*Pierre Bayard*, *2007* > [!thought] > Thinking about it, in the age of the [[Large Language Model]], this book is prescient. We never read anything, we ask the LLMs to summarize it for us. Perhaps one of the best book I read in 2022. Intro and the chapter 1 are perhaps good enough for this book to make sense, I skimmed through few of the latter chapters and I didn't enjoy them. # General Theory ## Non-reading First, we need to accept non-reading: Bayard argues that we're surrounded by the following **obligations around books**: * Obligation to read * Obligation to read *thoroughly* * One must read the book in order to talk about it Bayard encourages his readers to face and accept society's widespread hypocrisy on the subject of books. There's a strong stigma attached to non-reading, with unconscious guilt that an admission of non-reading elicits. **We must accept non-reading**. >[!quote] Accepting non-reading > Faced with a quantity of books so vast that nearly all of them must remain unknown, how can we escape the conclusion that even a lifetime of reading is utterly in vain? > > Reading is first and foremost non-reading. Even in the case of the most passionate lifelong readers, the act of picking up and opening a book masks the countergesture that occurs at the same time: the involuntary act of *not* picking up and *not* opening all the other books in the universe. ## Collective Library > [!TODO] Elaborate this more, as this is the core concept of the book Bayard introduces the concept of **collective library**. I like to think of this as *`metabook`*. This talk about *books' relationship to the society and the other books*. > [!quote] On Collective Library > railroad switchman should focus on the relations between trains—that is, their crossings and transfers—rather than the contents of any specific convoy. Bayard goes on to use Joyce, the most famous author that we don't read: > [!quote] On Joyce's > For instance, I've never "read" Joyce's *Ulysses*,[^Ulysses] and it's quite plausible that I never will. The "content" of the book is thus largely foreign to me—its content, but not its location. Of course, the content of a book is in large part its location. This means that I feel perfectly comfortable when Ulysses comes up in conversation, because I can situate it with relative precision in relation to other books. ==I know, for example, that it is a retelling of the *Odyssey*[^Odyssey], that its narration takes the form of a stream of consciousness, that its action unfolds in Dublin in the course of a single day, etc==. And as a result, I often find my­ self alluding to Joyce without the slightest anxiety. > > Even better, as we shall see in analyzing the power relations behind how we talk about reading, ==I am able to allude to my non-reading of Joyce without any shame==. [^Ulysses]: HB++ [^Odyssey]: SB and HB++ > [!note] > The choice of *Ulysses* over *Finnegans Wake* is important here; *Finnegans wake* is universally acknowledged to be too abstruse in our *Collective Library* far out in the spectrum of abstruseness that people publicly admit non-reading without shame. *Ulysses* (along with Proust, which Bayard references) is at least comprehendible, widely accepted as the masterpiece of thus it's the ultimate book that one may feel guilt to confess non-reading. Finally, Bayard defends non-reading as a conscious activity. > [!quote] Non-reading is a spectrum > > non-reading is not just the absence of reading. It is a genuine activity, one that consists of adopting a stance in relation to the immense tide of books that protects you from drowning. On that basis, it deserves to be defended and even taught. > > To the unpracticed eye, of course, the absence of reading may be almost indistinguishable at times from non-reading ... ## Bayard's Footnotes To fully practice his beliefs, Bayard gives his opinion of all books referenced in the work, along with his *non-reading-ness*. The rating ranges from `--` to `++`. Non-readings are: * `UB` - Unknown Books * `SB` - Skimmed Books * `HB` - Heard about Books * `FB` - Forgotten Books *Ulysses*, the work referenced above, is *Have heard of, extremely positive opinion*. This gets hilarious as the book goes on as Bayard rates *fictional* books - books that appear inside a novel. Their ratings range from `UB++` to `UB--`. --- # Thoughts ## What Others are saying [The People Who Don’t Read Books](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/kanye-west-sam-bankman-fried-books-reading/672823/) > [!quote] SBF from [Sequoia](https://archive.is/Ao2T8) > “Oh, yeah?” says SBF. “I would never read a book.” > ... > “I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that,” explains SBF. “I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and ==it should have been a six-paragraph blog post==.” ## On reading great literatures So with these "*great literatures*" that i already know what they are about (both the content, but also what they mean in the grand scheme of the World Literature); i'm actually left with two thoughts after i read them; either: * The book was archaic and difficult. Others' interpretations and the surrounding historical context is more interesting than the book itself. * The wikipedia entry was sufficient. * The wikipedia entry isn't doing the justice. ## On studying the graph