Serial Reader: Reading Schedule Builder

In 2021, I did an experiment to find out how long it takes to read classic <i>technical</i> books if we spend 40 minutes a day. It turned out that our small book club could read and understand a complete analytic number theory book in 120 days. The complete meetup logs are archived here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;susam.net&#x2F;club&#x2F;meets&#x2F;iant.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;susam.net&#x2F;club&#x2F;meets&#x2F;iant.html</a><p>I am currently doing a similar book club meetups for Mastering Emacs. If this sounds interesting to you, you are very welcome to join us. Meeting link, schedule, and other details are available here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;susam.net&#x2F;club&#x2F;mastering-emacs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;susam.net&#x2F;club&#x2F;mastering-emacs&#x2F;</a>

The estimates seem a bit high, or perhaps unbalanced from book to book. <i>The Count of Monte Cristo</i> is slated for 208 days at twenty minutes per day!<p>I read mostly just in bed before going to sleep, averaging around 30 minutes. <i>The Count of Monte Cristo</i> took me three to four weeks (I don&#x27;t keep notes on that, so it&#x27;s an estimate), and I&#x27;m not a speed-reader. It&#x27;s just a book that has aged well (i.e., a limited cognitive overhead) and is not particularly hard to read in the English translation.<p>On the other hand, it lists <i>The Canterbury Tales</i> for 64 days, which seems reasonable given that reading English that old really does take a lot more effort (and that&#x27;s assuming an annotated edition), but way out of whack compared to Dumas&#x27; novel above. (Also <i>The Canterbury Tales</i> is not a work I read in one go; a couple of stories before moving to another book is sensible here in my opinion.)

I am an avid reader, reading 2 or 3 books at a time, alternating between history and economics to fiction and fantasy, with detours into science and periodicals (like The Economist). I think I exceed this 50 books&#x2F;year goal easily, but I never bother counting. I am also lucky to read in more than one language, for a nice variety. Incidentally, I read Moby Dick this year and found it a mixed experience, but more on a pleasure side.<p>Anyhow, it&#x27;s been very interesting to see changes in myself the attention span required. I have to consciously put my phone and get cozy in reading chair so I am not distracted.<p>For my teenage children, once phones and high school was introduced, their reading dropped quite a bit. They still read but they seem like madly dancing gadflys in their approach to it.<p>Yesterday we visited with friends and their 12 year old daughter was on chapter 3 of Count of Monte Cristo and was complaining that it was dull and when it was going to start being awesome. We (her parents and our family) were cheering her to stay with it because the epic tale of escape and revenge (served quite cold) is really good.

I devote part of my time to rereading books, on the basis that you&#x27;ve read a book for the first time only on second read. One benefit is that I get a lot more out of them, another is that I remember more of them. This is useful when the book is complicated, or more is going on than is obvious at the surface: many classics benefit from this strategy.

one piece of advice for anyone about to read war and peace: the number of chracters are vast and you&#x27;ll find that the names used to refer to each can often change with no warning. different names can be used interchangeably, even in the same piece of dialogue. it can get very confusing. best to have a map of character names before you start.

I recommend reading a book every three days (on average) and doing it for a year. I did this one year and read mostly bios and history material. At the end of the year I felt I have so much more knowledge in so many different areas and has given me different perspectives.

In my experience reading frequently, even if just for short periods, is easily the best way to read a lot.<p>Ten thousand pages in a year might seem like an enormous ammount, but it is actually quite manageable if you dedicade one part of every day to doing so.

I’m so happy to see this on HN! I have nothing to add to the conversation except to say I’m a satisfied and dedicated user! I read a lot but I tend to read books that are “shorter” (~350) and finish them in 3-5 days so the huge classics can be intimidating and sometimes feel like a bit of a slog. I read on Serial Reader every morning while I have breakfast and I’ve finished 15 books this year on the app that I absolutely never would’ve bothered with otherwise. The $5 or whatever it costs to upgrade and read ahead is also well worth it. Sometimes you just <i>need</i> to know what happens next!

Sadly this doesn&#x27;t include many books. Probably going by free ebooks library or such.<p>Would Love to hear from other&#x27;s book recommendations fiction or non.<p>Those looking for inspiration I&#x27;d recommend (not in order)<p>* Ray Bradbury<p>* Pearl S. Buck<p>* John Wyndham<p>* Fyodor Dostoevsky<p>* Frank Herbert - Dune<p>* Terry GoodKind - Wizard&#x27;s first rule

@mlschmitt23 not sure if you&#x27;re looking for feedback, as this isn&#x27;t a Show HN, but when I click to download the app in the banner on your website, then it turns into an Open button, which opens the app when I click it. Unfortunately the app only opens for a split second, and then bounces me back to Safari to your website.<p>I was able to open the app like normal from my home screen.

Reading War and Peace in 20 min&#x2F;day increments? Would that be a good experience?<p>disclaimer: I have not read, but normally very long books are best absorbed in larger chunks as they tend to be more descriptive and take longer for plot to unfold

Don&#x27;t be discouraged from &quot;War and Peace&quot;, because it says that it is 235 days (probably it is much less). When I finished it, I wished it had another 1,000 pages.

I low key enjoyed COVID, it gave me a week of free time to read.

Does anyone know of a more generic piece of software for this? I want to be able to input my own books to read and get a schedule.

My two cents, if you have to think hard about how to set aside time for reading, you have another problem

Nice. Can you talk a little bit about what this is written in and how the development process went?

I have read a lot of classic books and several of them are quite dull. I have no idea why you would read both <i>Wuthering Heights</i> and <i>The Count of Monte Cristo</i> just because they are &quot;classic&quot;.<p>For people that really want to read through some these books, I actually recommend the abridged versions first. It is a lot easier to read the details of the full novel if you have read the abridged versions, and know that you enjoy the story.<p>Another suggestion if you just want to get used to reading long books is to start with something more modern like the Game of Thrones books, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter.