How to read books you never knew before

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Shane Parrish, founder of the Farnam Street blog, found a way to read books that others only talk about. The method turned out to be so simple and effective that the blogger decided to share it.

I love the physical presence of books on the shelves, the way they wait to be looked at, to be admired, to be remembered. I used to be very fond of libraries, and now I like them. But over time, I realized that I needed to own these damn volumes.

I need the book to always be at hand. So that I can write in it, take it off the shelf and put it back, take it off the shelf again and put it down again. Well, in general, you get the idea.

So I started putting together mine. And today, even after I handed out hundreds of volumes, my closets are full of books that I have not yet read. And I keep buying new ones.

Looking around my shelves recently, I saw a book that I wanted to read a long time ago. In fact, I even started reading it in the summer, but stopped after about 150 pages to move on to another, more "urgent" reading.

It was "" by Robert Caro. A classic work on power politics in New York in the early to mid-20th century from the perspective of the brilliant and terrible Robert Moses. The greatness and curse of this book in its volume. It has about 1,110 pages, difficult to understand pages. I think Caro said it was about 700,000 words. And this is after he cut the draft, where there were more than a million.

Karo's book is amazingly written, not a single boring passage. But even such books are time-consuming simply because of the volume.

The problem is that you only start to feel anxious when you take such a book off the shelf.

Let's count. I read quickly, in the region of 300 words per minute. Well, maybe give or take 50 words. If I read at this speed, it would take me 2,333 minutes, or about 39 hours, to write 700,000 words. And here's the thing: my brain doesn't really want to take on an unpaid 39-hour project. Therefore, most often we choose something shorter and simpler. It still counts, right?

Then I remembered all the other great books I want to read in my life. Caro's four books on Lyndon Johnson that are considered masterpieces. "" By Edward Gibbon. "" And "" Leo Tolstoy. "" By James Boswell. "" By William Shearer. "" By Adam Smith. Biographies written by Ron Chernow. (His "" is one of my favorite books, I've also heard a lot of good things about "".) They're all just huge.

Then I wondered: how the hell do people read all these books? How can I become the one who read them, and not just heard something about them?

I read a lot for the blog, but it's hard to get out of my usual schedule for a week to tackle War and Peace. And so for all busy people.

For myself, I found a simple solution: read 25 pages a day. That's all. It is enough just to adhere to this rule.

What will 25 pages a day give you? Let's count. Most likely, there will be two days in a month when you simply will not have time to read. Plus Christmas. There are 340 days a year left. If you multiply 25 pages a day by 340 days, you get 8,500 pages. 8 500!

I also noticed that when I set myself to 25 pages, I almost always read more. So, let's say, not 8,500 pages, but 10,000 pages. (To do this, you need to read not 25, but 30 pages.)

So what do we get? The Power Merchant has 1,100 pages. In four books about Lyndon Johnson - 3 552. In two novels by Tolstoy - 2 160. In six volumes of Gibbon - about 3 660. Total 10 472 pages.

It turns out that in about a year at a modest speed of 25 pages a day, I will finish 13 great books and learn an incredible amount of world history. In just one year!

Then next year there are "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" (1,280 pages), six volumes about Lincoln by Karl Sandberg (2,000), Adam Smith (1,200) and Boswell (1,300) and much more.

This is how great works are read. Day after day. 25 pages each. And no excuses.

Just don't take this advice too literally, it's not about the number of pages. (Although for me 25 pages is a rule.) You can read 20 or 10 pages, 30 minutes or an hour, 2,000 or 3,000 words … It doesn't matter which unit of measurement you choose, the rule will still work: after six months, a year, five or ten years, you will assimilate a huge layer of human wisdom.

Did you want to read ""? Or ""? Or something from Jane Austen? Or David Foster Wallace's "" Get started today. Only 25 pages, and tomorrow 25 more. Read in the morning, read during lunch, read before bed, read in line … It doesn't matter where and when. The main thing is to read the required number of pages. And now you are already the one who reads the books that everyone is only talking about.

Agree, the prospect doesn't seem so daunting anymore. All you need is a little diligence. So let's get smarter.