Buy books at your local bookstore. The one in my town does such a good job with curation that I can pick something on any topic at random and 9/10 times it will be excellent. I think we'll see this more and more as people put less and less stock in Amazon reviews.

Alternatively, go to your local library and check out books for free. If you feel like you need to own them, then buy from the local book store. Supporting the local library is more important since they (almost?) all do great community outreach for literacy (children programs, etc).

yes, but without the people supporting the local bookstore who will be supporting the independent authors we need to write the books we read. We need both.

And without books being bought, how will I judge people I visit?

Finnish authors have also "library grants" and "library compensation" which means those independent authors will get paid if somebody loans their work. So you can also support their work "for free" by loaning the books.

I never said "do not support the local bookstore." Obviously we need both.

The absolute cheapest best thing you can do for your kids is take them to the library.

At-least the libraries in Washington are pretty cool.

And always check used bookstores. You can find gems there, and often take chances on new things because they're so cheap. And don't forget libraries! I could wax poetic about all those places.

In Germany we have booklooker.de as a market place for used books. I recently bought an autobiography from there which has out of print for many years. And I found the experience of holding a book in my hand older than myself strangely exciting. That book was printed ten years before I was born. The pages had taken on a yellow shade. Of course I held plenty of really old books in my hand by now. But only then I realized it might become a habit. Especially when there is a choice. You want to read a Mark Twain? Why not by an edition from before the Great War?

I'm well aware of booklooker, and it's amazing. There's also bookfinder.com here in America. They're some of the best places to start looking if you want rare/old/niche books.

The Amazon book shopping experience is atrocious too, if you want to read books on say, computing, the "bestsellers" are full of junk SEO optimisation tutorial books and Minecraft trash.

It's like wading through a swamp!

That's one thing I really don't get. I'm currently getting acquainted with AWS beyond the usual suspects (EC2, S3, RDS). Of course I was eager to check out their AI solutions. And guess what - they perform surprisingly subpar especially against the backdrop of their marketing promises. Now I know why they can't even keep their categorizations in order or provide a powerful text search - they lack the technology.

> I think we'll see this more and more as people put less and less stock in Amazon reviews.

Not going to happen, bookstores will keep dying.

What are the benefits that you're experiencing with increased reading?

I'd say a deeper more complex and connected understanding of the world. Truly phenomenal authors were masters of framing so many things I thought of strictly in objective terms in a more subjective light. You begin to realize how the world is filled with very shallow thoughts and ideas. You can really only come to that realization after digesting long form arguments and narratives.

What books can you recommend?

Not OP, couple rando suggestions:

High concept sci-fi:. Three body problem by Liu cixin, or A deepness in the sky by Vernor vinge

Character drama: 11/22/63 Stephen king, or really almost anything by him

Don't underestimate lit-trash -- it's worlds better than Twitter -- Lee child jack reacher novels are fun, so were the original Tom Clancy run. Altered carbon on the cuberpunk front.

And of course the classics if you're willing to invest -- most of them are worth it, otherwise they wouldn't be classics

And even the classics in various genres. Like, you can't necessarily go wrong with reading Douglas Adams, or Arthur C. Clarke or J.R.R. Tolkien, especially as a novice in a genre.

That said, I'd recommend reading Les Misérables to everyone. Definitely an amazing book.

And Count of Montecristo.

Funny, if I think of my favorite books I'd probably say the Three Body Problem trilogy, A Deepness In The Sky, and The Stand...maybe because I haven't read 11/22/63 yet. I better read Altered Carbon since you seem to have exactly the same taste as me.

I'd add that reading the whole Three Body Problem trilogy is highly recommended since it gets higher concept every book. And personally I enjoyed A Fire Upon The Deep just as much as A Deepness In The Sky.

The Stand is an actual classic, I should have mentioned it if I mentioned King. 11/22/63 is more of a less-epic, mature character work. Cheers to good taste!

I had no idea what I was getting into when I read The Stand back in high school. I thought Stephen King was a "horror" author, and the only thing I knew about him was that he wrote IT. The Stand remains one of the best books I have ever read.

King is awesome, though I prefer his novellas and short works. Apt pupil? The Showshank Redemption? The Breathing Method? really, all of 'different seasons' was incredible.

I wrote a really long winded response about some of my favorite authors and their corresponding favorite books. Each tackle different cross-sections of thought. All of them have had an everlasting impact in how they completely eliminate my ability to have binary ideologies.

Perhaps being able to read and enjoy poetry, is elevating ones level of understanding to an even higher plane, that reading just prose.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Dostoyevsky, Ursula Le Guin, David Foster Wallace (I could truly go on forever, but I think these authors are phenomenal, with themes and meta-themes different from one another).

I think if you watch an interview with DFW you will realize just how much he has thought of just about every facet of modern, entertainment-centric western society - all coming together in Infinite Jest which is the most depressing book I've ever read (he later committed suicide, so it might have been the most depressing contemporary book ever written either). Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness models an entire planetary civilization with no fixed sex (written in 1969, mind you), which I found very eye-opening. Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (as well as Crime and Punishment) are extraordinarily psychological and philosophical - ethics, free will, and God are centric. Both Steinbeck and Vonnegut have multiple books I'd recommend, but East of Eden by Steinbeck is an all-time favorite tackling good and evil (honestly Nietzsche in novel); Slaughterhouse 5 by Vonnegut (just a notch above Heller's Catch-22) is the embodiment of darkness and absurdity. Take an anti-war sentiment and an author willing to tiptoe to the border of sanity and insanity and the result is SH5. It is truly brilliant, and as someone who is fortunate enough to not have ever been impacted greatly by wartime, it is equally eye-opening.

Honorable mention (a book I have read more recently) goes to Tom Wolfe with The Bonfire of the Vanities. This book combines the legal system (police and prosecutors), personal greed and ambition (Wall Street bond salesman), racism (Media biases), and class structures and privilege in a hard hitting social critique on 80s New York City. Everything between its covers is key to understanding how the world actually works.

This turned out to be a lot longer than I anticipated. Hopefully it is helpful!

The tangible benefits:

1. Increased vocabulary

2. Practice and improvement of skills I'm specifically reading about (as many of the books I'm reading are for acquiring skills related to my job)

3. Simply reading about new topics encourages me to read books further exploring on that peripheral knowledge

The intangibles:

1. The momentum for reading begets more reading, which makes me feel good about spending my time reading over watching TV/movies/surfing the net.

2. I feel more knowledgeable and empathetic. In this past year I read stories about impoverished refugees from North Korea, American politics, and stories of overcoming seemingly impossible odds. These are topics I never get to explore in my day job, and it helps me feel more well-rounded.

Getting in the mind and lives of other persons, in ways (or rather, depth) that casual discussion, tv, and film can't even begin to touch, and learning to understand and/or appreciate different perspectives and circumstances.

I'm in a similar situation. Increased patience is one of the more noticeable outcomes.

I've been wanting to get in to reading, but my biggest issue is finding something to read that interests me. How did you start finding things?

Easiest for me to get started (since it was topical and I could convince myself there was value) was to pick the most interesting books from the "most mentioned on HN" lists out there [0].

[0] https://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker-news

Thanks. Didn't know about that. Bookmarking that pronto!

What interests you in other mediums? For example, if you like sci-fi movies, try reading some sci-fi books. Some people look down on shitty genre fiction, but it's great for getting you into the habit of reading. And as you read more and more of those guilt pleasures, you will become interested in trying other genres or more literary works.

Here's Reddit's top 200: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/reddit-top-200. Pick one that sounds interesting.

Those list dumps aren't particularly useful, as you have everything from Calvin & Hobbes and Tolstoy to Freakanomics and King James Bible.

- If you're looking for easy-entry, entertaining contemporary scifi, start with Red Rising, Hyperion, Old Man's War, Children of Time, or We Are Legion - We Are Bob.

- Classic Scifi is harder since some of it has not aged well. Easy-entry here would be I Robot, Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I am Legend, Dune, or Flowers for Algernon.

- Fantasy genre also suffers from repeated/common tropes, but some of the more inventive or engaging ones are Blood Song, Prince of Thorns (dark), The Blade Itself, or Sabriel (Audiobook by Tim Curry).

I would like to add the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy to that list.

