"I believe one should only read those books which bite and sting.
If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a blow to the head, then why read the book?
To make us happy, as you write?
My God, we would be just as happy if we had no books, and those books that make us happy, we could write ourselves if necessary.
But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that hurts us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like if we were being driven into forests, away from all people, like a suicide, a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." [2]
"Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder vorstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns."
I don’t know if I’m taking Kafka too literally here, but the books that I read that bite and sting probably fall into two categories. Things that are cynically written in bad faith and things that are hopeless and callous. Torture porn bites and stings, reading hacky partisan politics bites and stings. Anything that makes me feel stupider after reading it bites and stings.
The things that I think that he wants to say, the inconvenient truths, the things that make me see the world in a whole new way, that challenge everything I believe in. Those things fill me with joy and wonder they are just so few and far between.
Maybe the thing he’s getting at is the existential dread? The truth that nothing you do is meaningful? The staring into the abyss? In which case maybe in moderation, but I fundamentally disagree.
in a sense I wonder, if this is what he means, what a weird way to view life, that those things that challenge you are negative.
I think he is ultimately saying that you should be emotionally vulnerable, and you should read things that break through that inner barrier that we all put up. Reading a good book is like making a connection, and becoming emotionally invested in that world and the ideas within it. Turning that last page and knowing that its all over can be a heart-wrenching experience as well. I know I've experienced this indescribable feeling of loss or even grief almost after reading a good book.
That could also mean reading biographies of others lives, love stories, things that challenge your world view and things that are a little above our skill level. There is value in being willing to challenge your own beliefs (if they can't be challenged with a new understanding or new knowledge, then they aren't so much beliefs as they are a doctrine to be followed) and being willing to be emotionally vulnerable.
For as long as i can remember ideas have "Struck Me", and the more i read the more "Intellectually Uneasy" i become. I realise faulty assumptions about "What a thing represents" can lead me down a dead "Branch"; Whether in formal systems like math, tech architecture or social matters.
Sometimes as you say, "cynically written" books like 1984 can be have that bite, and thats true, but some books that have "Bite" because makes me go "Whoa!" or a slight panic when my world-view gets changed.
Godel, escher, bach was one of the first books that did that for me. It struck me on the head and i could not put the book down. Concepts of infinity and strange loops dominated my underlying intellectual uneasyness for some time afterwards.
Blood Meridian was also a book that shook my understanding of pre-1800 life. How close to savagery humanity still was only 200 years ago fundamentally shook my understanding of where i stand in relation to my ancestors.
"The Quants" showed me how shaky our financial infrastructure really is.
The Rose Of Paracelsus: On Secrets & Sacraments blew my mind. Spending 20 years to create a masterpeice that would certainly fall into both of your categories at once... a brilliant, cynical book, hopeless and callous in the eyes of a population with the attention span of a tik tok.
A lot of positive change can from works of philosophy.
Thats things that just knock your world view around for a brief moment in a almost confused-joyous-understanding. Make question your intuitions for a little bit.
"If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a blow to the head, then why read the book?" --
That's the authorial feeling of self-importance making itself visible.
Why read the book?
Because it might be enjoyable, a pastime, something that makes us dream, reflect, cry, or connect some dots in our lives through a parallel representation of feelings or ideas.
There are many reasons, and the "blow to the head" will not and should not be the main reason, especially for older people who have seen some water flowing under the bridge and see the shock factor as artfully constructed and therefore much less provocative than the author intended it to be.
Made me check and Google translated it about the same. No unexpected comma or awkward driven into the woods (by whom?), punch is a punch (blow is more generic), but awkward duplication of "one".
> I believe that one should only read books that bite and sting one. If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a punch to the head, why do we read the book? So that it makes us happy, as you write? My God, we would be happy even if we had no books, and if necessary we could write the kind of books that make us happy ourselves. But we need books that affect us like a misfortune that hurts us greatly, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like if we were to venture into the woods, away from everyone, like a suicide; a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
I liked the ChatGPT version better. The repeated "one" is paticularly jarring and not a stylistic feature of the original (which has man...einen, two different words reasonably translated as "one"). "Misfortune" is a more literal translation than "disaster", but in the context that it greatly hurts us, I prefer the latter. And I'm pretty sure "wir in Wälder vorstoßen würden" is closer to being cast out or driven away than just going for a nice sylvan walk. The passive voice there is faithful to the original. The comma after "disaster" is the only part I don't like in modern English.
