Fuck You Startup World
<i>Fuck reading a book a week. No one can read that fast. Let me repeat that -NO ONE CAN FUCKING READ THAT FAST.</i><p>Finally someone has the courage to tell the truth.  I mean, I get the part about the necessary skimming one has to to do not  just get through school, but be a practical, working academic (as described in the HBR article).  Or the way that techies need to skim lots of tech books to stay ahead in one's career.<p>But that's not <i>reading</i> (in the sense of works meant to be <i>read</i> and not just "understood" -- that is, fiction, or high-quality non-fiction).  Which means getting in the author's head; making their language your own (to the point of it sometimes actually does become the language you use, in ordinary speech and writing); getting to know their characters to the point where they have at least a partial feeling of tangible reality to them (like people you actually do know from the physical word); and their stomping grounds, to a point where they feel like places you've actually live in.<p>That's why it often takes me weeks, sometimes months (and multiple readings) to "read" a book.  Very part-time, mind you -- I suppose I could make it go faster, if I made a "system" about it.  Yeah, I suppose if I put my mind to it, I could get through a good-sized book in a week or so.<p>But then I would probably just end up "understanding" the book.  Not <i>reading</i> it.