How to Read Books: A Controversial Perspective

For this post, I want to talk about some of the habits and tricks that I use to read books quicker and more effectively. I am a terribly slow reader. I have always had trouble reading books and especially staying committed to them when they are non-fiction. I haven't actually fixed the problem of reading slowly, as speed reading just damages your ability to comprehend what you are reading. What I have done is tweaked my own habits such that I actually get things done. These are not universal tips, but rather habits that I have adopted because they work for me. Will they work for you? Well, I don't care. You're a faceless nobody.

I was motivated to write this after watching Better Than Food's video about the topic. I have additional commentary, namely because he focuses on fiction, and I often read non-fiction, too. I will link his video in the description; I suggest checking him out.

Finally, I want to quickly explain some terms that I will be using throughout. When I was taking notes, I was getting lost in some of the labels I was using, so I want to clarify them here, as much for myself as for you. They are: Fiction, historical narrative, and informational books.

The latter two are the main distinction: Historical narrative includes history, but also biographies and memoirs; this is non-fiction, but based in narrative. Informational books are non-fiction, but tend to be denser with information and lacking in narrative. This generally includes science books and philosophy books.

With this established, there are Eight Tips that I want to share:

Tip One: Read Multiple Books at a Time

Whenever this tip is brought up, people usually recoil in bafflement. "How do you not mix them up?" And fair enough. This tip probably applies to a certain type of person. If you binge read mass-market paperbacks, then this is not for you. Obviously, if you like mystery and thriller books, or romance books, then you almost certainly will mix them up.

I do not read those books often, however.

I usually read three books at once, and they are easily distinguished, since I read widely. I have two main books that I read, one being fiction and one being historical narrative. As of typing this, I am reading Lord Foul's Bane, by Stephen R. Donaldson; and Kissinger, by Walter Isaacson. One is fantasy fiction, and the other is a biography. Then, I usually have one book that I read slowly in the background, and this one is usually an informational book. Right now, I am reading War in Human Civilization, by Azar Gat. This is an evolutionary account of the origins of war amongst humans.

Right from the outset, it's obvious why I don't mix up the books I am reading.

Further, it helped fix the problem I struggled with in the past, where I would be stopped up reading an informational book, which stifled my progress on the rest. I would often read fiction alongside them, but it was still a struggle. This was mainly me being an idiot, but I suppose that this is a given.

Tip Two: Break Up Your Informational Books

Generally, it is considered a bad thing if you break up a book and read it in chunks. And that is true if your book is a narrative, though there might be some exceptions there. But this fact changes when you are talking about informational books. These books are always the most difficult books to read, and it is easy to get overwhelmed by them.

But I find that it is easier to read books when I am not committed to reading them all at once. Going back to the example I mentioned before, War in Human Civilization is the informational book I am going through as I write these words. This is the second time I have come to this book. Not only this, but I am also sitting on a number of other informational books that I will come back to later. This includes Consilience, by E.O. Wilson, and a book summarizing Feminist Theory throughout the years. I won't finish War in Human Civilization in this go. I will switch to Consilience for a chapter, and then on to the feminist book, and back around the cycle.

There are exceptions to this rule. I am reading the Kissinger biography in chunks. While the book is a historical narrative, the audiobook is also 34 hours long, so I am reading the book in thirds.

I usually read a chunk of a book at a time, perhaps a chapter or fifty pages, depending on how the book is structured. Then I move on to the next book. This helps keep things fresh.

Finally, it is also important to note that you can read some books so slowly that you die before you even finish them. What I mean by this is that you don't have to read whole books if you come to them. For some reason, I was convinced that when I read a book, I had to do the whole thing, or none of it. This was stupid, for obvious reasons, and it really limited the amount of things I ended up reading. You can pick up a book, read the intro and a few chapters, and then never come back to it. That is fine.

I've only read the first chapter of Jordan B. Peterson's Twelve Rules For Life, and that was only to hear the source of the so-called "Lobster Argument" he made. That was in the first chapter, and it helped illuminate some of the critiques and defenses of that talking point that I was seeing on the internet. I haven't gone back to the book, and I don't plan to, as I don't really read self-help, nor did I appreciate his writing style.

Tip Three: DNF and DNS

We all know the DNF strategy. This is quite simple. There are so many books out there and you will never get them all done. Think about how long your TBR is. It grows and grows. Think about all the books that you own, but simultaneously have not read; they just clutter up your bookshelves. You will never finish them all. You will never get close if you slog through a bunch of crap. Sure, the book might get better by the end. But no matter the decision you make, you will have a loss: not finishing a book you might have liked, or not starting some other book that you could have read.