I think you should only read books that bite and sting you. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a punch to the skull, why are we reading it? So that it makes us happy, as you write? My God, we would be happy even if we didn't have books, and we could write the books that make us happy ourselves if need be. But we need books that have an effect on us like a misfortune that hurts us very much, like the death of someone we preferred to us, like pushing us into the woods, away from all people, like a suicide, a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
A useful habit that I've begun to follow with more complicated books—especially when reading them out of personal interest—is to actively avoid taking notes or worrying about background material on a first read.
I've recently read and greatly enjoyed a historical fiction novel called "Augustus" written by John Edward Williams and published in 1972. On the surface level, it's about the events of the life of Augustus Caesar (better known in the book as "Octavian")—but on a deeper level, it's about the rarity of longtime friends in life, and dealing with aging and one's mortality. I put the novel off for a year because I thought I had to read a non-fiction historical account of Augustus's life first, as I thought I couldn't appreciate the novel without doing so, due to the unfamiliar character names and events. But one day, I just decided to try it out—and I found myself naturally remembering the character names and events without special care in reading the novel.
Similar experiences have been reported by people engaging with various forms of media. I've seen readers take copious notes on the novel "Infinite Jest," which has a reputation for being a difficult read, only to burn out. In contrast, readers who have finished the novel said that they didn't need to take notes, and that the story began to make sense simply by reading more.
I've also seen a similar pattern from subjects as academic mathematics, where some learners spend too much time on textbook explanations instead of working on the textbook problems, to subjects as relaxed as computer role-playing games, in which some players end up dropping these games due to a perceived need to take notes to understand the story, before they can get immersed in the game's world.
I think a lot more understanding and enjoyment of various subjects can be attained by being comfortable with confusion for a while. While note-taking has its place in understanding a subject, I've personally found that immersion is the most important factor for understanding.
I finished Infinite Jest without taking notes. I definitely missed a lot of stuff but I loved the experience and it ended up being one of my favorite books.
I think Infinite Jest is a great example for this sort of thing because I later realized that I had completely missed the entire main plot. By the author:
> There is an ending as far as I’m concerned. Certain kind of parallel lines are supposed to start converging in such a way that an “end” can be projected by the reader somewhere beyond the right frame. If no such convergence or projection occurred to you, then the book’s failed for you.
Nothing converged for me at all and yet I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I’m still not quite sure what to think of that.
Aaron Swartz (yep, that Aaron Swartz) wrote a great essay that explains the ending and main plot in clear language:
But I don’t think I got any part of that plot by reading the book. It’s all hidden and disjointed, and there’s so much interesting stuff at the surface that you almost don’t even care to go deeper.
If you ever get the urge to read Infinite Jest again (which I highly recommend—a second read is easily more enjoyable than the first), the Infinite Jest Wiki includes some page-by-page annotations that are nice to have on hand.
https://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com/david-foster-wallace/in...
Probably overkill to look up every little thing (and most of the annotations are just defining SAT-worthy words anyway), but I liked having it around when a random word/phrase would make no sense and it turned out to be a vintage shaving cream brand or some bit of Boston-ese.
And it's free of spoilers, so friendly enough to first-time readers, but I do think a first read is best with no notes or supporting material or anything. Other than two bookmarks, lol.
The best thing about reading(and finishing) Infinite Jest is that you are not sure. Not sure if the book has ended, not sure about anything. I've read and listened to multiple interpretation of the book. But that is what makes it a different experience(because of varying perspectives)
I have no research to back this up, but I think the need to understand everything may result from low self-esteem. Specifically, when not knowing something, people with low self-esteem may feel stupid. To eliminate this feeling, they† focus on learning. It is a good adaptive mechanism, especially compared to maladaptive ones like avoidance behaviors. A potentially better one is learning not to derive self-worth from how much we know or how others perceive us.
