Better Reading Habits for Reactionaries

The internet has put more reading material at the command of anyone with a computer or smart phone, but many people find that their capacity to remain focused enough to read longer, weightier material has diminished thanks to the frequent distractions encouraged by television, radio, social media, and mobile phones.

Television producers and social media companies earn money by distracting you with enticing sales pitches from their customers. They have an incentive to develop systems that addict you to distraction. All of these firms employ expert researchers to continually optimize their systems to get you to pay more attention to their channel, and thereby to the ads that it contains.

This creates a dilemma, in that deep learning requires that your mind enter a state of relaxed, uninterrupted ‘flow,’ for at least an hour at a time. If you don’t make time for focused reading, your brain is at the mercy of everyone who is paying to cold-call you with a sales pitch multiple times per day in return for your access to ‘free’ material.

You can still access tons of free reading material without sacrificing your attention span to get it. One of the advantages that reactionaries and conservatives have over liberals is that most of what they need to read is in the public domain. Old books have become a more reliable source of knowledge, especially about the human condition, than new ones.

While I won’t claim to be morally superior to the people interrupting you with unsolicited pitches many times a day (I myself do it), consider reclaiming your attention for yourself and your own benefit by changing your behavior and how you use technology. If you find yourself feeling mentally scattered, as if your own thoughts don’t even belong to you, then you’re not alone.

Getting more time for focused reading

To begin, when you’re reading, my strong recommendation is to leave your smartphone in another room when you sit down with a book or an e-reader.

If you are reading on a smartphone, disable notifications so you can continue reading without any interruptions. If you are reading on a laptop or desktop computer, use the full screen function (usually the hotkey is F11) to remove other distracting elements from your screen.

Different people have different tastes, but listening to music or other noise can disrupt your focus. I personally use wax earplugs or a white noise generator played over headphones when I’m in a noisy, public place and have to either work or read.

If you’re like most modern people, the majority of your attention paid to media goes to applications like Facebook, Twitter, and television. It may be ‘easy’ to consume these things in that it doesn’t require much energy on your part, and it’s immediately rewarding, but this tends to result in a sort of mental obesity. To build a strong mind, you need to spend your scarce watching and reading time on challenging material that will build your character and help you achieve your life goals.

Make the most of your scarce time on this planet: no one, on their death bed, will regret that they did not ‘like’ enough selfies.

Technology doesn’t have to distract you

Most consumer electronics devices and the web are distraction machines that keep you artificially stimulated as you use them. They’re supposed to keep you at an elevated stress level, bouncing from one thing to another, never really finding what you were looking for.

One of the only devices that I actually use that reduces how distracted I am is my Amazon Kindle. There are other e-readers on the market, but most of the people that I know that have used them have expressed that they wish that they had bought a Kindle instead. I had a particularly whiny friend who made the mistake of buying a Nook and would not stop complaining about it for ages.

So I can’t recommend those.

The main reason that I recommend reading most books on a Kindle is because books are heavy, space-consuming, and often relatively expensive. 100 average paperback books weighs roughly 65 pounds. If you read as many books as you probably should be reading, you will otherwise accumulate a rather heavy collection unless you rely more heavily on libraries.

On the other hand, you can have an Amazon account with hundreds of books, and a drive with cloud back-ups that has thousands of others, taking up virtually no space and weight.

Every time you move (and you will probably move multiple times), you will either have to sell some of your book collection or pay up to slog your big collection from one apartment & house to another. If you travel frequently for work or pleasure, you have to select which books to bring with you carefully in advance of each trip. With an e-reader, you just bring your device along with you.

The second main reason is that e-readers do not have notifications and are annoying to browse the web with. The web is an addicting medium that is excellent for finding ‘stubs’ of information and summaries, but it does not generally make it easy to have a focused reading experience in a browser.

The majority of people lack the willpower to focus on a single tab at a time, especially when a bunch of the tabs house applications blinking notifications at you.

The computer, tablet, and smartphone are just too functional, tempting most users to frequent distraction. This is why, even though you can read any ebook without a dedicated device, you should pick up an e-reader. It just makes it easier to focus to shut off alternative options besides reading the material in front of you.

The positive aspect of this is that no one can contact you on the device: it has a sole function, and does that function much better than a general purpose machine could.

Should you buy an ad-supported Kindle to save $20?

My most recent Kindle is an ad-supported one, purchased in part because I wanted to see how irritating it is, and partly because I had recently broken three full-priced ones in a row.

The ads tend to be targeted to mass-market Kindle readers, which is none of you. You can ‘freeze’ the ads to what shipped with the unit if you avoid connecting it to WiFi, but you can’t escape the screen saver. It comes up fairly frequently if you are not actively reading the device, to the point to which it is almost annoying.

You essentially have a choice: the device will either give you a subtle ‘ad’ for Amazon as the screen saver, or it will give you an ad for some other product on Amazon in its place.

Voyage, Paperwhite or Touch?

Is your house well-lit? Just get the regular Kindle. If your house is poorly-lit or you are a frequent flyer, then the Paperwhite will be worth looking at, especially at the lower price that it has now relative to what it used to be at. That has a slight back-light and some additional minor features.

I’ve never personally seen or owned a Voyage (the newest and most expensive model), but I have perfect vision and tend to break the devices frequently, and it may be worth your attention if $300 is a minor purchase for you. The selling point is a sharper display, a more fluid page-turning experience, and a lighting system that shifts to ambient conditions.

None of that particularly appeals to me, so I can’t recommend it.

3G or WiFi?

