Nonfiction books

[Moocow]

I've been trying to get myself to read more often. I feel a little unlucky having been raised with every kind of digital distraction available, so I stopped reading at my own will early on in favor of more intellectually stagnant things like video games.
But most of all, when I read a book, I can't shake the feeling that there's still something more interesting or more productive I could be doing. It's not a rational feeling but it's there.

Do any of you other INTPs make a habit of reading through entire texts, or do you have trouble getting started / continuing a book? I'm talking particularly about non-fiction. Is the lack of reading just me, my generation, or what?

 

[NeverAmI]

I just recently started picking up more on non-fiction. I think part of it was laziness, part of it wast the misconception of what actually interests me, part of it was this idea that non-fiction is not gratifying enough.

I think another part of it is the lack of marketing for non-fiction other than recent events. You have to go digging for the good ones, kind of like music imo.

The content and writing style really depicts whether I will actually finish a book. I try really hard to stick with a book until it is done, but if it really just doesn't click at all, then I won't finish it. I do allow a book to challenge me, though. If the writing is complex or the portrayal foreign or uncomfortable, I will do my best to stick with it. Only when someone makes arguments that are completely unfounded and with no validity will I really struggle to follow, although sometimes it is still interesting to hear their entire point of view.

A lot of biographies and factual portrayals put me to sleep though, a lot of stuff on history and current events do as well unless the author does a good job of intertwining it all in a creative and intuitive way.

 

[Cogito]

Do any of you other INTPs make a habit of reading through entire texts, or do you have trouble getting started / continuing a book? I'm talking particularly about non-fiction. Is the lack of reading just me, my generation, or what?

I've been told that my ability to read through large texts of non-fiction--as well as fiction--is rare and, therefore, must be envied.

In all honesty, I fucking hate foraging through the beginning of any book. . . but I work my way through. It's virtually worthwhile upon completion--I assure you. We're living in an age where instant gratification is the ideal, however unrealistic. (My intention is not to put you down in any way whatsoever--your position is quite understandable.)

One helpful, albeit obvious, recommendation is to set mini-goals for yourself. e.g. "I can't move on to another activity until I reach page fourty-five," etc.

 

[Moocow]

I've been told that my ability to read through large texts of non-fiction--as well as fiction--is rare and, therefore, must be envied.

In all honesty, I fucking hate foraging through the beginning of any book. . . but I work my way through. It's virtually worthwhile upon completion--I assure you. We're living in an age where instant gratification is the ideal, however unrealistic. (My intention is not to put you down in any way whatsoever--your position is quite understandable.)

One helpful, albeit obvious, recommendation is to set mini-goals for yourself. e.g. "I can't move on to another activity until I reach page fourty-five," etc.

Yeah, no offense taken. In fact I can see that being true, about instant gratification.

I ought to finish reading The Interpretation of Dreams. That's an easy one to pick up because it's Freud... I don't know how to determine which authors are the most credible for nonfiction sources though. Where do I start?

 

[Trebuchet]

Reading is a great pleasure for me, and that includes non-fiction. I often do feel a bit of guilt relaxing with a book, but mostly I use books to treat myself at the end of the day.

With some non-fiction, I do read only part, especially if I am using it as a reference book to answer some question. Also, some books I don't like enough to finish. Although non-fiction is often considered more serious than fiction, some of it is really awful. Why read it? There are a lot of books, and life is short.

So, maybe you are reading boring non-fiction. There is plenty of gripping non-fiction. I challenge you to put any of these down:

History: Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks. Marks writes of his experiences as an English cryptographer during WWII. Warning: there is a lot of anguish in this book.

Engineering and Psychology: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. This is a book about design and human interaction with things, by an expert in both engineering and psychology.

Geology (mostly): The Control of Nature by John McPhee. This book tells three stories of human attempts to control nature. One of them is the attempt to cool the lava in Iceland, rather than evacuate.

History and Engineering: Failure Is Not An Option by Gene Krantz. If you saw Apollo 13, you know the story, but Krantz tells what it was like to shoulder the responsibility, not just on that mission, but all of them, with some good explanations of how it all worked.

