如何读得更好
摘要
本文面向希望深入研究经典与非虚构类书籍的读者，提出将阅读比作锻炼的核心理念。作者建议循序渐进地培养阅读能力，采用两遍阅读法——先快速粗读把握全貌，再慢读深入理解细节。同时提倡轻注释与有意识的笔记方式，避免过度标记。此外还强调有目的地选书和随身携带书籍的习惯，旨在帮助读者追求阅读的质量与深度而非数量。
核心概念及解读
阅读如锻炼：阅读能力需要像体能一样逐步训练和发展，不能急于求成，应循序渐进地增加强度和持续时间
两遍阅读法：第一遍快速粗读以把握作者意图和整体结构，第二遍慢读深入理解部分与整体之间的关系
轻注释策略：阅读过程中避免过度标记和做大量笔记，仅用铅笔打勾和简短总结，为第二遍精读做准备
有意识选书：选择书籍应有明确理由和计划，围绕特定主题、作者或流派进行系统性阅读，而非随意挑选
质量优于数量：深入理解一本书比泛泛阅读一百本书更有价值，阅读的目的是深度思考与自我提升
文章主旨：文章的主要观点是关于如何成为更好的读者，特别是那些希望深入研究困难书籍、经典作品或非虚构类书籍的人。作者提供了一些建议，包括将阅读比作锻炼，强调质量而非数量，建议多读一遍书籍，并提供有意识的笔记方法。此外，选择适当的书籍也被认为是重要的，可以根据个人兴趣、特定作者或主题进行选择。文章还呼吁养成随身携带书籍的习惯，以便随时随地都能进行阅读。
总体来说，文章旨在鼓励读者在阅读过程中更注重深度、理解和有意识的学习，而非简单地追求数量。
作者的阅读方法似乎更适用于非虚构类书籍，特别是那些涉及哲学、历史和文学等深度主题的作品。他强调对书籍进行深度阅读，重视质量而非数量，而这种深度阅读对于理解作者意图、论点和整体结构非常重要。
具体而言，作者在文中提到了一些他个人喜欢的作者，如荷马、但丁、亚里士多德、艾米莉·狄金森、黑格尔等，这些都是涉及哲学、文学和历史等领域的作家和思想家。因此，这套阅读方法可能更适用于对这些领域感兴趣的读者。
阅读是一种深入研究经典、认真对待非虚构类书籍的过程，表明人们追求成为更好的读者。
阅读类似于锻炼，需要发展阅读时使用的心智、灵魂和眼睛的能力，这需要逐渐增加阅读强度和持续时间。
阅读需要练习，建议每周安排几次专注的阅读时间，逐步增加阅读量，而不是追求数量。
阅读像锻炼一样，需要多次重复。第一遍是快速而粗糙的阅读，第二遍是更深入的慢读，有助于理解整体和部分之间的关系。
阅读时建议尽量多读一遍书，第一次快速阅读，第二次进行更深入的理解，因为评价一本书通常是基于对整体的理解。
在阅读时轻轻注释和做一些小标记，不要在阅读时过多做笔记，留下一页半的笔记，为第二次阅读做好准备。
选择阅读的书时要有明确的理由，可能是对特定主题的兴趣、对某位作者的研究、或者探索特定子流派的发展等。
读书不仅是为了获取信息，更是为了成为一个更有深度思考和理解能力的人，需要有意识地选择读物。
随身携带书籍，培养随时随地阅读的习惯，利用碎片时间提升阅读频率，使阅读成为一种习惯。
作者提供了以下建议：
将阅读比作锻炼： 将阅读能力视为一种需要发展和训练的能力，类似于锻炼身体。建议逐渐增加阅读的强度和持续时间。
多读一遍书籍： 首次阅读可采用快速而粗糙的方法，迅速了解作者的观点。然后通过第二遍阅读，更深入地理解整体结构，理解作者的意图和论点。
轻注释和做有意识的笔记： 不建议在阅读时过多注释，而是使用轻微的注释，如在重要段落旁边打小勾，使用书签标记重要引用。在章节结束时，撰写简短的总结，为第二次阅读做好准备。
选择合适的书籍： 建议有明确的理由选择书籍，不仅仅因为听起来有趣。可能的选择理由包括对特定主题的兴趣、对某位作者的追求，或者对特定子流派的探索。
随身携带书籍： 养成随身携带书籍的习惯，以便在一天中的任何时间都能找到时间进行阅读。这有助于使阅读成为一种习惯，更容易进行。
这些建议旨在帮助读者更有意识地进行阅读，提高阅读深度和理解能力。
作者没有具体列举不推荐的做法，但从文章内容可以总结出一些可能被视为不推荐的做法：
不仅仅追求阅读数量，而是注重阅读的质量和深度。
不要过于急功近利，认识到阅读是一个需要时间和耐心培养的过程。
阅读时不要过度依赖过多的笔记，特别是在阅读过程中过于杂乱地做大量标记和注释。
不要贸然选择书籍，而是应该有明确的理由和计划，避免阅读过于零散或缺乏主题的作品。
不要将阅读仅仅看作获取信息的手段，而是将其视为一种自我提升和思考的方式。
这些是从文章中隐含的观点中总结出的，而非作者明确列举的不推荐做法。
作者强调更注重阅读的质而非量，主要是因为他认为阅读应该是一种深入理解、探索思想的过程，而不仅仅是追求读过的书的数量。以下是作者论述的一些原因：
深度理解： 作者认为，如果一个人能够深入阅读一本书，真正理解其中的思想和观点，那比匆匆快速地读过很多书更有价值。深度阅读有助于更好地理解作者的意图和主张。
思考和反思： 阅读不仅仅是获取信息，更是一个思考和反思的过程。通过深入阅读，读者有机会停下来思考书中的概念，并与自己的观点进行对比和反思。