In any case, mention that you are DNFing the book to your friends. If they have read it, then they will probably tell you if it's good.

That aside, introduce the concept of DNS to your lexicon. It means, Did Not Start. Books are expensive. Don't waste money if you can avoid it. Amazon provides free samples of books online. Use it to determine whether the book is worth it in the first place. Either that, or use the library genesis website to acquire a test copy for free.

In the case of fiction, this is particularly useful to root out bad prose. And this is especially useful if you are trying out self-published material. I am not insulting self-publishing as a whole, I think that would miss the point; my point is that when you touch on books that could have been written by anyone from a teenager to a literature professor, you need to have some method of discernment.

Tip Four: Read a Little From Each Book a Day

Once you have established a reading habit for each day, you should then stay on it, with only slight interruptions. I personally find reading about an hour of each book a day to be satisfactory. There is nothing complicated about this, and you can adjust your time to your own reading habits. If I miss one, then I make sure to read that one first the next day.

Another useful tactic would be to have a general schedule for each day. This is undoubtedly going to be controversial, but I am pretty routine oriented, so having a fixed schedule that I operate under usually works pretty well for me. And this usual routine provides a decent frame that my reading fits in with. I get far more done with this structure.

Tip Five: Use Both Audio and Written Books

If you change up your medium of consumption, then you are usually able to read more books throughout the day. I usually reserve the written books for the informational reads that take time. For obvious reasons, it is much easier to digest information if you are reading it at a slower pace and have time to sit with the actual text. Naturally, I am reading War in Human Civilization as a written text.

It is worth considering having both the audio and written text when reading an informational text. It allows for both momentum and something concrete to consider when engaging with the information.

I also reserve written books for the serious fiction that I read. I usually want to look at the prose on a more intimate level, and that is harder to do when you are simply using audiobooks. For Thomas Covenant, I am reading the written text.

The exceptions are when I read narrative books that are simple in terms of prose. For example, if I read something quick and simple, or when I read historical narrative. The prose doesn't really matter in these cases, so I am not missing out on anything. As I mentioned before, I am reading Kissinger's biography right now with audio.

Tip Six: Use Secondary Sources in Philosophy

Some of what I read is philosophy, so I must have a section dedicated to the reading of that. And I definitely have a hot take for this section, as you can see in the title.

While I am interested in philosophy, I don't really like the writings for their own sake. I just use the discipline to help frame my own thinking about . . . everything. Philosophy is the study of what is normally taken for granted, and I simply dip my toes in it to make sure I have a coherent frame for thinking in everyday life. And this is broadly applicable. As a generalist, I like to dip my toes in basically every topic.

The point of this tangent is to say that I don't have time to slog through pages upon pages of rambling mazes of words. It is far more useful for me to read overviews of certain arguments and topics over the years. The IEP and the SEP are both incredibly useful. History of Philosophy books are also very useful. Basically, any book that focuses on specific topics, like philosophy of mind or epistemology, is very useful. I will never read Kant, however. Especially not Hegel. I will never read any postmodernist.

And yes, this is controversial. But as the resident philosophically-minded non-philosopher, I will hazard it.

There are trade-offs to every action taken. If you read only secondary sources, then you risk strawmanning certain philosophers. You are only going off of what other people think they meant, and this is a loss. But the obvious trade off is that you are taking more time, especially when you are trying to read the works of many different philosophers throughout the ages. You must either lose time in the slog of countless primary sources, or risk not understanding things as directly as you could.

And there is another thing worth pointing out: many of the philosophers that are read did not write in english, so there is a translation barrier that might inhibit your understanding. This does not really mean that you should just put up more barriers, but you aren't as close as you might think you are.

When making this decision, you should especially think about your goals. Because my reading has to do with formulating my own philosophies of truth, knowledge, and reality, etc.—I don't really care about the "he said, she said" of philosophy; I don't care what Spinoza believes or what Aristotle believes. I care about my own philosophy. If their ideas interest me, it is only insofar as they help me formulate my own theory. I am a very selfish reader. If this is your approach, then use secondary sources.

If you like philosophy for its own sake, then you probably disagree.

Tip Seven: Separate the Profound from the Profundication

The next section is also applicable to philosophy, but also to the postmodern literature that the true "intellectuals" of the world love to tackle. Already, I have in my head the many collegiate level readers who love literature and philosophy, but inevitably come up against the brick wall of some obtuse text that they still "wrestle with," even up until today. They are handicapped by this conviction that every work has something important to say, and that we just have to keep looking in order to find it.

