I have seen the following happen to me while reading books. Event driven - you go back to a book based on thinking around a problem and look for information ar

I have seen the following happen to me while reading books. Event driven - you go back to a book based on thinking around a problem and look for information around it. I have found this very effective to understand the content, especially something not so trivial and those that you may not get by passive reading. However, this requires more time and effort from you in terms of self-thinking around problems. The second way is passive reading - just read because you got interested in the topic. You don't understand a lot of it immediately, and so either your interest may carry on and you may get more than where you began or you may give up. But if you give up, in the interim you may encounter some things related to what you read and you go into the first mode. Or you find that what you started is not your cup of tea at least for the moment. You iterate over other topics of interest.