How To Read Books Effectively

How to read so that you actually benefit from reading.

Photo by Shiromani Kant on Unsplash

You could easily read 52 non-fiction books in a year. The question is not why would you because clearly to cover more titles than fewer. The real question is, what are you going to remember? It could be greatly summarised by Woody Allen’s quote:

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia. — Woody Allen

Don’t get me wrong. Reading fast and thus efficiently is great and I do recommend everybody to try to increase their reading speed and quantity. But then again, if you want to read non-fiction you might want to learn something from the read book. And the truth is that if speed-read then what are you gaining is close to nothing.

How to read books effectively?

I used to read like this:

1. I would choose books semi-randomly, namely based on a vague recommendation from a friend, a nice looking front cover spotted in a bookstore or whenever I saw an interesting quote elsewhere. Without even thinking if I needed to read them.
2. I was reading when I remembered it. I did it in bursts (e.g. 2 hours on the plane, 4 hours on the…