If you have money to burn, get the version that has a 3G connection. If you want to save some money, the Wifi version is just fine. Leaving the 3G on burns the battery, and if you have a modern smartphone, you can just turn it into a hotspot wherever you are and use that to shop while you’re mobile.

You don’t even really need to use the WiFi, in that it also works fine plugging it in to a computer through a USB cable.

If you’re getting it as a gift for a less technically inclined person (the type that struggles with WiFi configurations), then the 3G version is worth getting.

Should I buy a case?

I have tried owning Kindles without  a case and Kindles with a case.

In the case of the no-case Kindles, I broke three of them, usually due to damage to the screen, with only one breaking due to a drop, and the rest developing cracks during normal transportation in a bag. I’m not the sort of person who breaks smartphones (I’ve never even cracked a screen), so this is more owing to the fragility of the device.

So yes, buy a case — the screen is not the Gorilla Glass you’ll find on a typical touchscreen: it’s more delicate.

When print books are better than an e-Reader

I would say that print books offer a superior reading experience overall. Except for terribly bound paperbacks, almost any print book will be more enjoyable to actually read.

Another category of book in which print books are superior is anything that has detailed, full-color illustrations. Tables, graphs, and code excerpts are also better read on paper or in PDF. I personally like to use sticky notes and my own scribbling on textbooks and technical manuals.

Additionally, when the used book is cheaper than the eBook edition, I will often just order the used book instead. Many publishers aren’t terribly dynamic with how they price their inventory, which means that many books that should be on the cheaper side stay sitting at $9.99 for years on end, even when the used books are selling for $0.01 plus shipping.

Using e-reader features to build your knowledge

I have found that many Kindle owners, even when they have had the device for years, tend to not know how to use its highlighting and note-taking features. These features are essentially what makes the tools worth getting, in my view, because otherwise, you have to use some other kind of external note-taking system (or otherwise damage your books with scribbling), it’s hard to keep track of passages that you may want to remember later.

Because it’s irritating to type on a Kindle, I only use it for highlights. When I want to read the highlights or take notes, I use one of the desktop apps to do so with a full keyboard. This is also how I refresh my memory when I want to write about a particular topic or a specific book — I go back to my notes attached to the book, and review through there.

You can download the reading app to use on your phones, desktop computers, tablets, and through the web reader. Because it’s not widely advertised, a lot of people who own the device seem to not know about the existence of the other apps.

You can access your notes on all books (including books that aren’t from the Kindle store) — the link is semi-hidden, and most people tend to not know about the feature.

What I do before I write about a book is go through all those ebook highlights, look for the most interesting ones, review my notes, and then write about the book. I used to do this in print books by highlighting in print, and then writing the page number with a short note either in a blank page close to the front of the book, or alternatively using a notebook for that purpose.

Getting access to tons of free old books

There are a quite a few good repositories of old books online.

• Archive.org is easy to search. Unfortunately, some of the ebooks are in poor condition, with formatting errors and other issues. More popular books are more likely to have fewer formatting issues.
• Google search will often turn up PDF editions of old books through academic websites.
  • Operators you can try are [name of book full text] or [name of book pdf]. If the link is to a torrent site, there’s a good chance that it’s just a phishing attempt and does not contain the book itself. Many links in these search results are actually just cloaked redirects that will infect your computer with some variety  of malware.
    • Look for academic domains and other similar websites to avoid the misleading search results.
• Amazon itself often has $0 editions of classic books.
  • These editions often have better formatting than some of the versions that are for pay.
  • Check reviews before you buy an out-of-print book to make sure that you’re not getting a bum edition.
• You can also use Amazon’s public library program to access an enormous number of free books using a local US library card. For most, you don’t even have to physically visit the library.
• Some university libraries also have special ebook programs, even for non-students, that you can use to access free material.
• Foundations and non-profits with a historical focus also often have substantial free archival libraries that you can access on the web.

Why I want you to read better books

…mainly, it’s because I’m tired of living in a culture full of clever people who are not making the proper use of their mental powers. Just being clever is not sufficient. You should be disciplined and knowledgeable is well. We are overflowing with clever ignorant people, and even more overflowing with stupid and ignorant people.

You have choices in how you spend your time. If you find yourself reading a lot of free blogs and spending inordinate amounts of time chatting with people in comment sections and on social media, you’re really not making the best possible use of your reading time.

Watching videos and listening to speech is an inefficient method of gaining new information, new knowledge, and learning more about the world. You will become a more interesting person to speak to if you re-devote the time that you spend on television and social media onto reading better books.

While it will not itself make you a better person (especially given that most books are drivel), it will at least arm you against the chief cause of mental degeneration in the modern west: that of succumbing to the equivalent of stuffing your brain with the equivalent of information marshmallow paste all day, every day.

In spending more of your free time reading books that interest you, it also builds habits that will help you read more books that are applicable to your profession (whatever that may be), giving you a competitive edge over all the fat bums who are spending their evenings watching TV and eating candy.

Further, even though this is a free article, you should know that the majority of ‘free’ material written by people who aren’t dead is a waste of your time. You will be better served by buying, borrowing, or downloading a book on a given topic than you will by attempting to cobble together useful knowledge through a variety of ‘free’ resources — in most cases.

Most of what’s published today, especially from reputable outlets, is garbage. It takes a lot of time to sift for material that’s actually worth reading. The material that’s good is often buried under a mountain of junk. To reform the culture, we have to focus on conserving what’s good and discarding what isn’t.

This is why I’m harassing you into buying an e-reader if you haven’t already, and to change your reading habits if you already own one. We need to raise the intellectual bar on ourselves. Periodicals and blogs alone are the mental equivalent of the Stairmaster 2000: a poor method of exercise.