All of these books are about people, whether or not it is a biography. It is about how people work, what they want, and how they act. That tends to be what interests me, which of course isn't what interests everyone. McPhee is a brilliant writer, a master of prose, who makes you want to meet every person he writes about. Marks and Krantz are painfully honest, while Norman is just so fascinatingly clever.

 

[NeverAmI]

I am not sure as to the credibility of some of these, but you can add me on goodreads.com to browse my shelves and get ideas, if you like.

http://www.goodreads.com/neverami

 

[Moocow]

I'll definitely look into some of those, Trebuchet. I'm interested in The Design of Everyday Things and The Control of Nature.
I suppose I'm pointing first and foremost to nonfiction scientific books. I'm really interested in learning about how everything works... so obviously not all the books will be incredibly exciting.
History is also almost always good for me if it's well written and I'm not being forced to read X amount by X date.

 

[NeverAmI]

Engineering and Psychology: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. This is a book about design and human interaction with things, by an expert in both engineering and psychology.

Just got it in the mail today.

 

[Moocow]

I just realized I have a peculiar habit of trailing off into thought WHILE reading!
This is one reason it's hard for me to concentrate on text. I can be reading something automatically but not registering any of it clearly because I'll be thinking about something completely different. Do any of you have that problem?

 

[Gunnarsson]

I don't think any of the books in the picture lasted more than 24h before it had been read from start to finish, and any particularly interesting section re-read. So no problems reading interesting books from start to finish as fast as possible. Might be worth mentioning that english is my second language...

Trailing off into thought while reading is sometimes a problem for me too. I read about a aerodynamic device perhaps, start to think about where it would be perfect to use, and 1½ page later I suddenly find that I have no memory what so ever of the text I read while thinking. Go back and read again...

 

[NeverAmI]

I just realized I have a peculiar habit of trailing off into thought WHILE reading!
This is one reason it's hard for me to concentrate on text. I can be reading something automatically but not registering any of it clearly because I'll be thinking about something completely different. Do any of you have that problem?

Yea, especially if the material is really dry. If a text is REALLY dry I will probably have to put it aside until I really get interested in that topic otherwise I will just waste 10x the time re-reading the same stuff.

It gets easier to stay focused though the more I read. I definitely don't "experience" the text like I do in fictions, though.

 

[Cogito]

I just realized I have a peculiar habit of trailing off into thought WHILE reading!
This is one reason it's hard for me to concentrate on text. I can be reading something automatically but not registering any of it clearly because I'll be thinking about something completely different. Do any of you have that problem?

Sounds like a very Enneatype 7 thing to do. I can certainly relate.

I puff out my chest and shoot any irrelevant thoughts down.

 

[Trebuchet]

Just got it [The Design of Everyday Things] the mail today.

Great. I sure hope you enjoy it.

 

[Melllvar]

I feel a little unlucky having been raised with every kind of digital distraction available, so I stopped reading at my own will early on in favor of more intellectually stagnant things like video games.

I think the general idea that books are somehow more valuable than "digital distraction" is kind of flawed, despite being so widespread in society. Books can be a very slow way to gather and process information (not that there aren't much slower ways... I HATE listening to lectures cause they seem so inefficient), compared to what modern technology has to offer. The internet comes to mind: I find I can learn a lot more reading blogs, news feeds and web pages than I can from even the average textbook. And I'm a guy who mainly reads textbooks, then non-fiction non-textbooks, then fiction, in that order, atleast as books are concerned. Books can't be updated frequently, they can't include video and sound, they don't offer you a chance for back and forth debate w/ the author, etc.

Even video games can be valuable. I remember reading an article recently about how frenetic FPS games basically give your visual cortex a workout, pushing it to the max for hardcore gamers. IIRC the end result was better eyesight or something like that, although I don't have the article handy right now. They can also force you to think in different ways, like being forced to do 3d rotations quickly in your head, or integrate new strategies to solve more difficult puzzles (thinking of puzzles games here, tetris and the like). I personally think we don't use technology enough in this way; edutainment software and stuff like that could easily give us all an edge over previous generations that didn't have that technology available.

Plus, not all books are created equal with regard to intellectual stimulation. I doubt reading a fairly typical novel is anymore stimulating for your brain than a game of Halo 3 or listening to a song for the millionth time, but getting obsessed with new ideas from a philosophy or science book almost certainly is.