形成自己的观点： 通过深度阅读，读者能够更好地吸收和理解作者的观点，并在此基础上形成自己的见解。这种深度理解有助于建立更为扎实的知识结构。
避免浮躁： 追求数量而非质量容易导致浮躁和肤浅的阅读。作者强调，将注意力集中在深入理解一些经典和有深度的作品上，能够避免这种表面化的阅读态度。
总的来说，作者认为阅读应该是一种有意识、深度和有质量的体验，而不仅仅是为了累积书单上的数量。这样的阅读方式更有助于个人的成长和思考能力的提升。
我知道很多人都想读一些困难的书。也就是说，他们希望能够深入研究经典，比如阅读哲学，或者只是认真对待严肃的非虚构类书籍。或者可能是一些更偏文学而非流派的文学作品，可能稍微少一点属于流派的一面。所有这些都表明有很多人希望成为更好的读者。
因此，我想给你一些建议，这些建议在我努力成为更好的读者的过程中非常有用。这是一段历时多年的旅程，包括上学、毕业、研究生毕业、进入职场、找到新的生活节奏，开始家庭生活，所有这些，对吧？虽然我已经做到了这一切，但我认为我也能够变得更加满足，不仅是在我阅读的数量上，更是在我如何阅读上。这确实是一个关键点。我们希望专注于成为优秀的读者，而不是变得更快的读者。
当涉及到阅读时，我绝对是一个追求质量而非数量的人。如果你告诉我你读了五本书 - 哦，如果你告诉我你整年只读了一本书，但你深入阅读过，并且这是一本你确实努力理解的书，我会感到高兴。我会觉得你做了一些了不起的事情。事实上，我觉得这比说你今年能读100本书更令人印象深刻，特别是如果你在读这些书的过程中并没有从其中大多数书籍中获得太多收获。
我知道自己有意放慢了阅读的速度。今年我读书少了一点，我对这个决定感到满意。但是想要成为更好的读者容易说，实践起来可能有点难，尤其是如果你不知道从哪里开始。所以今天让我们谈谈这个。
我的第一个观点是阅读很像锻炼。我之所以这么说有几个原因。很多人想要身体更健康，但他们觉得去健身房很难做到。同样地，我认为很多人想要阅读很多好书，他们想要深入理解，但实际上拿起一本书并进行阅读可能觉得有点无聊，也许有点痛苦，总的来说，他们很难找到动力。
现在，如果阅读就像锻炼一样，这就引出了另一个类比，也就是说，无论你在阅读时使用什么能力 - 这些是心灵、灵魂甚至是眼睛的能力 - 它们都需要得到发展。如果你最近没有多读书，而你拿起了荷马的一些作品、但丁的一些作品、亚里士多德的一些作品，甚至是艾米莉·狄金森的一些短篇作品，你不应该期望这些作品会轻易展现在你面前。你不应该期望这会很容易。
如果你曾经从锻炼中休息过，然后试图重新开始，我认为你可能知道那是什么感觉。有点痛苦，肯定有些痛苦。所以，那些阅读的
肌肉 - 我们阅读时使用的这些能力 - 需要得到发展和训练。这意味着在一开始我们需要逐渐增加强度和持续时间。但这也意味着你需要一开始走得慢一些。
如果你决定想要更多地阅读或更深入地阅读，这并不意味着你需要把整个星期六都用来阅读，特别是如果你最近没有多读书。每周安排几次30分钟，真正全身心投入其中，你会发现最终你可以读得更长时间，你的注意力不会漂移，你会发现自己能够真正理解你所读的。我基本上是在说，如果你想成为一个更好的读者，你需要练习。
但我还想给你一些建议，可能不那么明显。首先，我要建议你尽量多读一遍书。如果你在读非虚构类书籍，尤其是如我一样有哲学博士学位的人，我可以告诉你这一点。我从来没有能够在只读一次后就能够聪明地讨论一部作品，无论那是一本书还是一篇文章。通常情况下，当我们接触一部作品时，我们并没有看到作者的意图，特别是在作品初期。因此，由于我们看不到作者的意图，消息将会是什么，或者正在争论的论点是什么，由于我们看不到这一点，我们无法完全理解这些早期的部分，这些建立起来的基础，它们将如何一起形成并支持或实际上未能支持这个结论或这个消息。
我想说的是评价一本书或一本书中的论点通常是非常整体的。因此，我们需要能够理解整体，以便理解部分，尽管这些部分帮助我们理解整体。而我发现做到这一点的最佳方法就是读两遍。第一次阅读时，我称之为快速而粗糙的方法。你会相对快速地阅读它，并尝试看出作者的观点是什么，作者试图让你相信或理解什么。在你认为你已经建立了这一点并理解了它之后，你可以回过头来进行慢读。
现在，这不一定是你立即要做的事情。事实上，你可能想在快速阅读和慢读之间花一点时间。但通过进行第二遍阅读，你会发现这是非常有帮助的，因为现在你理解了这个作品的要点，你能够看到所有这些小部分是如何结合在一起的。现在，这在虚构类作品中可能更难做到。通常情况下，我们不太愿意在阅读它们的一两年内重新阅读小说。但我认为，尤其是 - 所以也许这一点更多地针对非虚构类作品。
我记得当我第一次尝试阅读黑格尔时。我有一位是黑格尔专家的教授，当我问他作为一个从未读过黑格尔的人应该如何对待黑格尔时，他说：“读完黑格尔的所有作品。”当然，如果你对黑格尔有所了解，我想你会知道这是令人害怕的建议，特别是如果你刚刚从本科毕业，刚刚涉足德国唯心主义。但我认为他有正确的想法。