1. What are you interested in? 2. Seek out popular books on indicated interest. 3. Choose book and read.

Seriously though, I jumped back into reading by picking a genre I loved, but was very behind on. In my case it was science fiction and started with the rather famous Dune. There have been some books I started and did not like so I stopped. When I find a stack of books for free I try to seek out if anything looks interesting (and check for quality) and grab 1 or 2. Worst case scenario you can just returneth the book from whence it came.

There's always Gnod[0].

Finally getting into reading will be like picking up any other activity. You need to fully commit for a while before it becomes something that you really need to do (rather something you only want to do).

[0] http://www.gnod.com/

When I am at a loss for something to read and I want something that is usually a low-effort but very good read, i throw darts at the Pulitzer for fiction list.

I'm reading Greer's "Less" today, the most recent winner, and it is really pretty great.

If you haven't read Hemingway, "The Old Man and the Sea" is a pretty good starting point.

If you are into post-apocalyptic fiction at all, you need to read McCarthy's "The Road"

(Note, if you want Steinbeck - personally, I liked 'Of Mice and Men' a lot more than "The Grapes of Wrath" but both are good. Just saying I don't always side with the committee)

I mean, we can argue all day about what the best book is, but everything on that list is going to be both very good and usually quite accessible; you will note that Joyce is conspicuously absent, and a few of these are assigned reading in high school.

If you want to read stuff before that (and get free books from gutenberg!) I recommend you check out Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad. Both are excellent. "The end of his tether" is my favorite Conrad. "Roughing it" is my favorite Twain.

Not necessarily great for starting, but document what you read on Goodreads, or some other similar site. It starts to recommend more books based on that (and what other users have said about them), and I've found some real gems that way.

For starting, you could still use Goodreads to possibly find something interesting, or take a recommendation from someone who has similar taste in other things as you.

It’s a little high brow for me rather too often, but have a flick through a London Review Of Books. Don’t subscribe as you’ll feel great shame if you don’t get through them all. Or find some other review process - eg work your way though Booker Prize winners. Most decent papers have a review section too. Once you find your source your sorted for ages as reviews rarely date.

I started reading things that were related to programming but weren't textbooks (i.e. The Pragmatic Programmer and The Mythical Man-Month).

Then I started reading books on skills I wanted to acquire (i.e. Traction for marketing and SPIN Selling for sales).

All of those books lead to recommendations into other books.

Listening to podcasts that recommend books increase the breadth of books I'm reading.

My wife brings home books from the library and I read whatever she reads (i.e. Hillbilly Elegy and The People vs Democracy), and those lead to other nonfiction books I become interested in. And then there are the "classic" novels I interleave from time to time (i.e. Siddhartha and Meditations).

It just starts with maybe a handful of books you are dying to read, try to read for 15 min before bed, and before you know it, you're 50 books into the year!

For literary fiction, literary friends and book reviews. Also, anytime you see a name come up again and again, look into getting a something they have written. I bought Dostoyevsky because I kept seeing him come up (worth it).

Find small/independent presses that do cool things; even independent presses as large as New Directions will have a certain culture you can base opinions off of and figure out if its worth your time. Note that if its an imprint of one of the Big 5 theres no way to know if the book is gonna be worth it based on that.

And read books in translation. By virtue of being translated you already know its worth somebody's time, bad books arent often translated. And often they are hella good.

I loved thethecouple of books by dostoyevsky i have read. They were difficult to get into, but it occurs to me one of the really interesting and pleasant things about reading is attuning yourself to a writers tempo, patterns and word play. It forces you to adjust your own internal voice.

If you have access to a good library, it's a good place to try various types of books to see what you like. Ultimately, what you will be reading a few years later is hard to predict from what you start reading now. However, in the beginning, finding something that "hooks" you is the best bet because it gives you the experience of being absorbed in a book. These are the books with which I have introduced some people to the world of books:

- The Lord of The Rings

- The Hobbit

- Dracula

- The Little Prince

- Animal Farm

- Asterix and Obelix comicbooks

- Siddhartha

For the next time, I'm going to try "Necronmicon" (H. P. Lovecraft!)

(EDIT: Formatting and added "Siddhartha")

The Little Prince is such a short wonderful book. I mean i don't even think its for kids.

