My way to read a book

Reading seems easy. Your eyes might run effortlessly, crunching black ink shapes on snow white paper and yet, when you try to recall what you have just read, emptiness. It happens to everybody, that’s why I believe it is important to have some sort of technique while reading. Even if is seems as simple as reading. Those are the steps:

1. Gather contextual information about the book. Who is the author? When and where was it written?
2. Read the book while taking notes on the margins.
3. After every paragraph pause and reflect on what you have been reading.
4. When you finish the book wait one week, then review its structure, the main concepts and your notes.
5. Find your personal way to index the knowledge you just acquired.

Following those steps requires effort, and makes Sometimes I find myself skipping some of those points although as a rule I try to stick to them. Let’s have a look a bit more in detail.

1. Gather contextual information about the book

Every book has a story behind, which is not told in its pages. The author is very likely to have spent ten times more time writing them than you reading. Moreover every person is influenced by the current social and historical context. To correctly interpret the main ideas we should be able to grasp this and put the book’s argumentation in perspective.

2. Read it taking notes on the margins

Those are called marginalia and I haven’t been using them since the beginning. I actually though to be an ominous crime to ruin let alone write on any book.

3. After every paragraph pause and reflect on what you have been reading.

Reflection