> I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?”
I used to be this way too. Then I just started reading again and now I can't stop. The trick for me -- which might be circumstantial and not related at all -- is an e-reader I always carry on my person, and an unlimited free books policy from my employer.
Sometimes I only get a few minutes of reading here and there. Sometimes there's a few hours at a time. But it's on the level of when I was a child and teenager again.
I mean, I still don't, generally read the article because the comments on HN are often higher quality. But the books I read are even higher quality.
And the things I've learned from mathematical, financial, systems theoretical, organisational, political, anthropological, and technical literature has really taken me places.
> Sometimes I only get a few minutes of reading here and there. Sometimes there's a few hours at a time. But it's on the level of when I was a child and teenager again.
So I dunno about everyone else, but thinking back on my teenage reading habits (which, like plenty others here, I could sit and read for hours and never find time nowadays), I didn't only read for hours at a time. I always had a large book in my backpack I could read a few pages of between classes, a smaller book that would fit in a pocket outside of school for similar short waiting times, and a third book sitting next to my bed where I'd read one full chapter each night. Then the full-day reading times would usually be if I found a fourth book where I couldn't help myself.
I brought back the one-chapter-per-night thing several years ago and I've been getting through books fast enough I no longer feel like I'm missing out. It's still rare that I sit for hours reading, but so many times I've had to make myself stop and go to sleep I no longer feel like it's out of my reach.
> I used to be this way too. Then I just started reading again and now I can't stop. The trick for me -- which might be circumstantial and not related at all -- is an e-reader I always carry on my person, and an unlimited free books policy from my employer.
I was facing similar challenges and I'm doing something similar and I can see my interest in reading gradually going back up (I bought an Onyx Note 3 e-reader and the fact that I can checkout books from the local library is doing wonders for me and my daughter). I'm hoping this sticks and would recommend trying out this approach.
Usually this kind of literature are however more similar to university textbooks for which I prefer to read them as PDFs on the iPad as my Kindle tends to mess up the formulas and figures if you get them in an Amazon Ebook format.
Sometimes you get a PDF from Amazon to begin with, for which I find the the Kindle a subpar experience.
I've come to dislike the pdf format more and more with time. It's great for printing, it's great to show documents really as they are, and it's bad when it comes to... Well, about anything else?
I feel it has become an standard of document viewing when it should have never gone beyond document sharing.
I totally see what you mean. For the most part, I have no trouble deciphering the garbled equations on the Kindle based on context and general understanding and subsequent description. When I do struggle, I tend to fall back to the PDF to clear the confusion up.
PDF is my favorite book format. I like the idea of reflowable text, but my experience is any book with pictures, tables, or math looks pretty terrible as an epub or kindle book. Books that would be suitable for Kindle (usually fiction), I find listening to as an audiobook much more convenient .
I have started to dislike pdfs a lot more since I bought an e-reader. A lot of them are basically scans of pages and basically there is no reflow; I just have to constantly zoom and scroll which is a major put-down.
It's not really my choice. My employer threw a Kindle at me on my first day, and then I e-mail my Amazon receipts to an administrative person at work who makes sure I'm reimbursed as part of my next salary payment.
Kobo Libra 2 is nice. Easy to hold, has a warm toned backlight (I switched from kindle to kobo for that reason alone) and with Overdrive it’s really easy to check out library books.
I used to be this way too. Then I just started reading again and now I can't stop. The trick for me -- which might be circumstantial and not related at all -- is an e-reader I always carry on my person, and an unlimited free books policy from my employer.
Sometimes I only get a few minutes of reading here and there. Sometimes there's a few hours at a time. But it's on the level of when I was a child and teenager again.
I mean, I still don't, generally read the article because the comments on HN are often higher quality. But the books I read are even higher quality.
And the things I've learned from mathematical, financial, systems theoretical, organisational, political, anthropological, and technical literature has really taken me places.