Reading fast, reading well, and reading widely

I do feel this often:

People feel compelled to finish books they’ve started – that’s just a tax on your reading. Why would you do that to yourself?

Some of the interesting comments:

I got this advice from an English Lit professor 20 or so years ago. His advice was: “Read the first 50 pages, if the author hasn’t earned your attention by then, you can stop reading. You’ll never read all the good books anyway, don’t waste your time on the bad ones.” A literature professor, mind.

It’s among the top pieces of advice I’ve ever put into practice. It’s liberating. I try to pass on this advice, but it’s rare that anybody sees the wisdom there.

This is where reading smarter works for you.

Unless you’re actually studying for your own interest (and this is a good thing of itself), the goal in a college course isn’t to read the assigned texts, it’s to maximise your grade in the course. Usually with a minimum required effort.

If you are studying for your own interest, the text will probably be intrinsically interesting to you, and you don’t have a problem.

If you’re reading “for the course”, then consider what the goal of the reading is. This will vary by subject and text, but generally:

  • Skills courses (maths, engineering, comp sci) tend to focus on learning a specific skill or ability. Focus on what delivers that. Often the assigned text is not the best.

  • Theory courses (typically social sciences and some humanities) focus on understanding a concept and its applications or instances.

  • Knowledge courses (law, medicine, philosophy) often require memorisation of a large body of knowledge.

In all cases, examination or essays will only focus on a small quantity of the material. Understanding how tests are structure or how essays or presentations are graded gives you a leg up here.

Specific approaches will vary by subject, course, and instructor, but “read it all” is virtually never actually required.

A good study group can be invaluable, if the group and its members understand what is required to pass the specific course.

My grandmother did the opposite. If she was about to put the book down for good, she’d read the last page. If that was good enough, she’d read the second-to-last page. If that was good enough, she’d go back and finish the book from the beginning.

Seems like stupid advice but it’s helped me through books I would otherwise have dropped permanently.

One fun metric I heard: subtract your age from 100 and that’s that pages you should read. So, for example, if you’re 60, then 100-60 = 40. If it hasn’t grabbed you by page 40, toss it.

Imo, 99.9% books aren’t worth reading. If a book’s value can be captured within its cliff notes, then it should have been a long form blog to begin with. Of the 0.1% worth reading, a majority are hard to actually finish. IE. Textbooks. Informative but doesn’t become more than the sum of its parts.

This leaves the ones that can be read, and are worth reading. The absolute best. These books have a few common traits.

  1. Literary value akin to music. The sheer joy of the act of reading. Pure entertaintment.

  2. Philosophy. Everything is philosophy. But good philosophy is felt through a book before it is even stated.

  3. Anecdotes that hit beyond standard tropes. Unique anecdotes either in scale, investment or anomalous structure that carry you to the philosophical conclusion.

  4. Compression and focus : what not to write and how express it. Often, this is the biggest shortcoming of almost good books written a compilation of great ideas.

I have consistently found these 4 to be the best way to evaluate the value of a book for me. Everything else is secondary.

I see the article advocates for quantity over quality, superficial skimming over deep analysis, and quitting when things become uncomfortable. I strongly disagree with this stance. I believe that instead of reading many books, you should read few books very well (it’s a saying by a classic); and that high quality books are usually not easy, you need to put in some effort - generally, things that are worth it don’t come easy.

I also don’t understand the fetish for reading “many” books. What is your goal? Do you want to be a better human being, deepen your understanding of the human condition, get a taste of the best this art form has to offer? Or do you just want to kill time or impress others with the quantity of books read?

Most popular nonfiction books these days contain very little information, should be about a dozen pages long, and can indeed be mostly skipped.

There is a good art to skimming and carefully selecting books that get your full attention, there is a lot of garbage out there.

If you only have, say, 20 minutes with a book, you can get a lot out of it.

This does offend people who really like books who read most of their books every word. Lots of books don’t deserve that and you’ll get more out of books if you realize that.

And yes you can absorb a lot of a topic by only spending a short time with many books.

But still, some books do deserve to be read word for word, others studied for years.