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Great question! In my fourth decade of life I’m finally figuring out the optimal way to do this myself. I’ve forgotten so so many books over the years that I su
by guidoism 7y ago
Great question! In my fourth decade of life I’m finally figuring out the optimal way to do this myself. I’ve forgotten so so many books over the years that I supposedly read.
Read How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer Adler. (https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Classic-Intelligent/dp/0671212095 https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Classic-Intelligent/dp/...)
I’ve given this book to a bunch of people on my teams as it also helps with communicating ideas which is vital as a programmer.
The wikipedia page for it is a good place to get an overview of what it’s about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book
Since reading it I’ve been keeping a notebook, some people might call it a Commonplace Book, with interesting stuff from the book. I find that I get a lot more from books from the act of writing it down and then reading those notes later when I glance at them while looking something else up in the notebook.
One big big big thing I learned from the book is to not read a non-fiction book like it was a novel. There’s nothing wrong with skipping ahead and finding out what happens later, in fact you should absolutely skim the book first. I end up finishing a lot more books by doing this since so many books aren’t actually worth careful reading. I am able to systematically skim a book including the TOC and index and determine if it’s worth reading carefully. A lot of books are so sparse with ideas that you can get most of them through this method. Only the good books are worth going on to the second and third stages and only the great ones the fourth stage.
- totalperspectiv 7y agoThat book also totally changed how I read for the better. I tend to have two books going at a time. One I read seriously, usually in the morning and take notes etc. The other is purely entertainment band is usually an evening or weekend mornings book.
- axiom92 7y ago> One big big big thing I learned from the book is to not read a non-fiction book like it was a novel. Do you mean to say: "is to read a non-fiction book like it was a novel"?
- guidoism 7y agoThe opposite. Non-fiction books should be read in multiple passes, like a video encoder. - First pass: Understand the structure, important words (from index), some interesting passages. - Second pass: Read it all the way through, don't worry if you don't understand stuff - Third pass: Look up stuff that you didn't understand from the previous pass and read it again in order to understand them. - Four pass: Read it concurrently with other related books to try to truly understand the topic
- Baeocystin 7y agoI would go so far as to say all books should be read in an iterative manner, fiction or not. Good stories will reveal previously-missed tidbits again & again as you explore the deeper structure of the work.
- dredmorbius 7y agoDeep reading should be saved for books worth the effort. There's far more written than you'll ever be able to read. The cost of discovery is a large impediment to that. Skimming / scanning (contents, index, bibliography, intro/conclusion chapters) is part of the informational assessment. If the book holds up to that, keep digging into it. If not, set it down, and feel no guilt. I'm reading a lot of material, though I'm not satisfied with my methods or progress. I've found Adler's book highly useful. The principle problem is that my interests have both breadth and depth sufficient that the volume of relevant material is enormous, and quality assessment is complicated. I'm doing the best I can.
- Baeocystin 7y agoI should clarify- I fully agree with your assessment. Sturgeon's law holds true with books as much as anything, and there is plenty that can be tossed aside after only a cursory glance. My point was aimed along the lines that if a book is worth reading once, you will benefit from rereading it at a future date.
- 3pt14159 7y agoI lost my Commonplace Book with all my notes from my previous readings in a trip to a hospital. I'm still devastated even though I have a partial backup from photos I took before hand with my phone.
- lallysingh 7y agoI'm sorry. I've found a Neo Smartpen (with tweaks) to help back up my notes.
- 8ytecoder 7y agoOne of the reasons I love the kindle. I highlight my favourite quotes and phrases regularly and then after I finish the book I summarise it into an essay. For instructional books I make a bullet point list of key learnings.
- qorrect 7y agoWow this a game changer for me, did not know you could do this, thanks!
- dfc 7y agoYou didn't know you could highlight on the Kindle? Do you primarily use the Kindle web app? If you have an actual Kindle reader it sounds like you should read the manual in case you are missing some other nice features. I can't imagine using a Kindle without the highlighting or dictionary lookup.
- qorrect 7y agoThere's a manual ? I will read it, good call.
- iNate2000 7y agoI annotate my Kindle books as well. But at least twice now, I've lost all my annotations because the publisher "updates" the book. I'm sure that problem won't exist forever (and it doesn't exist for titles that are never updated). But it certainly reduces my trust in the platform. Which reduces how much I take advantage of it.