† Some of them, not everyone, on average, etc. Also, different people have different motivations. Not everyone who has a curious mind has low self-esteem. People are complex.
This made me think of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, where you find yourself thinking “I need to look some of this stuff up, it’s becoming hard to know if I understand it all”, but that is part of the satirical commentary he wanted to make - it’s very meta, very good, not knowing all of the esoteric references is the exact point.
Foucault’s is amazing. It’s a great story, but it also delivers a visceral experience that really mirrors what the characters are feeling. One of the best “medium is the message” books.
I see so many comments about taking notes while reading. I didn't even know that was a thing. I'm not even sure if I would want to do it, because it would interrupt the reading. My own personal belief (which I came up with just now) is that reading novels should be a smooth relatively easy affair. Because I read simply for the fun of it. This may not be the case with academic books however. I just, start reading.
I have in fact stalled on books before though off the top of my head only SICP and Anna Karenina come to mind. I'll reattempt both of them in the near future. Stalling on SICP was probably due to me not having the sufficient math background, which I'm slowly working on fixing. The post you wrote gives me hope.
There's a possibility that I've been doing things the wrong way all these years.
First read, I don’t take notes unless I’m familiar with the material. At most, I’ll mark interesting passages. But I usually pause after each or every two chapters, reflecting on the concepts.
I don’t take notes with fiction books, but I pause whenever I can’t give it my full attention (interruptions, some other tasks, tired).
I think taking notes while reading fiction would be relatively unusual (outside fields like literary criticism), but taking notes while reading non-fiction is quite common, especially when grappling with denser material.
For example, I kept extensive notes while reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. The work assumes you're internalising as you go along, which is somewhat inescapable given the nature of the material. The author can't stop to re-explain some finer point of Aristotle's every time it is engaged with in the subsequent two thousand years.
Pausing to take notes helps one reflect on the material and solidify their understanding, but also gives them a quick reference later if necessary. I just use my phone's Notes app, to keep the barrier as low as possible.
Fascinating. My first response to your opening paragraph was horror - how on Earth could you hope to really internalize and learn from a textbook without taking notes on it? - before realizing that you were (mostly) referring to fiction or entertainment media. In which case, yes, I wholeheartedly agree with you - don't do anything to pull yourself out of the story, remain immersed and (if it's a well-structured work) it will start to make sense to you.
I did take notes throughout my first playthrough of Elden Ring, for instance, and started enjoying it a lot more once I stopped!
> A useful habit that I've begun to follow with more complicated books—especially when reading them out of personal interest—is to actively avoid taking notes or worrying about background material on a first read.
I recommend using those little sticky tabs instead. If I come across something I want to look up later, or want to come back to for whatever reason I use one on the page itself to to highlight the line, and another at the top so I can find the page again. By the time I'm done reading it might be full of those little tabs but it doesn't really slow me down in the moment.
Agreed. I used to struggle with remembering all these names in novels, but recently came to terms with the “dysnomia” by drawing parallels between reading fiction with hearing anecdotes, where capturing the rough dynamic and vibe is more important than remembering characters; confusing names is venial if the confusion is part of the experience.
If you enjoyed Williams's Augustus, do give Stoner and Butcher's Crossing a read. I "enjoyed" them even more than Augustus. Enjoyed is in quotes because they are both emotionally devastating -- Stoner more so than Butcher's Crossing. I didn't feel like myself for a week after reading Stoner and a decade later I still often think about it.
I read Stoner a month ago, and just finished Augustus. Both are among the best books I have read this year, so far at least. I’ll be picking up Butcher’s Crossing soon but needed some lighter reads in-between :)
I will admit that there is some level of joy in finding previously unnoticed angle or joke on re-read. Every few years or so I find one such gem in Pratchett's books. It does make me smile. I don't think I can emjoy Infinite Jest or Ulysses that way.
For non-fiction, I will admit that it is hard for me to take that advice. I am currently going through a historical analysis book, which in itself covers a complicated topic and references tons of source materials, which now I feel almost obligated to add to my reading list. And for harder subjects, it feels like I get lost on the foundational materials if I don't take notes.
