my Chinese teacher supplied me with this supposedly ancient piece of Chinese scholarly wisdom: read any book a hundred times, and its meaning will be obvious.
i have found this to work amazingly well -- particularly with poorly written technical papers.
your comment also reminded me of this one time I was hanging out and watching the Matrix (for the 100th time probably) with a film maker friend. and he was pointing out to me that American film editing guides you with a rather heavy hand on where to look on the screen, whereas European films did little of that and the viewer has to search for what to pay attention to in a scene. after he showed me the editing techniques it all made sense, and explained why i could mindless follow hollywood movies, whereas watching an european film i'd get lost if not paying attention.