When I saw the title I thought the article would be about the dreadful stress of keeping up with new tech or research.. But it's about spare time reading?

Granted the problem seems similar, but only because the author is in the field of reading (working in books related profession).

I'm not sure how much it can be applied to just hobby reading. Stress of keeping up with tech/research comes from a sense of professional obligations (you'll fall behind to your professional peers) but there's not much of stress if you're in it as a leisure /hobby; it's not inherently competitive activity.

So the conclusion is not that helpful. It's targeted to a very small audience (people that work in a field where reading books and keeping up with the latest books, are important) and is essentially "don't worry about it!"

At one of my jobs the entire team read at least a book a week, often more and seemingly non-stop. Every standup started with every person talking about what we'd read that week.

I'd never been a huge longform reader (more like a book a month, at best) and rarely had anything to contribute. Sometimes I'd say "our documentation" because that's what I'd been working on, and when I wasn't working _I wasn't reading_ because it was too much like work to enjoy.

It eventually got profoundly uncomfortable. My manager raised my non-participation as an example of how my attitude was turning too negative for the team. I'd find out from recorded team meetings when I was out sick or on vacation that they'd crack jokes about it when I wasn't around.

It particularly odd because I arguably read as much as anyone else on that team, but I preferred either technical content related to what I was working on, or shorter works like short-story collections and articles for fun. If I wasn't reading biographies and novels, it seemingly didn't count to them.

I read around 150 books a year. Most of it is what I like to call "shitlit", or alternatively inconsequential literature.

This does not mean I am better or worse than anyone, just that my default state is reading. Friends eventually read books when recommended them and we talk about then.

Reading shouldnt be a target, it should be for enjoyment. I enjoy shitlit, but others may not.

Reading is part of my daily job, my education path, and in my free time. Even here on HN (ignoring the fact that the internet is no book). I have so many open tabs in my browser with articles I want to read because I see value in reading them eventually, but I can't keep up with all the new content that gets produced. Then I read the article with different eyes, the eyes of a youtube consumer. I have a huuuuge list of yt videos I still want to watch because of education, interest, or curiosity. Same here, I just have not the time to keep up with all the information that gets produced.

So what's the solution to that? Step back from the Internet, unsubscribe from non essential creators, close tabs without verifying if still needed, organize more and more? So trade fomo with organization? Start over with an empty browser, empty new email account?

What's your take on that?

This sort of gamification is so widespread. It makes perfect sense to me in some areas, but in others (reading being one), it doesn’t at all. Reading is so personal and so important to savour, that the idea of “getting through the book” just seems to run counter to the whole spirit.

I’ve got a massive stack of books that I want to read and I feel some frustration sometimes that I can’t get through them quicker, because I want to read more! But this is an internal metric and not one I’ve ever compared to anything or anyone else.

I’m a fiction reader mainly; maybe this sense isn’t the case if I had a stack of business books? I don’t know.

Goodreads statistics don't add pressure. They take it off. This article assumes that reading is a chore.

If I notice that I'm falling behind it's because I'm not taking enough me time. It's so easy to get wrapped up in work, research, deadlines, grants, students, etc. Then you burn out.

Reading stats are a way to keep that at bay. And even better it's cumulative and I can't cheat. If I've been really busy this month, I have to make even more room next month to catch up. That space gets filled with afternoons where I relax, sip tea, enjoy the view, read, learn something new, get a new perspective, or just live in another world for a while.

What an awful take on life and reading.

not just books but almost everything. there is a lot of anxiety seeing others put out stuff when you are barely stringing along. dont beat yourself up, focus on beating yourself.

I'd always thought of it as being a perk of being a nerd that I didn't feel the need to "keep up" with fashions.

TV series, books, movies, bands, whatever. I'll partake if I fancy it, if I don't, who cares? I won't be cool? I never was cool, and hell, they changed what it was anyway.

I think the Goodreads challenge is silly. Every year I set it to one book. I'm already beating it by 600%!

