> Personally, I’ve benefited a ton from reading the first couple chapters out of advanced textbooks (while ignoring the last 75% of the textbook) Anecdotally,

> Personally, I’ve benefited a ton from reading the first couple chapters out of advanced textbooks (while ignoring the last 75% of the textbook) Anecdotally, this is something I've thought about many times, that an awful lot of books cover like 80% of the important stuff in the first say 4-5 chapters, and then are just full of filler. I find this extremely frustrating as I'm at the same time fearing to miss out on some important insight in the latter chapters, while reading the full length of most books is simply super hard to do in any sensible quantity. Otherwise, great post. Going through a similar transition, for some of the same reasons :)