| on it.
|
| [EDIT] One thing to beware of with free ebooks and non-English
| works in translation, is that it's pretty common for older
| public-domain translations to be needlessly-obtuse to a modern
| reader, or outright bad. Worth taking a few minutes to compare
| your options before committing to one of those.
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