Why create fake tasks to stress yourself out? Reading should be enjoyable, not a chore. And not all books are created equal. If you spend all year reading Remembrance of Things Past is that bad because you only read one book instead of reading 50 forgettable pop psychology business book of the month books? I don't think so.

I wonder if I should read this article to keep up with the idea of letting go.

I'm in a weird position. Can anyone provide a summary of this article?

I have all the time in the world to read things that are interesting (to me) and really absorb the content. But I've increasingly been noticing a "recipe article" trend with blog posts. People throw 100 words in when 10 will do. This article is an example.

I've even gotten to the point with certain important blog posts where I copy paste the content to chatgpt with a simple prompt to summarize the main points.

I'm not happy that I have to do this, but people have seemingly forgotten the art of getting to the f'ing point.

Your audience has an attention slightly shorter than this comment. Unless you catch their attention, none of your nuance is going to matter.

Generally I've found just skimming the first line of each paragraph works well, but even that is getting harder to find.

One pattern that I have noticed amoungst people who work in the "letters" (writing, editing, publishing, journalism, etc.): Since their income is relatively very low for their highly skilled work (it usually requires a university degree), they cannot compete on social status (read: money/wealth). (Leave aside the many people in letters who come from a wealthy family; you will meet many of these people in Global Alpha cities, like London, NYC, Tokyo, etc.) Instead, they create a navel gazing world of intellectual status where they try to "read more than everyone else" and "have a strong opinion about everything". Thus, their peers "feel behind". I think this also well explains why the people in the letters, especially journalists, think Twitter is "so important". It is not. It is tiny echo-chamber in a massive online world.

I want to be very clear about what I wrote above: I am not criticizing the quality of their work. There are plenty of people in the letters who annoy me to no end with their navel gazing, but produce fantastic work. Please keep these two separate!

The best part of this article: She realises it is all bullshit. In short: Read what you like. And, don't worry too much about other people. Another good title for this article: "A Letter to My Younger Self".

> This vibe has crept into so much online book discourse

I've always thought of and used reading as a solitary past-time.

Fairly first-world-problems kind of article but I get how the author's occupation might have easily led to that kind of stress, and I sympathize with them.

It spent too long just describing the FOMO and how it can creep up on your mental health though, for my taste at least.

It's true that the first step of fixing a problem is to identify it but I believe they could have just said "Even if it's your job to keep up, put limits in place because it will stress you to the point of ruining other aspects of your life".

So that article is kind of at the "beginner level in the area of how modern-day tech can stress you out", I suppose. Valuable for people who are stressed but haven't understood why just yet.

I had the feeling of failure connected with reading during my college experience. There was a book club. It was like an elite club that everyone wanted to be a part of. But in order to join, you had to be able to read a lot of books. I wasn't able to do it, and I never became a part of that club, yet two of my friends were there. I was jealous

"The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself"[1]:

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

It's so strange because my experience is the opposite. I see a lot of content about reading and books (how there are no great books anymore, what was the best book, etc), fun facts and other trivia about authors, a few books getting made into movies (hello Dune, but I was thinking of the Martian and Ready Player One) ...

but I don't see any of this cultural expectation, this peer pressure. (One of my friends keep recommending me books and movies, but that's an exception. Okay, I saw Pikkety's Capital on a different friend's bookshelf. And that's it.)

...

and it's also interesting because I remember when half of the world was waiting for GRRM to stop trampolining!

I purposefully put down the last book somewhere around halfway because I thought the next one will be upon us soon, so it'll be great to pick it up and read the remaining story in one go. Hah.

And somehow after Banks died I stopped reading books. (Sure, no connection, but well, it would have been nice to get more of his funky space stories!)

