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June 22, 2020 - March 6, 2023
In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away.
What you understand by reading the book through to the end—even if it is only fifty percent or less—will help you when you make the additional effort later to go back to the places you passed by on your first reading.
On Reading Speeds
.h3
It is wasteful to read a book slowly that deserves only a fast reading; speed reading skills can help you solve that problem.
be able to read at different speeds—and to know when the different speeds are appropriate.
Fixations and Regressions
.h3
the primary task—recognized as such by all speed reading courses—is to correct the fixations and regressions that slow so many readers down.
read as fast as his mind will let him, not as slow as his eyes make him.
Force yourself to keep up with your hand. You will very soon be able to read the words as you follow your hand. Keep practicing this, and keep increasing the speed at which your hand moves, and before you know it you will have doubled or trebled your reading speed.
The Problem of Comprehension
.h3
The hand (or some other device) used as a timer tends not only to increase your reading rate, but also to improve your concentration on what you are reading.
it is precisely comprehension in reading that this book seeks to improve. You cannot comprehend a book without reading it analytically;
Summary of Inspectional Reading
.h3
the ability to read at various speeds and to know when each speed is appropriate is the ideal.
Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.
Skimming or pre-reading a book is always a good idea;
do not try to understand every word or page of a difficult book the first time through.
Systematic skimming, in other words, anticipates the comprehension of a book’s structure.
Superficial reading is the first necessary step in the interpretation of a book’s contents.
5 How to Be a Demanding Reader
.h2
The Essence of Active Reading: The Four Basic Questions a Reader Asks
.h3
prescription for active reading. It is: Ask questions while you read—questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.
1. WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT AS A WHOLE?
leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way by subdividing it into its essential subordinate themes
2. WHAT IS BEING SAID IN DETA...
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main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author’...
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3. IS THE BOOK TRUE, IN WHO...
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make up your own mind. Knowing the author’s mind is not enough.
4. WHAT OF IT?
its signif...
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Knowing what the four questions are is not enough. You must remember to ask them as you read. The habit of doing that is the mark of a demanding reader. More than that, you must know how to answer them precisely and accurately. The trained ability to do that is the art of reading.
Good books are over your head; they would not be good for you if they were not. And books that are over your head weary you unless you can reach up to them and pull yourself up to their level.
To keep on reading actively, you must have not only the will to do so, but also the skill—the art that enables you to elevate yourself by mastering what at first sight seems to be beyond you.
How to Make a Book Your Own
.h3
Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.
DeepRead
try to outline the book, not page by page or point by point (you have already done that at the back), but as an integrated structure, with a basic outline and an order of parts. That outline will be the measure of your understanding of the work; unlike a bookplate, it will express your intellectual ownership of the book.
DeepRead
The Three Kinds of Note-making
.h3
structural.
conceptual.
notes about the shape of the discussion
dialectical.
Forming the Habit of Reading
.h3
From Many Rules to One Habit
.h3
The Third Level of Reading: Analytical Reading
.h1
6 Pigeonholing a Book
.h2
The Importance of Classifying Books
.h3
RULE 1. YOU MUST KNOW WHAT KIND OF BOOK YOU ARE READING, AND YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS AS EARLY IN THE PROCESS AS POSSIBLE, PREFERABLY BEFORE YOU BEGIN TO READ.
What You Can Learn from the Title of a Book
.h3
Practical vs. Theoretical Books
.h3
Theoretical books teach you that something is the case. Practical books teach you how to do something you want to do or think you should do.
