Reading Well

I was the kid in high school who relied on OG tools like SparkNotes and CliffNotes to get me through English classes.

Why? Because I hated reading.

If LLMs existed as they do today, I would have been in paradise. ChatGPT, CoPilot, and Claude would have been my best friends. I would have delegated all reading assignments and essays to LLMs. Life would have been good.

As a kid, I only saw reading as a way to obtain information and expand my knowledge.

But times are different.

Yes, reading is still a way to obtain information. But I now realize that it serves as a way to generate ideas.

Paul Graham wrote that to have ideas, you have to think well. To think well, you have to write well. And to write well, you have to read well.

Thus, reading well is a prerequisite to having ideas.

Reading well means you are good at reading and you read good things.

I’ve got that first part covered. You probably do, too.

But the second part gives me problems.

I used to feel obligated to finish everything I started. I didn’t want to waste the money I spent on books. So even if I lost interest halfway through, I persisted. I forced myself to finish every damn word. A true victim of the sunk cost fallacy.

I’ve grown since then.

Over the last two years, I stopped forcing myself to finish every book.

I discovered that my creativity and ability to generate ideas flourished when I read books with great writing.

Now, great writing is subjective. It’s a feel.

Your definition differs from mine. That’s natural.

To me, great writing is:

• Fluid Writing: Sentences and paragraphs that flow. Ones that make reading frictionless. Ones that don’t make me forget what was on the previous page.
• Story Wrappers: I retain information when it’s wrapped in a story, so I prefer writers who use stories to explain their ideas. It’s more memorable this way.
• Novel Ideas: These could be topics I’ve never encountered before or unique perspectives on topics I already know.
• Selective Vocabulary: I hate writers who overuse big words to appear smart. There are appropriate situations to whip out some advanced vocab. But most of the time, simple words suffice. I’m not here for art; I’m here for value.
• Concision: Too many writers ramble and say more than is needed. I love writers who can deliver messages with the fewest words.

If you’re like me and want ideas, identify your definition of great writing.

Then, every time you start a book, check whether the writing meets your criteria for great.

Time is scarce, but content is abundant.

Don’t feel guilty or ashamed of abandoning books. Starting bad books is fine and expected. However, continuing to read after identifying a book as bad is a disservice to your mind.