Tips for reading

Everyone knows that reading is not a simple reading of lines of text, it is a complex mental process with its own characteristics and hidden features. Let me tell you about a couple of such features - about two types of reading, as well as share useful tips for the person reading.


Of course, there are much more types of reading, about six and a half billion - every reader has his own type of reading. However, there are two main types.

Analytical reading
')
Analytical reading is described in sufficient detail in Mortimer Adler’s book How to Read Books. This type of reading applies to books that are particularly rich in knowledge and experience, in relation to books in which knowledge is literally compressed, and it needs to be unzipped. Analytical reading is characterized by the following principles:

• In analytical reading, the process of studying a book should not be perceived as entertainment or a way to relax with a book, but as a serious intellectual work.
• The first sign of analytical reading is that after half an hour of such reading there is great fatigue.
• The second sign of analytical reading is that it takes several times more time and effort to study and read each book.
• While reading it is necessary to make notes in the margins or write out fragments of the book in a notebook. The book, read by the analytical method, is literally covered with a second layer of text with notes, notes, thoughts and conclusions of the person who read it.
• In analytical reading, the book is re-read at least three times - the first time is simply read without analysis, the second time the book is deeply analyzed, the third time it is simply read again. After reading, a list of ideas of the book is formed, the so-called sammarie.

Henri Mauroy in Letters to a Stranger describes an analytical way of reading as follows:

A very effective method of reading is “starlike”: the reader expands the range of interests, moving in different directions - as if through the rays of a star - from the basis of a book or a plot.

The analytical method of reading is great for studying complex texts - manuals, help books, important technical articles, descriptions. It is also suitable for those who want to receive several times more information from books .

Surface reading

With superficial reading, the emphasis shifts from the desire to get as much information from the book as possible to get maximum comfort out of it. This is a calm, relaxed reading, studying a book for fun, using text as a method to relax. Surface reading is distinguished by the following principles:

• It is necessary to read with pleasure, according to your mood or to create it.
• There are no rules for reading books - each has its own rules.
• The man does not read the book, he communicates with her.
• The book needs to be read only once, and if necessary, re-read favorite pieces.
• If a book does not like it, it should be thrown and never returned to it (however, sometimes it can be given another chance).

With surface reading, we read up to 80% of all information - for example, this is how we study most of the articles on Habré, switching to analytical reading for the most interesting and serious ones. Superficial reading is reading fiction, magazines, newspapers.

What is it all about?

Reading is a complex and multifaceted process. Reading is not just the ability to perceive textual information, it is the ability to decipher it, to understand what is written. Reading can and should learn.

Some tips for reading:

• It is important to be able to switch between the types of reading, studying important information in an analytical way, and easy and interesting - superficial.
• Reading serious and important articles should be approached only in the right atmosphere for this (nothing should distract you, neither the external environment, nor the internal disturbances). This is the only way to read analytically.
• Reading analytically, get ready for the “Wikipedia effect” - you will constantly go over clarifying and explanatory links, distracted by reading supporting articles and materials. There is nothing terrible in this, only you need to be able to control yourself and not to make the effect take control over you.
• Find a compromise between the desire to read something interesting right now, no matter what, and the need to postpone reading until later.
• If it seems to you that you do not have time to read now - you will never have it. Learn to allocate time to read in any situation and with any schedule.
• The phrase “I do not read, I listen to audiobooks / podcasts” does not work - you do not listen, but listen (you are engaged in an analogue of surface reading).
• Try not to read more than two books at once, but rather to limit yourself to one at all. Attention to reading, involvement and interest are reduced in direct proportion to the number of simultaneously readable books. If you still want to study two books at once, keep one at home and the other at work.
• Convenient for the modern person reading schedule - in short intervals of 15-30 minutes during rest.
• Do not read before bedtime (or at least do not call the process of self-consuming a book reading).
• Mix styles - after a business book read a technical article, then someone’s autobiography, and after - a book about self-development.
• Get a notebook in which you bring in all the books you should read.
• Treat reading at the same time as both mental work and entertainment.

Well, and finally, several links, books and articles that we can recommend to those who want to learn to read faster and deeper:

• Mortimer Adler, “How to read books” is a great book about analytical reading.
• Peter Shelley, “Photo Reading” is another popular book about a very interesting reading technique.
• 7 reading tips - an article on LH.
• “Reading to the light” from Armen Petrosyan (and his own rake for reading )
• Reading and meditation - “Katena” by Viktor Kolesnik.
• A large collection of books on speed reading and reading rules .

We hope our reading rules will help you to get more benefits or pleasure from the process (and maybe both of them at once). And what reading rules do you have?