You Can Read Hard Books

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00:00 - Beginning
00:37 - Pick the Book
01:42 - Find a Buddy
03:52 - Give Up
05:02 - Read
08:53 - Write down your thoughts
11:50 - Evaluate
13:12 - Repeat

[_jared]

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[tapankamath]

Love the idea of looking at books as if they’re people we’re trying to understand, just brought a massive shift in perspective! Thanks!

[MatthewRisnes]

This is why I read all my books on my phone. Cause I have my phone with me everywhere. And this has conditioned me to stop doomscrolling so much on my phone. So now instead of looking at the news app or YouTube or whatever, I tend to open up my book. I’ve finished War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Idiot, Brothers Karamazov, Dune Messiah and many other books this year alone. The phone is not the enemy. It’s just incumbent on us to reorient our relationship with it.

[joanneleeson]

You are a good teacher. Thankyou for your help Jared.

[sb]

(3:54) Right here is the best piece of advice: Don’t try to understand everything on the first go round.

A great book is an experience and will open up to you with time. You don’t demand of a piece of music or a painting that it *makes sense* to you immediately. No.

You listen to it; you look at it; you experience it—and then, through your experience, you come to understand it.

[davidleonard]

Great advice.
You need always challenge yourself, otherwise you do not grow.
Reading has always been a challenge for me. I'm dyslexic, so reading can be a struggle at times; but I've always read (thanks to my mother's constant encouragement when I was young) and I always write, thus I've strengthened a skill that has been hard come by. It is my most cherished skill because of that. Regardless my struggle I'm an avid and voracious reader, and because of my constantly challenging myself, that skill has grown. Now I can read even the most difficult books, the most complex prose: I'm not saying it is easy, and I am certainly not fast, but slow and steady wins the race, as we say.

[tammyschilling]

Quitting really is a great reading skill. Time is precious and if I am not enjoying a book, not understanding a book, or am just too tired at this moment of my life to get a book, quitting is the right move. Several years ago I decided that I would make it a goal to quit 5-10 percent of books I start each year. It's way better than wasting time on something when I could read something else.

[marrs_]

in terms of philosophy, Meditations feels like a pretty enjoyable introduction to what people might consider "hard" reading, firstly its just passages so easier to synthesize take aways from the smaller sections of text whilst still having to think hard ab it.

[jaykaye]

Gravity's Rainbow, here we go again.

[Nico-lkhb]

So happy you are doing more videos a month

[alexpopescu]

Just found your content and I’m in love! Wish you had more in-depth philosophy topics though like you did for stoicism. I know it’s probably hard to make them hopefully you make more.

[iMystic]

This is excellent advice (and an excellent video). Thank you!

[timdemoss]

This came at a great time! I'm midway through The Brothers Karamazov (first time with any Dostoevsky) and you're not kidding about the amount of nicknames...it's wild. Thanks for the encouragement :)

[valeriopagnotta]

Your idea of the importance of what kind of notes put on a book you are reading during a situation where you are not in the perfect zone to read is really interestinv and very wise i may add. Thank you😊

[nathanhassallpoetry]

I quit books if I am bored by, a maximum of 100 pages. I started reading Thomas Taylor's translation of Plotinus. It requires close reading, and is difficult, but is definitely enjoyable so far. Also been enjoyed Goethe's Faust, which I am reading aloud to myself. I'm more likely to be bored by books that are too easy, often ones with bullet points in them. Ha. Good video! Thank you.

[pretentioushab]

Thats really true, i am currently reading paradise lost. and im not a christian so everything is pretty much new to me except the tree stuff, I found sitting with the text and re reading to be the best ways to churn meaning out of the text, and sometimes skipping paras to come back to them with more context
i had a sort of idea that i am in a way inferior or wrong to use the internet for answers but to the contrary, i felt that using chat gpt for obscure references or myths and also Googling the meaning of archaic words to be really helpful.
I think it is just about letting go of mental barriers and failing continuously with the same book.
i love the channel btw!!

[nahuakang]

Really good advice, Jared. Funnily I remember reading Thomas Aquinas during college, which I considered to be one of the hardest reads. It was a period of stress and insomnia, and I oscillated between reading and giving up. What I didn't realize was that I shifted Thomas Aquinas to just before bedtime and, since I found the reading dull, it ended up solving my insomnia and helped me fall asleep. Needless to say, my essay on Thomas Aquinas was mediocre, but reading hard books can have unexpected rewards, too!

[zida]

I have a travelers notebook set and one of them is my commonplace book... and I start from the last page of that notebook to list the words I don''t know slowly working toward the front of the book. I will then routinely define them. It's always with me and helps me not get distracted by my phone.

also, Hi Carl! :D

[angieallen]

This came at just the right time as I am about to embark on "The Glorious Cause" by Robert Middlekauff. I already read hard fiction. It's non-fiction I struggle with, so step one: done. Thanks for these steps; I look forward to implementing them.

[MIDencezzz]

Thank you!, your content motivated me to buy more books and take reading more seriously, so far I just got my copy of consolation of philosophy