If you're a person who, while reading, is constantly arguing with the author and digging into their and your point of view, you may find this article and method

If you're a person who, while reading, is constantly arguing with the author and digging into their and your point of view, you may find this article and method of reading shallow. The method of "surgical reading" is most suited when you really don't care about the point of view of the author, don't want to have a dialogue or understand their deeper philosophy or context; you just, as he mentions, want to extract the 'knowledge', whatever that may be. I gotta say, this method seems less relevant if you want to allow yourself to be changed by dialogue with an author. Reading a book or even essay by bell hooks in this way, for instance, seems like a tragic waste of time. You don't read bell hooks to 'extract a knowledge nugget', you read bell hooks to look in a mirror and see your own experiences differently.