* Acknowledge that sometimes the book you're reading is repetitive or not very well written. If you're <10% in, read up on reviews and try to find a better book on the same subject. If =10%, commit and complete, acknowledging that you're not necessarily the best judge of a book's quality.
> It is fundamental that you keep focused on your current book and don't exchange it for another. Focus on finishing, one at a time (or 2 or 3, try not to pass the 3 books at the same time barrier).
Great post, but I halfway disagree with this point. I made a huge gain as a reader when I decided to stop feeling guilty for abandoning a decent book halfway through. Lots of times you get the thesis of the book and a few good examples in the first half, and then you're better off jumping around until you find something else that makes you really need to read it.
1. Readily give up on a book, or skim through the rest, the moment you realise that the book has 400 pages of filler
2. Find recommendations from thought leaders you subscribe to, while staying true to Rule 1 (Sometimes it's just a matter of taste, and it's counterproductive to force yourself to finish reading something just because someone else said that it's a good book)
This is good advice. Similarly, if you're reading a book for the information, and you find it's way too wordy, there's no shame in just skimming it.
I used to feel like it was my duty to read every word written by an author if I was serious about reading, even for self-help or pop-psych books. Over time, I realized that there's really a lot of bad writing out there, but there's still good nuggets of info if you look. The trick is to just recognize when a book is just padding itself out and just skim through the boring bits. No shame in that. And honestly, so many self-help or productivity books are just padded out to justify selling a book.
I read 20+ books a year. I don't finish most of them, re-read some chapters from the old books. I underline stuff and I go back to the underlined things at the end of reading a book. I prefer reading hard copies and at any point if I've to look at the page number, I realise that the content is not worth the time. I skim through. If I still don't find it interesting. I leave it. It's okay to leave a book in the middle. Most books have a single point to make and the entire book is about examples around that point. If you understood the point already, there's no need to dig in further.
It's human tendency to forget things. So re-reading stuff I find valuable helps me more than reading lots of new books.
One approach I like is to relax and read the book quickly the first time, don’t take notes or anything. If it’s good, read it again (and again periodically). If not, don’t.
This gives natural spaced repetition on the good stuff, and also you pick up different things in subsequent readings.
I do the same. I also have the philosophy that a book worth reading is worth re-reading. Sadly, you have to read it the first time without knowing if it will be worth reading at all.
This works for me too. I will regularly check a book out of the library, read three chapters, and then return it to get another. I realized that I wasn't finishing books because doing so was not a good use of my time.
Somewhat related is that I'll read chapters out of order. Many books follow an approach of "laying the foundation" before making the point. 40 pages of laying the foundation is a logical step but unfortunately is not done well in most cases.
You're not reading a book five times, cover to cover. That's not a productive use of your time. Instead, you should breeze through the table of contents. Skim the first chapter. Still interested? Skip to the last chapter and read that. Jump around to the parts that interest you. Read through it again with a broad outline of what you're reading. Encounter a boring section? Skip ahead by twenty pages or drop the book altogether.
This is the best strategy for reading books for knowledge, and not just to say you've read a certain book.
> " It’s much better to read the best book on the topic 5 times, than to read 5 different books on the topic once."*
I think the author has a point. Maybe re-reading a book 5 times is not better than 5 different books, but re-reading it at least once is still a good investment. First, it turns out one doesn't remember all that much from the book after the first read. Second - and more important - when you're re-reading the book, you benefit from having the overall big picture in your head already, so you can re-evaluate earlier parts of the book using your knowledge about the whole.
This is apt, you tend to read books and the first read is great, subsequent release ends up being the same context as previous book but without substance. The best is probably being able to self reflect and think for yourself, being mindful of your thoughts, thought process and things that affects it.
The idea of reading a book a second time was repulsive when I had never done it before. But once I tried it, I realized that it is a much better use of my time and I get many more insights the second time around. I'd rather read an amazing book again, than waste my time on mediocre books just to say I read a lot of books.
Reading a lot of books is overrated. Reading great books is underrated.
I think an important thing is to understand why you're reading. What are you wanting to get out of it? That will inform the sorts of books that are of value to you and the sorts that aren't.
One person's indispensable book can be, and often is, another person's complete waste of time. It depends as much on the reader as on the book.
For technical books: I read a passage, think about it a bit, then either re-read the same section and digest further, or move on to the next segment.
I do not take notes or highlight sections- I have found that these pull me out of the mindset of thinking about what I'm reading, and instead put me in to the mindset of how best to document what I'm reading. The two points of view do not overlap as much as you might think.
For books I read for enjoyment, I take in the words at a reasonable pace and build the scenes in my mind, just enjoying the flow.
Usually I read a book in one sitting, but if I find myself interrupted, when I start again I'll go back a chapter or two to ensure that I'm back in to things by the time I get to where I left off.
I re-read books I've enjoyed regularly. If anything, it is even more enjoyable than the first time through, particularly when life experience allows you to appreciate a thought in the book that you didn't fully grasp on earlier readings. It's great fun!
This is a good insight, and I sometimes worry I am just optimizing for quantity instead of quality.
That said, how would you pick the “best 100 books” to reread?I also tend to reread things that I enjoyed in the past but it seems like there might be a better way to go about this. I do read from a lot of the “Best books of all time” type of lists and I don’t find a markedly higher success rate with that strategy.
I feel like a good compromise is to read widely, but when a book strikes you as worthy of greater focus, to reread it at least another two times (in the Mortimer Adler sense as described in How to Read a Book).
Perhaps scheduling rereading in a spaced repetition sort of way, like doubling the interval of time before you reread a text every time, might be useful.
* Acknowledge that sometimes the book you're reading is repetitive or not very well written. If you're <10% in, read up on reviews and try to find a better book on the same subject. If =10%, commit and complete, acknowledging that you're not necessarily the best judge of a book's quality.
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