Reading: Knowing the Structure

First set up the canvas by which you will attempt to work through the book.

When we are reading, we need a goal with context. We cannot sit there and consume information without a plan. This is true for reading non-fiction and fiction alike.

When we approach a new book, we should first seek to understand its structure. If it's non-fiction, look through the table of contents to see which topics are covered and how the ideas are arranged in a way that the author believes convey their message best. If it's fiction, look to find the total number of pages and chapters so that you can track yourself and fully understand which part of the plot arc you are at when you read.

This is important because it gives you context as to where you are going. Sure, some may desire not knowing anything about the direction of your reading, but in my opinion that is wholly ineffective. The purpose of reading is to put yourself into the mind of the author, albeit with your own personal expressions of understanding. Nevertheless, it is important for us to understand how the author has structured his work. Reading is a lot more meaningful once you understand the structure of your subject.

Write What You Read

You must write what you read if you are to remember it.

"Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man." -Sir Francis Bacon

Reading allows you to consume knowledge, but one of the best ways to consolidate this is for you to produce it in a form of your own expression. So how do we remember things once we determine something is important? One of the guides we can look at is the study of classical rhetoric, the art of speaking and persuasion.

Rhetoric can be divided into the follow stages:

1. Invention - Let your ideas ferment and swish around in your brain.
2. Arrangement - Arrange your ideas in a clear and easy to understand manner.
3. Style - Incorporate style to make your message more convincing.
4. Memory - Commit your message to memory.
5. Delivery - Refine your mode of delivery.

While I can go into much detail about these steps, this brief description will suffice for now. Next we will talk about how to determine what is important when you read and how to approach different types of text.

Being Well Read

Does reading a lot of books necessarily mean you are smart?

One must be weary in attempting to be well read. For many are widely read but few are truly well read.

Many people are avid readers, but retention and application of the information in the books they read often fall short of what one may expect of such diligent readers. Why is this? How do we internalize information such that they become useful to us? In the next few posts, I'll be focusing on this issue.

But for now, let me leave you with this quote from How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler.

There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores. 

To avoid this error—the error of assuming that to be widely read and to be
well-read are the same thing—we must consider a certain distinction in types of learning. This distinction has a significant bearing on the whole business of reading and its relation to education generally.

Never Read Anything More Than Once

Reading more than once means you are not reading effectively.

Do you often read a paragraph and not know what happened? Subsequently, you had to read it again to understand what you just read. A friend of mine strongly objected to my previous post that compared reading speed with listening speed in terms of efficient learning. According to him, full comprehension often requires him to re-read material more than once. I concede, my previous comparison rests upon the assumption that you will be able to have equivalent comprehension of both methods of learning.

But if you are reading anything more than once, the chances are you are not in the right mindset. When you read, you should be speeding up and slowing down and creating comments in your head as you go; there should be a type of mental clarity and active learning. If you are not feeling this, then stop and take a break (either nap or go eat). If that doesn't work, you can try what I did for the LSAT for every single reading comprehension passage:

1. Close your eyes
2. Inhale slowly for 3 seconds
3. Hold your breath for 1 second
4. Exhale slowly for 3 seconds
5. Hold your breath for 1 second
6. Repeat steps 2 to 5, two more times
7. Open your eyes and immediately start reading (do not do anything else)

This sounds a little far-fetched, but try it out. It works because it primes your brain to focus on the reading, and once you have enough practice with it, you'll never have to read anything more than once ever again.