- tspiteri 7y agoAutomatic updates can be turned off. Under Manage Your Content and Devices, Preferences, there is an Automatic Book Updates item which you can turn off. Then if you want you can update books individually, or not.
- spookybones 7y agoWhat does your commonplace book look like? Is it a tome you keep on your desk, or is it portable?
- guidoism 7y agoI personally like the Baron Fig, it's exactly the same size as the iPad mini, so portable, but not pocketable. I actually keep two: one for scribbly notes and the other for my more thoughtful notes. Took me a while to get over making mistakes in the nice one, but I'm fine with it now and it doesn't hinder my writing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sova 7y agoRegularly come back and flip through the notes you made, like what was most striking, it can weave a lot together even after days months or weeks have passed. Every book needs a notebook beside it to become the verbatim abridged version of what's valuable (at that particular time of reading).
- Scarbutt 7y agoThere is also a nice short guide http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/howtoread.pdf http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/howtoread.pdf which looks similar in approach to the 500 page linked.
- sureshjayaraman 7y agoThis gives a nice, quick summary of different techniques!
- codetrotter 7y agoI’ve been thinking about something along these lines. One example might be that the book contains a lot of information that you already know. In that case, skimming through might tell you which chapters or sections to skip, instead of having to read lots of stuff that you already know, or worse yet, get discouraged by the repetition of things known to you and never finishing the book, thus missing out on the good stuff that was “hidden” in the later parts of the book. But as of yet I tend to read books cover to cover and either finish them or give up on them along the way. But I do take notes about interesting things, and sometimes I do little experiments with them also. My notes are a bit lazy in that often my notes consist of taking a picture with my phone, but I categorize the photos into certain albums.
- guidoism 7y agoSomebody wrote "Not to sound rude, but how can one judge what idea one needs to see as 'important' while skimming through the book if they have no clue of what the book is about?" and then deleted it. I'd still like to reply because it's a good question. Here goes... That's a perfectly good question. I used to think that skimming was worthless, only something that people who didn't actually care about information did. But if you think about how you are constantly judging the value of information everywhere throughout the entire day then you can see how we have to make some filtering decisions. Systematic skimming is just another filter. If I'm going to dedicate 10 hours to reading the book carefully it makes sense to get an overview of the ground first. If the books I'm reading are from Alan Kay's list of greatest books you should read then I'm going to not worry so much about the filtering aspect of the skimming. If it's a shitty book with a catchy title in the business books section of the library I'm going to be much more skeptical and the filtering part of skimming is essential to not wasting time on crap. Judge a book by its cover. Then judge it by its table of contents. Then judge it by some passages you read that looked interesting. Don't commit to a book until you've gotten a better feel for what's inside.
- philwelch 7y agoIndeed, that makes a lot of sense. Also, while sometimes this could backfire, it's often useful to come to a book with some idea of what you want to get out of it and go digging for it specifically.
- Advaith 7y agoI recently started using kindle highlights along with https://readwise.io/ https://readwise.io/ and it works like a charm!
- bosie 7y agoDo you mind expanding how you use that service?
- submeta 7y agoThank you very much for that tip! Tried it, fell in love with it immediately. It imported my highlights from my Kindle and from my iBooks library and shows me my Highlights in a much better way than Amazon's web interface is able to do (https://lesen.amazon.de/notebook?ref_=kcr_notebook_lib https://lesen.amazon.de/notebook?ref_=kcr_notebook_lib) Also, it allows me to export all of my highlights. Finally it adds a gamification dimension, showing me random five hightlights from my books. PS: Through this site I learned that my Kindle highlights reside in a in file called `My Clippings.txt` (in /Volumes/Kindle/documents/My Clippings.txt) This is something I always wanted to know, because I have many books I uploaded to my Kindle device via USB (so no clound sync available).
- philwelch 7y agoI feel like there's a bootstrapping issue here, though. What do I read in order to learn to read How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler? Or do I merely read that book once, in order to learn the technique, before re-reading it?
- read_if_gay_ 7y agoHope that it’s designed to work even for people who don’t know how to read yet
- escapecharacter 7y agoYeah this was my EXACT complaint. Hopefully there’s an audio book version, or a 1-800 number you can call to ask to have it explained to you.