People can replace doom strolling or social media usage with some reading but after a certain point you will also need to give up certain hobbies or other activities to be as prolific as some other readers. Yeah you could spend one hour reading over playing that new online game with your friend or watching that new drama with your spouse but then you aren’t socializing. Or maybe you really care about flexibility so you spend the extra hour you have in the evening doing mobility drills and yoga. Or maybe you are trying to not fall behind the AI craze in tech so you spend an hour reading about the latest models and experimenting with them. Point is the person reading for one hour also isn’t doing what you doing. There’s also this underlying assumption that reading is always productive when there’s a lot of low quality content that’s easily consumed. Not every book is East of Eden.

Social media has scrambled people's minds so badly. In the past, only narcissists and sociopaths needed to spend their time building a public image of themselves and checking in to see what people thought about it.

Scoring yourself with stars or notches for the books you read - or like my dad, a box of donuts every time he slept with a new woman - that's some fucked up abnormal unhealthy shit.

What this shows is that even the most innocent of online coms based on gamified popularity metrics will always trend toward feelings of loss of self-worth for the players.

Why? Because gamifying social interaction is a pretty good definition of sociopathy. Forcing the genpop to engage in that game 24/7, and to treat social interaction as a system of rewards, has spread the sociopathy from the founders like a disease to the rest of the world.

Every time Goodreads comes up on HN it sounds like a cross between Facebook and drug addiction. I am very glad that I care about as much about other peoples' opinions on the books I read as I do their opinions on my wanking technique.

I'll be honest, they sound rude for laughing behind your back, but I really disagree with the notion that you're reading "as much" by reading some reddit articles or docs pages.

People who keep up a book per week or month ALSO read those things. I've found many people that don't read have this notion that just going on reddit for an hour a day "is the same thing", but it's nothing like sitting down and properly diving into long form.

That being said nobody should feel bad for not doing it. It's like running a marathon, don't say it's the same because you go for a walk with the dog, but nobody should be expected to run one.

> My manager raised my non-participation as an example of how my attitude was turning too negative for the team. I'd find out from recorded team meetings when I was out sick or on vacation that they'd crack jokes about it when I wasn't around.

That's workplace bullying.

I can really understand how it feels from their perspective. Work feels much better when we do stuff that makes us connect as humans, and quarterly corporate events don't cut it. They created a culture where they did something fun together and had a conversation topic other than work, and there's this one guy who just refuses to participate and doesn't even try to find a way to include himself in the group.

Sure, reading a book a week takes time from your other activities and is way too much to expect, but if you had spent 15 minutes on Monday morning browsing Wikipedia on the topic of literature and brought some trivia, that would have been much appreciated.

People often complain about the soullessness of corporate jobs, but when someone tries to do something about it, there's usually huge pushback because everyone wants that something to fit their personal preferences, and since we can't find a thing that everyone likes, we go back to treating job as a pure business relationship.

That sounds super toxic and weird.

I would change job unless the pay is extremely good. This is almost about privacy invasion. Why do they care so much people do at their own time?

This sounds super toxic - unless you got paid for reading novels.

This place was toxic, and those folks a bunch of pseudo-intelectual idiots.

Like... an involuntary book club? As in one person opened up that they read something like The Scarlet Letter? I'm sorry that you experienced that.

At an old job I read a fiction series based on a suggestion from my manager but that's because we liked the same type of books, absolutely was not expected to be read to join the "in" crowd. If anything, we were the "out" crowd!

^^^ I get night terrors thinking about gig in Boston fire city good sea food but wth is up with work environments that lure you in with free books and perks and it's like hell

Respect.

I'm gonna start using "shitlit" from hereon out.

And also, there are people I respect who said they read 100+ books a year, and that you should, too. But while others in my circles were eager to jump on the train, for me, I thought it would be performative, and be about having read said 100+ books than digesting any of it. And what more, I recall that I best retain info via reading if I have skin in the game, rather than feeling like reading makes me appear more approvable to others.

All that is to say, it's good to hear from someone who reads a ton that a lot of your reading is kinda junk stuff (even if 150+ books a year is still a crazy metric – and as a tangent, people who ride bikes a ton say that a lot of their miles they rack up are junk miles, so I'm sure there's an equivalent of shitlit in any pursuit/ hobby/ interest/ endeavor).