Hegel, Infinite Jest, Judith Butler, Finnegan's Wake—basically any other thing that is postmodern—these are all examples of texts and writers that should be questioned. The only scrutiny they deserve is over whether they're even worth engaging with in the first place. Authors, even the "Greats," are not Jesus, they are not sacred. Who or what decided they should be read in the first place? Imagine that one obnoxious idiot in your old philosophy class who had nothing to offer, who wrote impenetrable ramblings, and who everyone dismissed as insufferable and as a pseudo-intellectual. What is the difference between him and Hegel? One is dead.

There are a number of principles that I adopt when I try to separate the profound from the profundications, the worthy from the obscurantist babble. The first step is understanding that a book being hard to understand is not an indication of being smart. This is obvious on its face, but by the gods is it not well understood. People want to avoid being arrogant, or they don't think of themselves as smart, and so they just accept that they can't understand something because the concepts must be so high-minded. Put that aside, and think about these principles, while understanding that I am talking about overindulgence of these ideas, not the mere usage.

Long sentences. This one is obvious. And I am not talking about the occasional creative flourish. I mean prose that uses page long sentences as a rule in their writing. This makes the reading process harder. It has nothing to do with how interesting the content is. And reading long sentences is not the same thing as intelligence. You are not going to solve important philosophical questions with long sentences. You probably will obscure half-baked ideas, however.

Inserted clauses, especially their conjunction with the previous point. As before, the occasional inserted clause is fine. And their usage to give off a more conversational vibe to their story is also fine. You yourself can tell how easy it is to read the book. But when they start to break up the delivery of the ideas, with insertions of yet more ideas, then it is another example of being obscurantist.

Here is an example I put together: "There are questions that I am less certain of, if only, for the cases of more abstract dealings, because we can say that they have less connection to reality, and are therefore less certain, at least in terms of their meaning, to have something worth communicating to anyone in particular, especially to those who have an interest in understanding it, for whatever reasons that may be." The sentence is very hard to understand. And perhaps there is a conversational feel to it. But it also goes too far. The primary idea is clouded by all these ridiculous asides that could easily be separated out into other sentences.

Reworded, this could say: "There are questions that I am less certain of. For abstract questions, I often question their connection to reality. Sometimes, they are quite simply meaningless. They risk having nothing of worth to communicate to anyone." This excerpt is so much clearer. And nothing about the substance has changed.

Diction. This is another obvious example. Does the text use esoteric words to an obsessive degree? As before, esoteric words are fine when used sparingly. I like collecting new words from the books I read. And philosophy often needs new concepts to communicate what they are saying. But these terms need to be explained in turn, and they need to be articulated through the use of simple language. A good use of new concepts would be to communicate what might be a complex idea, but in a straightforward manner. It makes the explanations easier, in other words. A bad use would be one that makes the ideas even harder to understand.

A title is a good indicator, especially for non-fiction. The title might say something like: "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes." Run. Away. The title should simplify the article's ideas and telegraph the most important one. You should not be capturing every nuance right from the start.

All of this is important because reading is a psychological act. Rules for writing at all levels are not something pulled from the aether. They are abstracted from human capacity. We recognize patterns in how people tend to read, and what tends to be easier, and we tailor our writing craft to them. And postmodernism helps prove this by breaking all the rules.

Go back to Tip Three. Remember the concept of a DNS and use it heavily here. Read the first few pages. Make a decision based on these principles. If it is hard to read, then is it for these reasons, or because of the nature of the actual subject matter? And if you must, then rely on secondary sources. I did this for many of the postmodernists and those downstream. Sometimes this can even be funny. I remember reading secondary sources on Judith Butler, and much of the commentary was caveated with statements like, "what I think Butler is saying."

Tip Eight: Have a Reading Catalog

One way to give yourself a small psychological reward for completing reading assignments is by creating a catalog of all the books you've read each year. And I don't just include books that I have completed, but even the books that I've only read a few chapters of. I might mark "Consilience: Chapter 8," once I've finished that goal. I also include information dense articles, podcasts, and videos, since those have a tendency to pile up in my watch/read later playlists.

At the very top, it is also worth having a currently reading section, where I mark how far along I am in a given book. This helps show that there is movement, even during a given book. This is similar to goodreads, but with greater flexibility.

Conclusion

Some of these Tips will hopefully help you read more books, while also helping you understand them better. I am not denying that there is a general trade off between understanding and the speed at which you read. But this merely establishes a ceiling. If you have imperfect reading habits, there is room for improvement in any case, as it implies that you haven't reached that ceiling just yet.

If you have any commentary, then feel free to share in the comments.

Video: https://youtu.be/Vp1hb3tkRZo