How To Read More And Effectively?

@Viswamitra i second @Gauri03 on using kindle. I was so against e readers. Then i slowly tried a few apps like cool reader which allowed me to have the turning of pages and book like look and now have no qualms using kindle.


In fact the digital versions are a boon when you want to read some interesting titles that you come across even in these very forums. Recently @Gauri03 mentioned Michael moss's salt sugar fat, and it piqued my curiosity and to get hold of a hard copy at that rate is a nightmare. I found a copy under the research department of a university and I am happy.

You can flag a content, you can instantly check out related stuff( if you are like me or my son) and much more. I don't need to carry physically. I have them on kindle, iPad, iPhone and even some books on my ggdrive for easy access.

I keep away the book if I am not able to progress beyond a few pages. I read Easy on the mind and then get back to the dry ones. I am never a stickler of hard rules like finish this book whether I like or not before picking the next one. More so no as the books are available to me all the time.

And yes having somebody who loves to discuss what you read is the best motivator

 

(6) Plus, the big incentive from audiobooks is pronunciation. How on Earth does one pronounce those Frenchie and German names! Not to say that English has any less irregularities when it comes to pronunciation.

On the converse, the drawback of audiobooks is lack of textual support to check the spelling when you hear a fuzzy word. The ideal e-reader is where the text is rolled out on the screen against a booming voice.

I have a mix of audio and e-text books. Got rid of all my paper books few years ago. No more clutter in the house. A slim iPad pro for all my surfing, book reading, and streaming needs.

Having said that, my reading speed has not gone off the charts with these electronic devices. I'm a stuttered reader. I read two pages in like two hours making an origami of the marginal notes by scraping, chewing and picking on the content. There are books I'm stuck at page#twenty for years. I don't read with a fervour that I am supposed to, again this something I'm working on to mend my “learning to read” in tandem with Bulwer 'n' Bowlby's “learning to write” initiative. So, yes, the paradigm shift for me was moving away from physical books.

Small kotchen — how does one lookup dictionary and swipe to integrated Wikipedia instantly when reading a physical book. To cap it all, I cross-reference atleast twenty times while reading two pages. No wonder neither my speed nor fervour nor anxiety in finishing a book has escalated across the years. Mind, I am not a slow reader but a sluggish and indolent reader.

 

If there was an FB react button, I would click on that "awe" reaction.

This may not fall under “reading more” but definitely “read effectively”. There's nothing more effective than regurgitating that read cud like a frenzied ruminant with friends. Reading, though is a solitary pursuit, can never be effective until you toss that chewed cud in a collective escort. As a friend puts it, “Book readers feed off on each other's energy levels in discovery”.

If one intends to be an expansive reader, then they must cultivate groups and discipline their passion into constructive feedback-loops something like "Tell me how did you interpret that passage ..."

 

HI,
First of all, choose a book which you are longing to read
secondly, fix the time which has less disturbance &distraction, fix the place to read, avoid the zone which focuses more on the up coming work.
finally settle down to read with a pen, paper & the book, hunger should not hurry you, so..........

 

Tell me about it. In the past, I would have bragged about reading a book then talk to someone and realize that I overlooked a scene, forgot the names of the lead characters. I was discussing David Copperfield with a friend and he remembered more than I did though my read was more recent than his. I wondered, how he remembered those characters and scenes. I just finished the novel but he read the novel. That was a blow! I engage in mindful reading now. With these tablets in hand, it is easier to cross-reference wikipedia and annotate and highlight passages for stimulation and reference. The incidental trivia in the contextual search assists to grasp the theme further.

Also, book discussions are great memory enhancers because you strive to remember things for the heck of talking about them later. Concerted effort is any day better than individual slog. You can atleast moan together in solidarity for having chosen a heaving Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Sadly, book clubs haven't taken off quite well in IL. Yes, there may have been sporadic concerted efforts but that coalition disintegrates into another forlorn venture in no time. I mean, I have not seen a sustained participation in literature club.

In general, my reading habits have transformed of late. Read, read at a pace (fast or slow) whereby you assimilate the contents and source a takeaway from even that infrequent engagement. But cross-referencing (tags) or cross-integration (dictionary, wikipedia) is vital if you want the essence of that book to linger for a while.