Do you blog or keep a list? I would be nice to see what you read. I tend to only read fiction written by women. (I read enough non-fiction via the Financial Times newspaper.) As a man, it is really eye-opening to "see the other (emotional) side". Usually, the stories are much more about character development, than trying to save the world ("do something big") that I often see in fiction written by men.

How does this work? Is it a book every two days? Or three books on the weekend? How long is your commute and how do you keep off YouTube/Netflix in the evening?

Reading indeed should be a source of enjoyment. But sometimes you read coz you have to.

if you read 150 books a year you are well ahead of the crowd. However it would be tough to apply all 150 books contents to real life. If you enjoy reading keep doing it. I would love to be able to read 150 books or let alone make the time for it.

I liked Oliver Burkeman on this with his “too many needles” idea [0].

Personally, I hoard a bunch of stuff using Omnivore and then on a semi regular basis I go through that and just throw away 90% of it. I find this two stage process useful: stage 1 is gathering All The Things, stage 2 is after a while sifting and keeping only the stuff I’m really interested in. Ultimately though, I try nowadays to apply a Buddhist angle on it: I hold all this stuff very lightly, knowing that it’s as close to infinite as makes no difference, and letting it go!

[0] https://www.oliverburkeman.com/river

Stop looking for content that might be interesting. There's simply way too much content that might interest you.

Start pulling content instead of pushing. Why are you looking for something to read? Boredom, research? Then go for the kill: what is the best option here? What is the most fun to you or the most important data you need? Prioritize mercilessly.

And filter aggressively. There is very little original and high quality content out there. Most of what is available is derivative and there's a long tail of very low quality content. Even if the topic or title seems interesting, for each 100 articles or books that sound interesting, there's likely 1 or 2 that are miles ahead of the crowd in terms of quality. Time is a great filter. Books on a given topic that are decades or centuries older than average are likely to be the source of much rehashing in a given field.

> Step back from the Internet, unsubscribe from non essential creators, close tabs without verifying if still needed

Pretty much, yes, that's the answer, at least for me. I've stopped keeping tabs on much of what's considered as being "new" and I've surrounded myself (literally, I think I might have a hoarding problem) with books that I consider to be close to my (hobby-ish) interests.

Even when it comes to those books I 100% realize that I won't have enough time to read them all, but whenever I see a mention/reference being made from a book that I'm currently reading to a second book it's good to know that I have that second book in my piles of books located around the house. Hard to logically explain, but it is what it is.

Ironically it’s because increasingly it’s 100 words generated by an LLM from a 10 word prompt. We’ve effectively found a way to keep entire datacenters humming to do nothing more than obfuscate signal in very expensive noise and the lossily try and extract it again.

I often use the old trick of skipping to the end to see if there is a coherent conclusion, and if I think the conclusion is interesting, I’ll go back and pick my way through the body of the article.

I agree with your points though in general. I think this is even worse with many non-fiction books. So much fluff when the main points could be summarized in 10 pages.

I had same feeling. I have been using AI summarizers more and more for these type of articles/posts. Though I haven't checked the summary quality, here is what I got from Kagi Summarizer:

The passage discusses the author's experience with the growing sense of competition and obligation around reading and book consumption. It criticizes the way platforms like Goodreads have turned reading into a quantifiable task, with people feeling pressure to read a certain number of books per year. The author argues that reading should be about the experience and personal enjoyment, not about keeping up with others or hitting reading goals. The passage encourages readers to step away from the social media side of reading and not worry about the "right" way to read. It emphasizes that the value of reading is not quantifiable and that people should read at their own pace without external pressure.

Strikes me (in my 40s, regularly read books and sometimes full articles in magazines) as lazy. When I understood I will not be reading all the things, and that a lot of what is written is trash (to me, anyway, given my values and sense of purpose), and that books are technology that replaced oral tradition, it became a whole lot easier to be very selective about what I read. I've started many books now that, before, I'd feel compelled to finish.

