I agree with @paulg . Especially for subjects like history, reading subpar books may help you “navigate” the past better. See also:
http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html
I understand the motive for this advice, but it's not much use in practice. 1. You don't know what the 100 best books are, so you have to keep reading new ones to discover them. 2. It's not the same 100 for everyone, and you can only discover your interests by exploring.
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This! Same goes for everything. There are 100s of really good books, but need not be the best for a particular individual who needs to do the sampling for his/her own discovery!
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So the context of the quote was that Naval mentioned that he doesn’t usually read books from cover to cover and does a lot of exploratory reading to find quality stuff.
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It made more sense in full context. Was much less literal. He was talking about how reading can become a weird signaling game where people will show off that they’ve read a bunch of books rather than prioritizing actually learning.
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Basically the message was to seek out knowledge, not look knowledagle. I would definitely agree with your points, and I think
@naval would as well.
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I'd say it's better to read one or even 10 good books over and over than 100. 100 is too many. Read 100 books is the opposite of quality over quantity.
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Paul. I think there are some ancient books that it is clear they are great books and they can make a sure list of must reads. Agree that as for new ones you must keep reading. It is a dynamic thing.
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This is true. Naval has been lately coming across as a charlatan, bestowing elegantly formulated yet utterly meaningless advice upon his brethren.
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That's wrong. He's generally on the mark. Apparently this quote meant something different in context.
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I had the same reaction. Reading lots of books is like buying lots of cheap options. You never know which is going to pay off, but it's likely that one will
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