An absolutely excellent book list. If all those books are available on Project Gutenberg (which it seems they are), this is one hell of an achievement as a civilisation, that we have managed to make freely available these foundations of educated thought.

Agreed on the list quality. About the second part of your comment - these works were probably all in the public domain before the great copyright lockdown of 1976 (and subsequent copyright extensions). Unfortunately "content owners" are going to find a way to extend copyright into perpetuity.

It feels like copyright law today is going where Real Property Law was circa 1600. "To content owners and the heirs of thy body in fee simple absolute... "

Edit: Don't expect to see any new works anytime soon.

How much time does he spend every day to read them? I'm always impressed by people who tell me they read a book in a few days. I understand that one can learn to read faster, but for non-technical books this always lead me to be unable to clearly envision the world it is taking place in. Just like a narrated movie. Even if I slow down I often can't remember the names and places in the book. In two hours I might read about 50 pages. Far too slow to even stand a chance doing the same challenge he does.

Like the OP, I'm finding myself spending more and more time reading on my nook color. Though the LCD is slightly less comfortable than my eInk Sony ebook, having wikipedia a touch away is really too great to explain. I've read many, many books over the last weeks. One or two a week (last week, Jules Verne' "le testament d'un excentrique", the week before Jack London's" people of the abyss" and Verne's "la maison à vapeur").

And I still have a huge shelf of paper books to read :) Thinking of it, I probably spend most of my time reading something anyway (I read tons of magazines, blogs, HN, reddit, etc. too). I'm a real book worm :)

You say that you're reading about 25 pages per hour, that seems really slow; are you sure you aren't sub-vocalizing? Do you by any chance make the words sound in your head (or even your glottis)? This is often the main reason why some people have altogether slow reading and poor understanding.

I'm hearing the words in my head in a voice that might suit the specific character. If I don't I feel something is missing immersion wise.

You can see all data here: https://readmill.com/richardjingram

Last week: over 32 hours!! https://readmill.com/richardjingram/reads/debt-the-first-500...

Check Richards data, progress and highlights at https://readmill.com/richardjingram

Oh, man... this alone makes me want to get a Kindle/iPad.

EDIT: Looks like it doesn't work with a regular ol' computer. Is there another site that has more multi-device support?

i wonder how many technical books the average HN'er reads per year. My own personal goal is to read 5 books a year

I spent a whole year going through the entire SICP, and doing all the exercises. It is not only a matter of "being technical", if there are exercises and you want to do them, your goose is cooked.

I wonder how many technical books anyone reads from start to finish.. for me very few have met that criteria

Agree. Although, I don't consider this to be a negative fact. Some chapters are relevant, others are not. This is quite common for technical books.

2 or 3. 5 technical books is pushing. Am unsure how much can you read _and_ remember/understand 100% if you do 6 to 10.

Average person in the US, not counting ppl who don't read at all, reads 6 books a year.

>I've only just this minute taken a mere six steps to get from Jack Lemmon to Samuel Pepys

I wonder how often a path between two pages on Wikipedia is unique once its length is known. (You know, assuming no cycles were abused inbetween.)