>I've been considering skimming through the whole things to get kind of a big picture of what the thing is and where I'm going and then going back a second time

>I've been considering skimming through the whole things to get kind of a big picture of what the thing is and where I'm going and then going back a second time to catch then the details and experiment. That's what I would recommend ... quite often every detail is not necessary, but it helps to know where to look should you need more detail in the future. Mortimer Adler discusses this, where first you want to get an overall gist of a book, and then skim it and dip further into areas. It helps you to start to formulate questions that you can answer with deeper reading. Then you might read the whole thing ... but maybe not, based on what you learned on grasping an overview. It is particularly freeing to realize you don't need to completely read a book to get the most out of it FOR YOUR PURPOSES.