我试图很快地阅读很多黑格尔。黑格尔以阅读困难而著称。我不认为我能够重构黑格尔的任何一个论点，但我能够理解黑格尔的整体画面，了解他的思想的形状和结构。然后，在那学期末写一篇关于一个更具体问题的论文时，我做得比如果我没有试图短时间内大量阅读黑格尔要好一些。话虽如此，我的黑格尔论文并不是很好，可能是我在研究生院写的最糟糕的论文。我不再有它的副本，对此我感到相当高兴。
我第二个建议是你会想要做笔记，但你不会想要在阅读时做笔记。有很多人对阅读时做笔记感到非常困扰。因此，如果他们在阅读一本哲学著作，或者说一本历史著作，他们会写下他们认为重要的每一点，他们总是在做笔记，总是在标记那些书。很多这些注释，坦白说，都是垃圾。它们对你自己的思考实际上并没有帮助。对于理解作者的意图或试图理解作者而言，它们并不立即有帮助。而且你将产生大量的笔记，筛选和整理它们真的相当困难。
我更喜欢在做书籍笔记时轻轻地注释，所以我使用铅笔。我只在我认为相关的段落旁边打个小勾，也许偶尔在页边写不到一句话。有时，如果我感觉有点花哨，我会使用这些书签。它们颜色鲜艳，我会把它们放在我认为会很重要的引用旁边。最多，在每章结束时，我会写一个段落，尝试总结论证是什么以及我们在辩证法中的位置。这实际上应该在每章最多花费10分钟。最后，你最多留下一页半的笔记，也许两页。你会留下一些轻微的注释。但你做了什么呢？你已经为第二次阅读做好了准备。你现在已经为慢慢阅读并决定什么才能成为笔记打下基础了。
你的笔记实际上是一种有限的资源，因为你需要能够理解它们并将它们放在一起形成自己的一种连贯单位。因此，在第二次阅读时，你可以查看这些你标记过的段落，并决定哪些实际上值得成为笔记。这是你可以添加一些你自己评论的地方。也许有一天我会制作一个关于我的笔记方法的视频。我确实有一种方法；这是一种系统。但我认为瑞恩·霍利迪和我基本上采用相同的方法：轻微注释，将它们转化为物理卡片，然后对它们进行分类。我认为通过查看你的物理注释是相当有用的。出于这个原因，我不使用应用程序或软件。我真的更喜欢保持它简单和模拟。
好的，既然你决定要读两遍这本书，你决定要做笔记，但要以这种有意识的方式进行，你不会在笔记上太乱，第三个要点是你需要选择合适的书。很多人只是决定他们想要读更多，广泛阅读确实有价值。但往往会发生的是，当你回顾所有你读过的书时，你会意识到你的阅读旅程没有故事情节。你只是挑选了一些你认为听起来有趣的书。
一方面，你有时应该只是因为一本书听起来有趣而读。我认为这很棒。但大多数时候，你应该有一个很好的理由选择你的书。现在，如果你是一个参与长期研究项目的学生，弄清楚这些理由可能会更容易一些，而看这个视频的大多数人并没有参与这类研究项目；你只是想多读一点。所以，你不是基于如何推进你的研究计划来选择的。让我给你一些建议或你可能问自己的一些样本理由或问题。
首先，你是否只是对一个特定主题感兴趣？对于我们中的一些人来说，这可能会非常一般。比如，你可能真的喜欢政治，也许你想了解伟大的思想家是如何思考政治的。好吧，在这种情况下，你可能应该读一些约翰·洛克、亚当·斯密、马克思，也许还有一些后来的马克思主义者。如果你想了解自由民主理论，你应该读约翰·罗尔斯。你可能想读玛莎·努斯鲍姆，她是另一位研究这些问题的伟大哲学家，同时她也是一位希腊学者。你可能还想读一些孔子或其他中国政治哲学的著作。你可能想读托马斯·霍布斯。这是一系列相当多样化的文本，但所有这些都将帮助你更好地实现你的目标，即理解政治的深层问题。
也许你没有这样的驱动兴趣，你只是对一个特定的作者非常感兴趣。通常，当我们谈论伟大的书时，我们会犯一个错误，认为我们只应该谈论该作者的最佳作品。现在，我最喜欢的作者之一是费奥多尔·陀思妥耶夫斯基，我只读过他的一些作品。我读过的作品让我惊叹，我只知道他是最好的之一。但当我考虑到2023年我想读什么时，我正在考虑的是，为什么我不尽量多地阅读陀思妥耶夫斯基呢，你知道的，我一年能读三四部小说？这有很大的价值，因为你将理解作者著作的高峰，但也将理解低谷，因为他们的每本书都不会令人惊叹。
坦白说，陀思妥耶夫斯基写了《罪与罚》，这是我最喜欢的书，如果他写了其他书，它
们就不会像在我心中《罪与罚》那么好。我不能期望这样，但我知道陀思妥耶夫斯基有伟大的潜力，我想看看他还能做什么。所以，你可能会选择一位作者，或者你可能会选择一个非常特定的子流派。也许你真的喜欢非裔未来主义，你想了解这个流派是如何随着时间的推移而发展的。所以，这是选择阅读的几种不同方式，无论是为了推进你的研究计划还是为了帮助你理解你自己思考中一直回到的大主题，或者探索某位特定作者的生活和作品。我会说，所有这些都是很好的理由，这还不是一个详尽无遗的列表。
我主要的观点，也是我真心希望你从这个视频中带走的观点是，你应该考虑你想读什么，也许制定一个小计划，因为你读的东西不仅仅是你购买并花时间阅读的书籍。你实际上正在决定你想成为什么样的人。对于我们实际上参与道德或自我塑造的任何事情，我们只需仔细思考。这实际上不是我们可以交给机会的事情。