You're not happy you have to do this- why do you have to do this, again?

> Can anyone provide a summary of this article?

Well that’s too much work. But here is an LLM produced summary of the text:

Molly Templeton's article, "On Letting Go of the Idea of 'Keeping Up'," explores the pressures of contemporary reading culture, contrasting it with the joy of reading she experienced in childhood, symbolized by earning gold stars for each book read. She describes how, as an adult, reading has become entangled with competition, social performance, and the need to keep up with trends, turning the solitary pleasure of reading into a public performance marked by obligations and quantifiable achievements.

Templeton criticizes the way platforms like Goodreads have transformed reading into a task-oriented activity, where success is measured by the number of books read, detracting from the intrinsic value of reading itself. She shares personal anecdotes from her time in New York's bookish circles, where she felt the pressure to be well-read and current, highlighting the anxiety that can come with trying to meet external expectations.

Templeton recalls a turning point when being asked about her recent reads felt more like a competition than a shared interest, prompting her to reevaluate her relationship with reading. She argues for a reading culture that values personal experience over productivity, emphasizing that the number of books one reads should not dictate one's worth as a reader.

Templeton advocates stepping away from the competitive and overwhelming aspects of online book communities to reclaim reading as a personal, unquantifiable joy. Her reflections serve as a reminder that the true value of reading lies in the individual growth, enjoyment, and insights it provides, far beyond any statistic or social media status.

Not perfect, but helps to determine if something is worth the time: https://kagi.com/summarizer/index.html

This is a woman who is sharing an anecdote akin to what every episode of Sex in the city (the greatest tv show ever created according to many women) is about.

If you don't get it, you are not understanding what more than half the population is about. Not to worry, almost all people don't understand themselves, others or the world at large and LLMs will not help, since they are trained on data produced by people who don't understand much of anything :)

I need to troll a little bit here: Do you watch the whole 90 min film, or the YouTube summary in 10 mins? Or even shorter: Just the 2 mins trailer? Why do you read a whole novel instead just reading the back cover? Why read Der Speigel or The New Yorker long form journalism when you can get the summary in 90 seconds on the toilet with CNN?

"If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter" from Pascal comes to mind.

This is a magazine (note the "mag" in the hostname). The reason people read magazines is not to "get to the f'ing point": if you want that, find a newspaper or something. The intended audience of a magazine is people who actually want to have the leisurely fun of reading an article that isn't just long but might actively bury the lede or use rhetorical devices such as a false start... honestly, your comment -- which is itself three times longer than it "needs to be" to make your point, btw -- feels as insulting and asinine as someone complaining that Romeo and Juliet could have been summarized in five minutes or so, demonstrating that Shakespeare clearly didn't know how to write.

(And sure, maybe some articles are just bad, and don't have writing which captivates anyone, but an article is not a bad article just because it is long or just because can be summarized with fewer words by someone who merely wanted to "get to the f'ing point", and if you come into articles with that mindset you are also going to find slow movies extremely boring and whine about "nothing happened"; but... did you feel anything?)

It’s understandable and may work for you but I have the feeling it’s a bad habit. But again, if it works for you all the better.

“ In a reflective and deeply personal essay, the author navigates the evolving landscape of reading, from a childhood adorned with gold stars for fairy tale conquests to an adulthood grappling with the digital age's quantification of literary consumption. Amidst New York's vibrant book scene, a place of lit gossip and subway commutes, the author encounters the double-edged sword of being part of a community that both enriches and, at times, imposes unwelcome pressures. With a critique as much of Goodreads' role in transforming reading into a competitive sport as of the social media-induced urge to keep up, the piece eloquently argues for a return to reading as an unquantifiable, personal journey, a haven from the public eye and a refuge in the joy of books for their own sake.”

TL;DR: “TL;DR”