Not OP, but for me the biggest boon to my reading has been the kindle for a variety of reasons:

1. If I'm not into a book, I wont force it, I can just jump to a new one.

2. 1-click downloads, if something sounds good I can just send a sample to the kindle. If it really sounds good I'll just buy it.

3. Portability, it's always in my bag and the charge lasts weeks.

I get book recommendations from Hacker News reading lists, podcasts, and friends. Then just download the sample.

I used to walk into the library on my way home and just look at covers and spines until I had 5 or so books that literally looked interesting. I gave each book a chapter of reading before deciding to finish it or not.

Don't judge a book by a cover, but do have some curiosity.

Definitely. I go to the local bookstore once a week to check new releases/acquisitions. I've found it nice to check the cover/title and, if it catches my eye, read more about it or try a chapter. Found some really good stuff I'd've never read otherwise that way. This mostly works for non-fiction, though I've found it great for fantasy novels as well. I usually take a picture then go see if anyone I trust on Goodreads has read it, or if the library has it.

If you insert what you've read at Goodreads it uses algorithms to figure out what you may like. If you add books there on your todo list you'll never run out of material. Or add some programming books.

If you're not a big reader then try the Harry Potter series. Although they are aimed at kids there is a lot of depth in them with the bonus they are easy to read and also quite gripping.

Similar story, in my 20s though. Went from 1-2 books a year (three years ago) to 48 this year (on track for 55). I too wish I discovered this earlier. There is so much to read about and the density of high-quality information in a book is unmatched.

>density of high-quality information in a book is unmatched.

Do you not get tired from this?

Books I read 3 years ago are typically purged from memory by now. What remains are understandings and intuitions on a topic, which have value, but sometimes I wonder if the time is always well spent.

I keep a log, just a simple text file, where I spend 5 minutes to 30 minutes after I finish a book to write my thoughts on it. Title + Author + 7/10 (or whatever) overall rating and a few paragraphs.

The log might mention how I came to the book, what the big themes were, and for non-fiction, I write down the page number of important points that I might care to reference later.

I love the physical books in my library because I can easily see the titles and I can turn to them easily when I need to jog my memory.

This might be really weird but when I have a tough question, I like to think about what my favorite authors in my library might say, and I'll take the book out and flip through the pages, looking for their thoughts on the subject. When I spend hours reading a book, I internalize that author's voice, beliefs, and thought process. I don't need to remember all the tiny details but I remember their thought process which I consider priceless. I was going through a book called Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger and they have pages of questions to ask in the back and I realized I was automatically asking all of them on a daily basis. I had internalized that thinking.

I like to read the same book over and over if it's really good. It's like how people get encyclopedic knowledge about star wars

I get more tired having to piece together the world on a topic via the Internet when no book exists (or I don't know one).

Just because the density is better doesn't mean every book is dense.

In terms of memory, I keep notes and titles in Goodreads. Over time I may use a more durable store but I enjoy Goodreads.

Even though you can't recall things you've read on command relevant things are very likely to surface in the context of a discussion or reading something similar. The brain does a lot of this hide 'n seek stuff on you when you're not paying attention.

Paul Graham's thoughts on this, if you haven't seen it: http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html

I don't know if I agree. It just seemed relevant.

Can you briefly list what improvements you have observed because of more reading?

For sure I sleep better when I spend 1 hour reading before sleeping than when I watch a series or play a video game.

Similarly, I also discovered the joy of reading books, English in particular, quite late (I'm 36 right now). When I was younger, the only books I read were text books. My reading stats is jumping from 1-2 books a year to become 11 read books so far this year ( Mostly, self-help, business and technical ). And the weird thing is, English not my mother tongue, but still enjoy it more than my native language. Grow up and live in an environment where English is not country's official language. Found out this habit affect my brain organization massively. So, thanks to the internet and Kindle which help me accessing great books easily :D

I started 2 years ago around 32, but I did mostly audiobooks. So far I have finished about 90 books, chosen mostly by Amazon/Goodreads/Audible ratings. I take a few lines of notes for each book while listening to help me remember what the book was about later.

How did you break free from the Twitter/social media/24 hour news cycle reading to actual longer form books and novels?