最后，最后一个观点，这纯粹是实际的，几乎没有哲学含义：养成随身携带书籍的习惯，或者如果你使用电子阅读器阅读，随身携带你的Kindle，或者如果你更喜欢听书，随时随地都能接触到你的有声书。你会发现一天中有时间阅读。也许你在办公桌工作，中午休息时间较长，你可能能够读15分钟。与其在手机上花费这15分钟，不如与一本好书共度。或者当你准备去睡觉时，尝试在关灯前只读几分钟。随身携带你的书籍真的会帮助你找到额外的时间来阅读，它会使阅读成为一种第二天性。它确实会变得习惯性，一旦它变得习惯性，你会发现你做得越来越频繁，然后你只会成为一个更好的读者。再次强调，我们正在努力成为读者，并且我们希望能够轻松地练习。所以，挑选一本好书，挑选一个好的理由。随身携带它，尽量随时随地携带一支铅笔，这样你就可以记下一些笔记，准备重新阅读这些伟大的作品。好吧，现在我就说这么多，下次再聊。
A lot of people want to read hard books. That’s to say that they want to be able to dive into, say, Classics, or they want to be able to read philosophy, or just serious non-fiction. Or maybe some literature that’s more on the literary side of things, maybe a little less than the genre side of things. All of this is to say that there are a lot of people who want to become better readers.
So, I want to give you a couple of tips that I have found useful in my journey to become a better reader. This is a journey that has taken me a number of years. It has involved going to school, graduating, finishing graduate school, entering the workforce, finding a new rhythm, starting a family, all of that stuff, right? And while I’ve done all of that, I think I’ve also been able to really become much happier with not just how much I read but how I read. And that really is a critical point. We want to focus on becoming good readers, not becoming faster readers.
I am definitely someone who is all about quality rather than quantity when it comes to reading. If you told me that you read five books – heck, if you told me that you only read one book all year but you read it deeply and it was one that you actually had to work at, I would be thrilled. I would think that you had done something amazing. And in fact, I would find that more impressive than saying that you were able to read 100 books this year, especially if you didn’t get much out of the majority of those books that you read.