I’ve recently moved to Europe and found myself surrounded by hundreds of famous galleries, which are essentially the main entertainment here.
I started visiting them and looking at classical paintings, little by little googling what it was and why. It turned out to be so exciting!
Now, a year later, I can say for sure which of the women with a severed male head in their hands in the painting is Judith and which is Salome. And I understand much better how people lived in these parts before, and why they live the way they do now.
Therefore, I completely agree with the author of the article - sometimes you need to plunge into the unknown, and this unknown will reward you.
I’m afraid to imagine how many discoveries await me in museums of contemporary art.
As an artist and technologist living in Europe, I am glad to see a comment like this. It's refreshing. An open-minded and incremental approach to culture can be incredibly rewarding.
I can relate so much! Went to Uffizi once, I wondered why so many people were lining up to get in because I had zero clue about art at the time, after deciding to actually take a look in the museum with audio guide, I spent almost 4 hours in Uffizi though I didn't have many clues about lots of them, I was just trying to "feel" the pieces, years later, I finally started to read books about art and suddenly I had this amazing realization of "wow isn't that art that I've seen before?" then it all makes sense now, it's one of the best feeling ever, now I usually just go checkout museums, venues or whatever it is because I know even though I cannot appreciate the art at the moment, some day in the future I'll be glad that I take the chance to look at it.
The article title reminded me of when I was young and used to read Byte Magazine. Byte used to cover a wide range of topics, and could get quite technical, but the big thing that is vastly different to today is that you would get a monthly digest of articles that were selected by the editors, not by yourself. And I used to read it cover to cover. There was a lot I didn't understand, but also I feel like I gained a wider knowledge than if I only read what I was interested in, and many times the ideas that I was exposed to turned out to be useful much later in life.
Some of them ended up being distractions too, like playing with hardware, or writing a compiler, but it was all very interesting.
Byte magazine was a terrific publication. There's nothing similar in print these days that I'm aware of. Certainly, Byte couldn't be accused of dumbing down the content to reach a wider audience, unlike many of today's supposedly technical magazines. I learned a lot from Byte and experimented frequently with the knowledge and understanding I gained from Byte.
I had a huge complex in my youth , I simply couldn’t read as fast as my peers. Now, I realize that I was going too fast, and by slowing down, taking my time and reading slowly I could absorb more, and understand, and I had this amazing ability to never forget anything I did read (at least for an extended period of maybe 2-3 years). I realized over time that going fast isn’t for me. Better to go slow absorb, digest and ultimately retain more would get me where I needed to be. Never did well in school in terms of grades but ultimately I got better and better doing a masters and actually got sponsored to do my PhD. Many years I read but could not understand, but ultimately it was the joy of reading slow that got me further than the joy of reading and not understanding.
I do this for my media consumption. I take breaks, never trying to finish in one go. I also pause intentionally when pause occurs (chapters in non-fiction books, series episodes. And I don’t mind revisiting the material, especially if it was good. As for music, I treat it like a soundtrack, focused albums (and a few playlist) listening, falling back to silence when my attention is needed on some tasks.
When I was about 14 years old, my parents saw my interest in electronics and computers and went to a university professor they knew and purchased 6-7 books on various topics. (Mostly electrical engineering and some programming)
They were designed for 2nd or 3rd year university students, and they were way wayyyy beyond me, but I used to read them, over and over, and slowly parts of them were becoming clearer to me, even the bits I didn’t understand (at all) must have been going into my memory because later when the concepts started to click, then the connections were being made.
It took me years, I read the books many times over and over all through my teens. Reading books I don’t understand has become a lifelong joy for me, just yesterday I got my subscription to “Advanced Materials” and I have thousands of articles to read!
Same but for computers. As a child I got the engineering books for the 6502 from my father ( he was a power engineer).and they were like a foreign language. But I persisted and read them over and over like I was trying to decode an ancient cipher. And like you, eventually they became clearer and my understanding flourished. Such a cool experience.
I fondly remember seeing the integral symbol and having no idea what it meant, and no internet to check. I remember thinking to myself “This must be important if it’s in this book” and just memorising without understanding. I still write x^(p/q)==q//(x^p) as my goto graffiti!
