Comment by SonOfLilit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SonOfLilit | Hacker News Reader

To retain more, read slower.

Stop after every paragraph. Consider - do you agree with the author? Do you have past experiences that support or challenge his claims? What can this be used for? What else is interesting about it?

When reading a novel, try to identify clever things the author did here. If relevant, try to guess what the solution will be to the mystery.

When reading a math, physics or programming textbook (or paper), stop every time the author is about to present a new tool or solution. Spend a few minutes trying to solve it yourself before reading his solution.

Do all the exercises.

You'll consume less books per month, but will come out knowing much more (in total) than if you just ran through them.

A few years ago, I did an experiment where every time I read something online I had to post some thoughts about it. I read much less, and gained much more from every bit I did read. I especially like how the comic strips came out - I gained a lot of new appreciation for the relation between art and story:

http://iconcurandfurthermore.tumblr.com/

I did something similar for about two weeks, where I'd choose an article every day and write my own notes about it: http://kovach.me/notes.html

They were all about a single topic though, and I skim through several articles a day now on various topics. I might start doing this again; I _did_ learn a lot from transcribing notes and I think it could work with a variety of topics.

This.

I also did little blogging experiments like that when I was in graduate school, with physics textbooks! Sadly, I didn't get far because Jackson was so, so far beyond anything I'd seen up to that point -- it was all I could do to keep up with the weekly 2-3 problem assignments, much less read and understand all the reading. But Jackson is a special case. :)

I would also add progressive-time experiments to this list. If you're reading something important, that you want to retain, ask yourself one day, one week, and one month later what you remember from it. Come up with ways to apply what you read: in writing, in conversation, etc.

Slow reading and writing on it does sounds like a great way to retain knowledge, but it's hard to find a book that actually worth slow reading. What's your way of deciding if a book is worth reading?

I'm not the OP, but if you slow read you will quickly find out whether the books is worthwhile or not. I don't think finding books is that hard, especially novels. For technical knowledge, I regularly read reference books and literature surveys, so I know what's in the book before hand and I know the quality. Keeping track of authors is hard in the beginning, but keeping track of publishers is easier and yields relatively the same results. That's why they charge so much...

I read fiction based on recommendations or liking other works by the author, but more importantly, based on hearing people saying interesting things about the work. A good recent example is this gwern article, that finally convinced me that I must watch Neon Genesis Evangelion:

http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20and%20Dark%20Side%20Editing

I read nonfiction in a project-learning approach - if I need Partial Differential Equations for a game I'm writing, I'll read an article or book about PDEs. I sometimes read a nonfiction book simply because I love the author or topic (Feynman's Lectures, Hamming's The Art Of Doing Science And Engineering), but it usually doesn't work as well (project-based is awesome because you always have "how can I use this in practice?" in the back of your head, leading you to process the material in interesting ways.

Skimming also helps.

The most fun I've had studying a book was Steven Smith's DSP book, at http://www.dspguide.com/ (I recommend that you learn how to make music with synthesizers before you start reading.)

My online reading diet is more of the fast-food-and-candy type, which is something I really should solve.

Check out "How to read a book" by Mortimer Adler. A great process on reading to understand more. Even has a section about reading speeds too, as well as ideas on choosing a book.

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