Dedicating your entire life for only one or handful books

I do not like this whole * completionist * and * journey over the destination * kind of mentality many consumers have Like "you have to read 100000000 books". But why. i can also can read the same 3 books for ever Imagine if you read 3 works but they are the Bible the Illiad and that Joyce memebook You actually can discover new things in there In every reading In fact many literature big scholars do that They are not reading 1000000 different books

>>5340 Destination over journey *

>>5340 For those types, finishing a book is just a checklist for them. Basic consumption. Reading or doing stuff for the sake of being able to say they've done it. It's a trap that even the best of us can fall into though. We can't all always be deep reading. Sometimes the words just go in and then out. For me, I probably need to read a book two or three times before I've really gotten it into my brain. The first time, everything is new and fresh, maybe even overwhelming. You have to take in new vocabulary and words used in ways you've never seen before, describing scenes you've never seen before. The second time, you've familiarized yourself with the vocabulary and now the scenes come to you more smoothly because your brain isn't overwhelmed anymore. The third time, optional probably, just because you enjoyed it so much. Advanced readers or big brain people can probably do all this in one read. It's all a big case of FOMO probably. There's so much content available now, people don't want to miss out and try to read as much as they can. Whereas before there was kind of abundance and ease of access, I imagine people having enjoyed the same few stories over and over again, that they could even recite it by heart and can remember the scenes clearly in their minds.

No, you don't discover new things just reading the same thing again, people who devote their life researching the bible or why Joyce write that memebook are just doing another kind of completionism

>>5343 It is less stressful for sure to me.

>>5342 I also suffer from some kind of OCD while reading that forces me to reread sentences and paragraphs just to make absolutely sure that I didn't skip a word. It is really frustrating I can force myself to not go back and just plow on reading every single word, but inevitably my eyes will start skipping ahead down the page and phrases and sentences will leap out at me and then I need to go back and reread the entire section again.

>>5345 Same. Do you do anything to try and counteract this?

I've never gotten something new out of a book from reading it multiple times. The value of a book comes when it is new and fresh. It is best for the words to flow over you, to not quite comprehend everything the author writes but to feel the impressions they are trying to impart. Of course this does not apply to textbooks

It's not exactly that but related : I recently took the decision to stop acquiring new books if I don't specifically and intensely want them, in particular. I'd rather reread the piles I already got, get familiar with them, being able to quote them from memory or at least remember them good rather than just piling up and piling up new ones because they « might be » interesting in a way. Several of the books I'm thinking about aren't novels though, but my reasoning still applies to all. The logic behind it isn't to be a big scholar or anything though, just to have an understanding deep enough that it will actually matter in my life.

>>5347 It can happens but its not needed to reread the entire book. I mean if you read some math book and then after lots of study you just take a look again at some parts of the same book you can figure out new things from the same part of text.

>>5347 ...Never steps into the same see twice.

>>5340 I'd do it to measure how my perspective changes and how my understanding evolves. I wouldn't limit myself to one or two books, as the concepts and ideas you acquire outside of that text that'll allow you to find new things within the text will be no different whether through life experience, talking, or through other books. I'd just revisit that one book time and time again to meta-analyze my own perspective and worldview. Which book is good enough for that though, idk.

>>5340 If a book is worth reading at all, then it's worth reading more than once.

>>5347 I mean, this is definitely true for genre fiction. If you're reading any sort of thriller or romance or anything else that's basically a movie script written out, you likely won't enjoy rereading it, at least until years pass and you've forgotten most things. Books with more depth or substance will give more on consequent reads. Thinking in terms of video games, it's like if someone asks you to pick a singleplayer game to play every day for the next year. You probably wouldn't pick call of duty, as it's short and there is no replay value, as the first runthrough will expose you to everything there is. They're not games that are designed to be played multiple times. Whereas something like a CRPG which has classes, paths and restrictions is made to be played many times and attempts to deliver as much content as possible. The same goes for things like poetry and literature; they attempt to shed a ray of light onto the grand scope of the human condition in a non-direct way, so there usually is no "payoff" or sense of closure, just a feeling of greater knowing and a desire to know even more.

>>5531 > so there usually is no "payoff" or sense of closure, just a feeling of greater knowing and a desire to know even more. usually I don't get that after reading the same book again, though. Usually, my 'desire to know even more' means wanting to read another book

>>5347 I find a second readthrough is beneficial if something 'clicked' late into reading the book which will give me a renewed appreciation for it or if I've done some reading up on the book after I've read it and go back through deliberately looking for a new perspective. Re-reading on its own without either knowing how to properly reanalyse a text or having a new perspective to look at it through has always felt pointless to me.

There are people who dedicate their lives to some 'holy' book like the Quran or the Bible. I think that for someone to claim to follow a religion, that person should learn the language to read the holy book they follow. I've toyed with the idea of learning sanskrit to read the Srimad Bhagavatam, even though I am not of that religion; at least I feel that'd give me a less filtered glimpse into their system of thought to make an informed judgement as to whether there is value in there. There are other books, of course, which are not usually considered holy. One could read Euclid's Elements (and learn some ancient greek), or Plato's Republic, or perhaps learn classical chinese and read the Daodejing, the Yijing (I-Ching, Zhou-yi or Book of Changes) and the Zhuangzi, or even just the Shijing (Book of Poetry). One book I would probably follow like this, over the course of several years, would be Knuth's Art of Computer Programming. Or Spivak's Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry. Hell, even SICP. Some of the books I mentioned (perhaps not all) are deep enough to warrant a lifetime of dedication to a careful reading and re-reading of them.

>I fear not the man who has read 10,000 books once, but I fear the man who has read the same book, 10,000 times t. Bruce Lee