I do like some "hard" fiction like the Stephenson mentioned in TFA, as well as Pynchon and David Foster Wallace, but my mind immediately went to some of the harder technical writing I've enjoyed - The Art of Computer Programming; SICP and other Lisp texts, math books, etc.
I once spent a very pleasant short vacation on a beach on Lake Michigan reading Peter Gabriel Bergmann's "Introduction to the Theory of Relativity," finding pleasure in gradually unraveling the notation, the mathematics, and the ideas, in a quiet and beautiful setting.
It always surprises me when I meet engineers who don't enjoy reading technical books, but different strokes and all that. It takes a kind of patience and persistence to unravel a technical text, which can be its own reward if you're not trying to solve a specific technical problem at the moment.
When i started reading the Common Lisp Reference Manual i knew neither English nor Lisp. When i finished it reading it for the first time, i learned English better. I read it again 3 times, then i started learning Lisp.
Don't leave us hanging, what happened at the end of the beach on Lake Michigan?
Jokes aside, I do the no note taking on the first read thing as well. Because I like reading, I do sometimes skip the problems in technical books the first time round, but I'm consciously aware it's a form of procrastination when I'm doing it.
My very first was Naive Set Theory by Paul Halmos. Way over my head in 7th(?) grade but my first intro to math beyond pre-algebra stuff.
Lately I've enjoyed, but did not finish, the Joy of Abstraction by Eugenia Cheng, on category theory. And there was a differential geometry book whose name I have forgotten but whose exercises I really enjoyed, because I could do them in my head while riding the bus, just by thinking about them.
I'm not particularly well read on mathematics (had a lot of math in college, hardly any since) but I would like to circle back to reading more at some point.
Related to "I don't entirely understand what I just read, but I loved it" from the article - some time ago (I'd say it's been years now), there was a submission on HN (at least I believe I found it on HN, though I'm not 100% sure) about rules for critiquing art (again, I'm not 100% certain, but this is how I remember it). Unfortunately, I think I didn't finish the whole article, but at the start it said that if you want to critique art, you have to understand that:
1. There is art you love that is also actually good.
2. There is art you don't love but is actually good.
3. There is art you love that is actually bad.
4. There is art you don't love that is also actually bad.
If you know which article I'm talking about, please let me know. I've been trying to find it on and off for what seems like years now.
Readit News
"I believe one should only read those books which bite and sting. If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a blow to the head, then why read the book? To make us happy, as you write? My God, we would be just as happy if we had no books, and those books that make us happy, we could write ourselves if necessary. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that hurts us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like if we were being driven into forests, away from all people, like a suicide, a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." [2]
[1] Brief an Oskar Pollak, 27. Januar 1904. , https://homepage.univie.ac.at/werner.haas/1904/br04-003.htm
[2] Literal translation by ChatGPT. Original:
"Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder vorstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns."
The things that I think that he wants to say, the inconvenient truths, the things that make me see the world in a whole new way, that challenge everything I believe in. Those things fill me with joy and wonder they are just so few and far between.
Maybe the thing he’s getting at is the existential dread? The truth that nothing you do is meaningful? The staring into the abyss? In which case maybe in moderation, but I fundamentally disagree.
in a sense I wonder, if this is what he means, what a weird way to view life, that those things that challenge you are negative.
That could also mean reading biographies of others lives, love stories, things that challenge your world view and things that are a little above our skill level. There is value in being willing to challenge your own beliefs (if they can't be challenged with a new understanding or new knowledge, then they aren't so much beliefs as they are a doctrine to be followed) and being willing to be emotionally vulnerable.
Sometimes as you say, "cynically written" books like 1984 can be have that bite, and thats true, but some books that have "Bite" because makes me go "Whoa!" or a slight panic when my world-view gets changed.
Godel, escher, bach was one of the first books that did that for me. It struck me on the head and i could not put the book down. Concepts of infinity and strange loops dominated my underlying intellectual uneasyness for some time afterwards.
Blood Meridian was also a book that shook my understanding of pre-1800 life. How close to savagery humanity still was only 200 years ago fundamentally shook my understanding of where i stand in relation to my ancestors.
"The Quants" showed me how shaky our financial infrastructure really is.
The Rose Of Paracelsus: On Secrets & Sacraments blew my mind. Spending 20 years to create a masterpeice that would certainly fall into both of your categories at once... a brilliant, cynical book, hopeless and callous in the eyes of a population with the attention span of a tik tok.
"Those things fill me with joy and wonder they are just so few and far between."
Yes, but that's what you should be looking for.
Thats things that just knock your world view around for a brief moment in a almost confused-joyous-understanding. Make question your intuitions for a little bit.
That's the authorial feeling of self-importance making itself visible. Why read the book? Because it might be enjoyable, a pastime, something that makes us dream, reflect, cry, or connect some dots in our lives through a parallel representation of feelings or ideas. There are many reasons, and the "blow to the head" will not and should not be the main reason, especially for older people who have seen some water flowing under the bridge and see the shock factor as artfully constructed and therefore much less provocative than the author intended it to be.
> I believe that one should only read books that bite and sting one. If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a punch to the head, why do we read the book? So that it makes us happy, as you write? My God, we would be happy even if we had no books, and if necessary we could write the kind of books that make us happy ourselves. But we need books that affect us like a misfortune that hurts us greatly, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like if we were to venture into the woods, away from everyone, like a suicide; a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
I think you should only read books that bite and sting you. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a punch to the skull, why are we reading it? So that it makes us happy, as you write? My God, we would be happy even if we didn't have books, and we could write the books that make us happy ourselves if need be. But we need books that have an effect on us like a misfortune that hurts us very much, like the death of someone we preferred to us, like pushing us into the woods, away from all people, like a suicide, a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
I've recently read and greatly enjoyed a historical fiction novel called "Augustus" written by John Edward Williams and published in 1972. On the surface level, it's about the events of the life of Augustus Caesar (better known in the book as "Octavian")—but on a deeper level, it's about the rarity of longtime friends in life, and dealing with aging and one's mortality. I put the novel off for a year because I thought I had to read a non-fiction historical account of Augustus's life first, as I thought I couldn't appreciate the novel without doing so, due to the unfamiliar character names and events. But one day, I just decided to try it out—and I found myself naturally remembering the character names and events without special care in reading the novel.
Similar experiences have been reported by people engaging with various forms of media. I've seen readers take copious notes on the novel "Infinite Jest," which has a reputation for being a difficult read, only to burn out. In contrast, readers who have finished the novel said that they didn't need to take notes, and that the story began to make sense simply by reading more.
I've also seen a similar pattern from subjects as academic mathematics, where some learners spend too much time on textbook explanations instead of working on the textbook problems, to subjects as relaxed as computer role-playing games, in which some players end up dropping these games due to a perceived need to take notes to understand the story, before they can get immersed in the game's world.
I think a lot more understanding and enjoyment of various subjects can be attained by being comfortable with confusion for a while. While note-taking has its place in understanding a subject, I've personally found that immersion is the most important factor for understanding.
I think Infinite Jest is a great example for this sort of thing because I later realized that I had completely missed the entire main plot. By the author:
> There is an ending as far as I’m concerned. Certain kind of parallel lines are supposed to start converging in such a way that an “end” can be projected by the reader somewhere beyond the right frame. If no such convergence or projection occurred to you, then the book’s failed for you.
Nothing converged for me at all and yet I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I’m still not quite sure what to think of that.
Aaron Swartz (yep, that Aaron Swartz) wrote a great essay that explains the ending and main plot in clear language:
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend
But I don’t think I got any part of that plot by reading the book. It’s all hidden and disjointed, and there’s so much interesting stuff at the surface that you almost don’t even care to go deeper.
Probably overkill to look up every little thing (and most of the annotations are just defining SAT-worthy words anyway), but I liked having it around when a random word/phrase would make no sense and it turned out to be a vintage shaving cream brand or some bit of Boston-ese.
And it's free of spoilers, so friendly enough to first-time readers, but I do think a first read is best with no notes or supporting material or anything. Other than two bookmarks, lol.
