> I encourage people to write a book (or books). It is a really fun process.
I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but you are insane.
I've written a couple for MK and SV and edited a few more conference books and a few more compilations of submitted chapters in an attempt to create a cogently thematic book, and I hated the world, everyone in it and myself. Never again.
> There isn't a book out there that doesn't promise to show its contents to the reader.
I think I don't understand that, but it seems massively wrong (e.g. my favourite book is called Essays) and I have no idea what you were trying to communicate. I can't see what exactly I'm supposed to do with the second sentence either. Sorry.
>what you are doing is picking up a copy of hamlet in a language you cant read, looking at it for 30 seconds, and then declaring
I don’t like this elizabethan bullshit, i find it unpleasant, and rather than waste my time on something that I feel doesn’t deserve my time, I’m gonna read some michael crighton. or maybe some dean koontz, stephen king or heck, tom clancy. it’s my life and I like what I like, and I encourage everyone to like what they like personally, and not allow themselves to be goaded into reading taming of the shrew, even if that is the best thing ole billy boy ever wrote.
> I don’t like this advice as it would make me miss these amazing books.
Abandoning a book does not mean you can never pick it up again. I have abandoned media that I didn’t like only to return to it years later and enjoy it.
> The challenge with the advice is that is I want ok experiences, it works. But if I’m looking for amazing experiences it cuts them off.
That would only be true if all amazing experiences sucked at the start, which is absolutely not true.
> Lots of art is difficult until the switch that makes it worthwhile.
And lots of it is worth it all the way through, or has something that makes you believe it will deliver if you stick with it.
> Especially since one great book may be as enjoyable as 100 marginal books.
And because our time is finite, if we abandon those 100 we may have the opportunity to find 5 great books instead of 1.
It is if I only had the barest whim to read the book in the first place. Of course I'll spend however long it takes to track something down if I'm absolutely sold on it. If I need to look at the book to decide whether I'm sold on it, though -- then being unable to do that means I stop caring.
> What does the author gain from this statement? Now, if I were to be interested in this book, I would now be not interested and would encourage others to avoid it.
That's not very rational. That your feelings are hurt has no impact on how good or bad the book is.
>> so I would like to knock this classic out, but I am not sure how.
First of all, this sounds like wanting to "having had read" a book to check a box rather than the desire for the intellectual growth that comes from reading it.
> If other minds that I find interesting tend to mention a particular book a lot, I want in. I want to get it, to understand it, to have what they're having.
That isn't a book chosen for intellectual growth, that's a book chosen out of mimetic desire.
> The notion that people should only read things they already 'enjoy' is modern anti-intellectual bullshit.
Perhaps enjoy was not the best word for me to use.
My point being, there are more classic books and books which other intellectuals reccomend than there is time in the world to read. Rather than keep banging ones head against the wall because this particular book does work out, they may be better served by trying a different book (one of the other 1,000s).
Exactly this.
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