- ingve 7y agoThere is an audio book version: How to Read a Book, narrated by Edward Holland [0] [0] https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Read-a-Book-Audiobook/B003VW9J9M https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Read-a-Book-Audiobook/B003...
- martin-adams 7y agoSadly not available in the UK
- yezooz 7y agoIf you use audible.com, all you need to do is change the billing country to US. Suddenly all books previously unavailable can be purchased. Country doesn't affect card payments in my case (Monzo) but worse case scenario you can use points.
- martin-adams 7y agoVery interesting, thanks.
- starpilot 7y ago"How to Read a Book" prescribes reading a book 3-4 times. Just the sheer repetition will help you get more out of it.
- SquishyPanda23 7y agoHow to Read a Book is great, and so is the sarcastic response How to Read Two Books: http://scriptoriumdaily.com/how-to-read-two-books-erasmus-addlepate/ http://scriptoriumdaily.com/how-to-read-two-books-erasmus-ad... :)
- dredmorbius 7y agoI'm considering writing How to Read Ten Thousand Books, as mentioned to a friend in a similar discussion earlier. Once I complete the preliminary research. Adler's book is indeed highly recommended.
- Gusmann 7y agoI would be the first one to read it, maybe you'd really do it? Because I have a lot of books around mu house which I started reading, one is 1/2 finished, the other 1/10 finished, then there's another one that I started reading and left somewhere at work etc... And I have no idea how to deal with it because it's really hard to concentrate on one book, but when I switch to the other I have to go a bit backwards in order to remember the idea.
- dredmorbius 7y agoI'm at least half serious. The epigraph would of course com from Ecclesiastes. An upshot is that you cannot in any meaningful sense read 10,000 books in a short period of time, though it's a tractable option over, say, a lifetime: 10,000 books in 60 years is 160 books a year, or about 14 a month. That's considering a new book every couple of days. To which you could apply the techniques described in Adler's book. To add to that, you need some sort of information capture system that scales, such that you're aware of the books you've attempted to read, and what your quick-perusal impression was. I'm also convinced that more information is useful only in a general sense. Information as with all else follows a Zipf or Power function fo significance and utility, both in area and time of impact. Much of what we are exposed to either doesn't concern much by subject, area, or time, with news being very high up on that list. News matters when current events have a high probability of impact on your life. The fact that newspaper readership in the US peaked during WWII, and has declined at a virtually constant rate ever since, has much to do with this. During the war, small events in faraway places could have a significant impact (and did). Since then ... not quite so much, and focus on individual events has proved largely less productive. (Hrm: maybe the news is grossly misdesigned? That thought's occurred to me for quite some time.) What you describe in terms of maintaining state and sense of place within a book is something I struggle with. The idea of learning and forgetting curves, and of paced repetition, should probably play into that. A key issue being "does this material warrant paced repetition?" Because if you've got to repeatedly process the information you hear, that's going to put a cap on what you can learn. So, the idea of progressive reading not only of a given topic, but over the entire corpus is something you've got to consider. What's a reasonable progression through a set of works? Which is pretty close to saying "what is an effective pedagogy?" The benefits of reading a wide range of works is that patterns, similarities, and patterns emerge. The disadvantage is that there's a great deal of repetition, and of course, a large amount of bullshit, some accidental, some intentional. Not all bullshit is useless. Bullshit that's become culturally relevant and/or integrated is useful not because it's true, but because it explains and describes that culture. Reading with this in mind is useful, though also difficult. And there's the problem of exposing yourself to repeated bullshit and/or toxicity. At a certain point that becomes damaging even when you're aware of it. The biggest problem with propaganda isn't that it's false, it's that it's effective even on those who create it. "Drinking your own Cool Aid" is a phrase because reasons, and some of the most harmful doctrines are harmful because their originators are fully convinced or swayed by them. There's probably a rough structural outline of the work in these paragraphs, FWIW. Anything you'd add/remove/change?
- ryan-allen 7y ago> One big big big thing I learned from the book is to not read a non-fiction book like it was a novel. I did a double-take until I read 'non-fiction'. Yes, absolutely, I agree. Large non fiction books need to be approached strategically for time saving's sake. Fiction on the other hand, I adore taking my time :)