I wrote a small blog on how I did read Infinite Jest > https://www.prasannakumarr.in/journal/reading-infinite-jest
† Some of them, not everyone, on average, etc. Also, different people have different motivations. Not everyone who has a curious mind has low self-esteem. People are complex.
Low self esteem would assume they're not capable of understanding and just give up.
I have in fact stalled on books before though off the top of my head only SICP and Anna Karenina come to mind. I'll reattempt both of them in the near future. Stalling on SICP was probably due to me not having the sufficient math background, which I'm slowly working on fixing. The post you wrote gives me hope.
There's a possibility that I've been doing things the wrong way all these years.
I don’t take notes with fiction books, but I pause whenever I can’t give it my full attention (interruptions, some other tasks, tired).
For example, I kept extensive notes while reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. The work assumes you're internalising as you go along, which is somewhat inescapable given the nature of the material. The author can't stop to re-explain some finer point of Aristotle's every time it is engaged with in the subsequent two thousand years.
Pausing to take notes helps one reflect on the material and solidify their understanding, but also gives them a quick reference later if necessary. I just use my phone's Notes app, to keep the barrier as low as possible.
I did take notes throughout my first playthrough of Elden Ring, for instance, and started enjoying it a lot more once I stopped!
I recommend using those little sticky tabs instead. If I come across something I want to look up later, or want to come back to for whatever reason I use one on the page itself to to highlight the line, and another at the top so I can find the page again. By the time I'm done reading it might be full of those little tabs but it doesn't really slow me down in the moment.
For non-fiction, I will admit that it is hard for me to take that advice. I am currently going through a historical analysis book, which in itself covers a complicated topic and references tons of source materials, which now I feel almost obligated to add to my reading list. And for harder subjects, it feels like I get lost on the foundational materials if I don't take notes.
I started visiting them and looking at classical paintings, little by little googling what it was and why. It turned out to be so exciting!
Now, a year later, I can say for sure which of the women with a severed male head in their hands in the painting is Judith and which is Salome. And I understand much better how people lived in these parts before, and why they live the way they do now.
Therefore, I completely agree with the author of the article - sometimes you need to plunge into the unknown, and this unknown will reward you.
I’m afraid to imagine how many discoveries await me in museums of contemporary art.
https://berlinartgalleries.de/
Some of them ended up being distractions too, like playing with hardware, or writing a compiler, but it was all very interesting.
They were designed for 2nd or 3rd year university students, and they were way wayyyy beyond me, but I used to read them, over and over, and slowly parts of them were becoming clearer to me, even the bits I didn’t understand (at all) must have been going into my memory because later when the concepts started to click, then the connections were being made.
It took me years, I read the books many times over and over all through my teens. Reading books I don’t understand has become a lifelong joy for me, just yesterday I got my subscription to “Advanced Materials” and I have thousands of articles to read!
This brought a smile to my face - thanks for sharing. :-)
I once spent a very pleasant short vacation on a beach on Lake Michigan reading Peter Gabriel Bergmann's "Introduction to the Theory of Relativity," finding pleasure in gradually unraveling the notation, the mathematics, and the ideas, in a quiet and beautiful setting.
It always surprises me when I meet engineers who don't enjoy reading technical books, but different strokes and all that. It takes a kind of patience and persistence to unravel a technical text, which can be its own reward if you're not trying to solve a specific technical problem at the moment.
Jokes aside, I do the no note taking on the first read thing as well. Because I like reading, I do sometimes skip the problems in technical books the first time round, but I'm consciously aware it's a form of procrastination when I'm doing it.
What are your favorite Math books, and what texts did you enjoy the most? Could you please share the titles?
Lately I've enjoyed, but did not finish, the Joy of Abstraction by Eugenia Cheng, on category theory. And there was a differential geometry book whose name I have forgotten but whose exercises I really enjoyed, because I could do them in my head while riding the bus, just by thinking about them.
I'm not particularly well read on mathematics (had a lot of math in college, hardly any since) but I would like to circle back to reading more at some point.
1. There is art you love that is also actually good. 2. There is art you don't love but is actually good. 3. There is art you love that is actually bad. 4. There is art you don't love that is also actually bad.
If you know which article I'm talking about, please let me know. I've been trying to find it on and off for what seems like years now.