We have all been there, reading a book. We get to the end of a chapter, and then we wonder what we have just read. It can be difficult to remember all of the points or arguments that the author articulated, or even the narrative or plot, especially in a novel with plenty of twists and turns.
In an era of endless scrolling, our attention spans have shrunk significantly. It can become difficult for us to even focus on something like reading a book, which requires long-term attention. Just like television shows, we are allowing the narrative arc to wash over us as our minds wander.
True insight doesn’t come from just passing your eyes over a book. Instead, it comes from really understanding what it is saying and wrestling with the ideas as you are reading it. If you want to build a deeper understanding and extract deeper meaning from the books you read, or retain more complex ideas that they convey, then this guide is for you. We take a look at some of the ways you can become a better reader so you can benefit more from the time spent reading.
Try using a highlighter pen
It might sound strange, especially if you’re into reading fiction, but using a highlighter pen can be a great way to become a more insightful book reader. It takes the experience from being passive to something more active, which can prove fruitful for many people.
One of the best ways to do this is to have a conversation with the author in the margins. If they say something, push back. Usually, you’ll find that they deal with your point later on in the reading, but sometimes they won’t, giving you a point of contention that you can then use to anchor the rest of your knowledge.
Also, when you react like this, you are forced to put what the author says into your own words. This uses different brain systems, encouraging you to remember more of what you’ve just read. The book becomes something that you’re really living in instead of just debating.
Pre-read and do your homework
Pre-reading around a book doesn’t sound like much fun, but doing your homework makes everything you’re about to consume easier to understand.
For example, let’s say that you are reading a novel that’s set in a specific intellectual, cultural, or political circumstance, or an era in the past. Brushing up on your politics, history, and cultural studies can help you understand the references and points made in the book so you’re not feeling lost and without context.
Try to figure out why the author wrote the book and the prevailing ideas they were trying to challenge. Also ask yourself who their contemporaries were, try to understand the why and when behind the book, and use this as your foundational lens. Once you have this in your mind’s eye, you’ll find it easier to view and interpret the text.
Practice syntopical reading
Mortimer Adler wrote a book, a guide, called How to Read a Book, and introduced the concept of syntopical reasoning. The idea here is to help readers achieve the highest level of reading, where you read several books on the same subject and then compare their arguments and synthesize your own original conclusions.
You’ll notice that many intellectuals do this naturally, and many of them who have podcasts often feature a bookcase of books on similar topics behind them. Insight doesn’t usually come from a single source. Instead, it comes from reading multiple sources on a single topic.
For example, let’s say you really want to understand the French Revolution. Don’t read the historical interpretation. It’s not a single author’s interpretation. Instead, read a broad suite of authors and opinions so you can understand the differences between their perspectives and what might be driving them. It’s in these differences that originality and insight often emerge, and it’s one of the reasons why so much of history is now revisionist.
Once you’ve forced books to have conversations with each other, you can become a true topic expert. It also changes the way you read a book, because you’re going into the context and understanding of one book, but then having that adjusted and changed by the interpretation of another. This experience can actually feel quite exciting and transforms reading from a simple passive ingestion of information to active arguments and critique.
Write a Feynman summary
Another approach is to write a Feynman study, famously recommended by physicist Richard Feynman. His idea was that if you can’t explain a complex concept simply, you don’t actually understand it. This strategy transfers perfectly to reading.
Instead of just nodding along and agreeing with the complex philosophical treatises, the idea is to explain the underlying concepts in simple language to prove to yourself that you’ve understood it. You can do this for any book or any dense chapter within a book.
Open a notebook and write: summarize the core argument in a couple of paragraphs or less. Try to pretend you’re explaining it to a middle schooler or a child in a way that they would understand. If you stumble or find the logical progression of your argument difficult, it’s often a sign that you haven’t completely grasped the topic and you need to revisit it. Don’t worry if that’s the case. All you need to do is go back and revisit your book summary once you’ve re-read the problematic sections.
Argue with the author
Lastly, it can help your reading skills if you argue with the author. We don’t mean this literally, of course, but creating an argument helps you become more insightful because you’re picking apart their ideas and asking whether they’re really valid.
Many people read books on the assumption that the author is an authority, but never treat them that way. Instead, see yourself as an equal and evaluate their claims based on the evidence and methodologies that they use. Don’t spend all of your time trying to understand the basic framework or the plot, because this means you’re often wasting your time figuring out what is happening instead of why or how it’s happening.
Feature image by Clay Banks on Unsplash.
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