Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

Hi Alan,

Previously you've mentioned the "Oxbridge approach" to reading, whereby--if my recollection is correct--you take four topics and delve into them as much as possible. Could you elaborate on this approach (I've searched the internet, couldn't find anything)? And do you think this structured approach has more benefits than, say, a non-structured approach of reading whatever of interest?

Thanks for your time and generosity, Alan!

There are more than 23,000,000 books in the Library of Congress, and a good reader might be able to read 23,000 books in a lifetime (I know just a few people who have read more). So we are contemplating a lifetime of reading in which we might touch 1/10th of 1% of the extent books. We would hope that most of the ones we aren't able to touch are not useful or good or etc.

So I think we have to put something more than randomness and following links to use here. (You can spend a lot of time learning about a big system like Linux without hitting many of the most important ideas in computing -- so we have to heed the "Art is long and Life is short" idea.

Part of the "Oxbridge" process is to have a "reader" (a person who helps you choose what to look at), and these people are worth their weight in gold ...

General question about this figure, which I've seen before:

> read 23,000 books in a lifetime

As a very conservative lower bound, a person who lives to the age of 80 would have to read 0.79 books per day, from the day they were born, to reach this figure.

Or, to put it another way, who has read 288+ books in the last year?

I'm quite sceptical about this figure. Any thoughts as to how this might be possible? Are the people Alan mentions speed-reading? Anyone else know similarly prolific readers?

AS someone that read at least one book per day if not more since the age of 6, yes it is possible. I can read between 100 to 200 page per hour, depending of the book.

You reach a storage and money problem fast (Ebook are a savior nowadays). And you tend to have multiple books open at the same time.

How does it work? There are several strategy. First i read fast. Experience and training make you read really fast. Secondly, you get a grasp of how things works and what the wirter has to say. In a fiction book, it is not unusual for me to not read a chapter or two because i know what will happen inside.

Finally... Good writers helps. Good writers make reading a breeze and are faster to read. They present ides in concise and efficient way, that follow the flow of thinking.

I will take more question gladly if you have some :)

Thanks. What type of training did you do?

I'm not keen on skipping chapters! Do you do the same with non-fiction?

Another question - how do you keep track of what you've read? (would be happy to hear from others esp. Alan on the same topic)