My hardest challenge is getting the same attention span for reading that I had before the current internet.

How do you pick those books?

I'm not OP, but I just follow my interests. Thankfully, at least with non-fiction, they're fairly broad, so I've read academic textbooks on religion, textbooks on programming, general science books on physics (to complement my textbook knowledge) as well as anthropology, sociology and more. Just find a topic you're interested in, go to Goodreads (I like it a lot more than Amazon for searching books), and see what you can find. Or Google it, and see what trusted people in fields like/recommend. Or even people with interests that align with yours.

As for fiction, I like mostly fantasy, so will browse the shelves and look at hyped books on /r/fantasy, as well as other, lesser-known ones that sound/look interesting (I'm a proponent of looking at covers and titles to see if it seems interesting to look into deeper). I also used to follow some reviewers. For more "literary" fiction, I look mostly at what mainstream reviewers say. I found All the Light we Cannot See that way, and loved it (except for one scene I felt was just completely unnecessary to the novel). Then, perhaps, look for major authors. Umberto Eco is one that comes to mind that I'm fixing to start.

Not OP, but I've read a ~200 fiction books and ~50 nonfiction books over my life.

Usually I pick books by the following:

- If I haven't read a single book for fun, I would pick a popular fiction or nonfiction book. Its a good starting point. Things like "Top 10 books in X category" from goodreads are good examples, or "r/askreddit favorite books"

- After reading 5-10 different books, I'll get a feel for what I like and don't like. I'll search "site:reddit.com similar books to X" and grab recommendations. Compare these to amazon's bestsellers and goodreads.

- For nonfiction books, I generally am more picky. I usually have a list of people I follow, some write reviews on books they read. I have had a few people I respect read "Ego is the Enemy" so I picked that up recently, and its something I struggle with sometimes so it's ideal for me. Nonfiction books are most powerful when you read it at the right time

- For nonfiction more textbook-like books, or something more informational, I usually let reddit / goodreads /hackernews decide what's good and what's not.

I started to read less fiction now, I've seen the same plot rehashed too many times. Nonfiction books are interesting to me at the moment.

I guess it really depends what you want to get out of your book. Do you want escapism, inspiration, or change?

I go by intuition. Lots of the time I find books to read when lost in the wiki crawl

How did you get past the existential crisis that reading a book does nothing but while way time on a task that accomplished little when viewed over a period greater than a month? For example, rather than reading a book, you could have made something. You could have learned a new skill. Gone somewhere and improved someone’s life like taking trash out at the soup kitchen. All the while you know that there is a high likelihood you’ll forget key plot points within that same month.

Even if you're talking about reading the most vapid genre fiction here, you still looking at things from the view that the purpose of everyone's life is to always be moving forward, progressing, building, achieving, getting better. Some people's feeling of purpose is different; look at Epicureanism for instance.

It sounds like you're stuck in the mindset that every moment not spent actively achieving something is time wasted. That can be a stressful way to live. Maybe if you're really looking to "get past the existential crisis" as you say, and you want to read books but feel like you shouldn't, it might be worth thinking about what you really want out of life as a whole. But I understand that it can be hard to rationalize, because our time on Earth is so limited.

Maybe you could compromise and only read books that teach something. Even good fiction teaches you about people and different ways of thinking.

Perhaps you're stuck on a BART train, and there's nothing much better to do?

That’s fair. I do wonder if just smiling and making eye contact would be a better time. The ability to provide a modicum of human kindness might be refreshing; just a small token of humanity without the selfishness of personal media.

> I do wonder if just smiling and making eye contact would be a better time

No, it would not. This is a good way to look extremely creepy and make everyone around you uncomfortable.

Just looking out the window with the occasional head nod is creepy?

Trying to make eye contact with and smile at strangers on BART definitely is.

Thanks for the info. Yet another reason to not go back to California.

I haven't been on any public transit where this would be seen as normal. I'm very curious in what region smiling at randos during a commute is typical.

Yes. One should never smile - very much not a human thing to do. Thanks, twtw.

And yet this happens all the time on Indian trains!

Smile replaced with head bobble :)

Do you ever game? Or watch TV? Or do anything at all for entertainment?