But most of all, when I read a book, I can't shake the feeling that there's still something more interesting or more productive I could be doing. It's not a rational feeling but it's there.

Do any of you other INTPs make a habit of reading through entire texts, or do you have trouble getting started / continuing a book? I'm talking particularly about non-fiction. Is the lack of reading just me, my generation, or what?

I generally just try to get as much out of the book as possible, then move on. I'm especially prone to daydreaming while reading. It seems like I have to read almost every page atleast twice, sometimes more, because my mind constantly gets distracted by other things. I don't usually feel bad if I don't finish a book, cause I know it was probably because I moved on to something else important. On the other hand, sometimes a book, fiction or non-fiction, just sucks you in and you can't put it down. I recently finished the ~400 page Mad in America in almost a single sitting, but I've been stuck on the first 25 pages of They Knew They Were Right for several weeks now. Its not that one book's necessarily better, its just what I happen to be interested in at the moment.

Anyhow, that's my opinion, I guess.

 

[Philosophyking87]

Digital distractions are like kyrptonite.
I have obsessive/addictive tendencies when it comes to technology.
As a result, I'm not as knowledgeable as I'd like to be and I rarely ever read anymore.

But I'm currently trying to work myself into reading from time to time.
Hopefully I can actually establish a workable routine.

 

[Jah]

Digital Distraction World.
I easily distract myself, and currently I probably have 10 books I'm "reading" that is; I have started to read them, and then after momentary distraction started another, slowly working my way through several books at once, jumping between books on psychology or quantum physics to Plato's Republic or H.P. Lovecraft, or reading dissertations on various subjects such as Energy and Alternative sources for energy, pdf. files about magick and other mystical subjects, always increasing the internal database of understanding and models of the world.

Needless to say, I have no idea how many books I actually have.

 

[Jah]

btw. NeverAmI, the Emotion Machine is one of the books I'm also reading right now

 

[Trebuchet]

I've got another good one. I am about a third of the way through Nurture Shock by Po Broson and Ashley Merryman.

This is a page turner, and I think I would have loved it when I was in high school, just as I love it now. It is sort of a book about parenting, true, but really it is a book about how the brain works in children and teens, and what science vs. common sense have to say about these subjects.

Each chapter covers a different subject, such as praise, sleep, admissions tests, lying, or rebellion. They aren't writing about how parents should raise kids, though. They write about correlations, MRIs, and neuroscience.

For those who like digital distractions, some of the chapters are online.

The chapter on praise, and the damage it can do, was published by New York Magazine.

The chapter on racial bias in children was published by Newsweek.

If anyone reads these, I'd love to hear what you think of the articles.

 

[Philosophyking87]

lol, a page turner.

 

[Silas]

I get the same daydreaming problem, apart from a while back, when I had staved off reading any books for a while (using the internet instead) and found that I had essentially become unable to read more than a page with out feeling the need to flit to another task, then I came across this article < http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/399/computing_the_cost >. You use the decision making part of your brain more when on the internet, rather then reflecting on things and keeping your attention span elongated to take in information better while reading a book. If i remember correctly, your attention span is lowered among other things, making it harder to read books if you spend lots of time on the internet clicking on hyperlink after hyperlink. Although it depends on how you personally use the internet, not what the article states. Anyway, I'm basically just recommending clicking on yet another hyperlink.

 

[Minuend]

When I read articles, I often start skimming when there's about 1 page left. Then I feel like I've got the gist of it, so it's not necessary to finish it. Additionally, I'm sometimes impatient because the next article is just as exciting.

When I read books, I'm the same as NeverAmI.

I sometimes buy books that I have problems starting to read. I think it's partially because there's so much else I want to read, and I kinda want to do it all at once. But there are books that are as addicting as fiction as well. Come to think of it, I often grow tired of the content when I'm nearing the end. They are usually just summarizing by then anyways.

I like knowledge, but the path there isn't always that amusing. I actually enjoy nonfiction books just laying around my apartment. It's like I'm surrounded by knowledge, is nice.

Sometimes, I daydream while reading as well.