I know I, for one, have intentionally slowed down my reading. I’m reading a little bit less this year, and I feel good about that decision. But it’s easy to say that we want to become better readers, but it’s a little bit harder to put that into practice, especially if you just don’t know where to start. So let’s talk about that today.
My first point is that reading is a lot like exercise. I say this for a couple of reasons. Many people want to be in better shape, but they find going to the gym very hard to do. In the same way, I think that many people want to have read a lot of good books and they want to have understood them well, but they find actually picking up the book and doing the work to be kind of boring, maybe a little painful, and just in general, they struggle to find motivation.
Now, if reading is like working out, that lends itself to another analogy, which is to say that whatever faculties you are using when you read – these faculties of the mind or the soul or just even of the eyes – they need to be developed. If you haven’t been reading a lot lately and you pick up some Homer or some Dante or some Aristotle or even shorter works like various poems by Emily Dickinson, you shouldn’t expect those works to just reveal themselves to you. You shouldn’t expect it to be easy.
If you’ve ever taken a break from exercise and then tried to get back into it, I think you probably know what it’s like. It kind of hurts. There’s definitely some pain involved. So, those reading muscles – these faculties that we use when we’re reading – they need to be developed and trained. And that means partly we need to build up the intensity and also the duration. But this also means that you need to go slowly at first.
If you decide that you want to read more or read more deeply, it doesn’t mean that you need to block off all of your Saturday to read, especially if you haven’t been reading a lot lately. Block off 30 minutes a couple of times a week and really devote yourself, and you’ll find that eventually you can just read longer, your attention won’t drift, and you’ll just find yourself able to really understand what you’ve read. I’m basically saying if you want to become a better reader, you need to practice at it.
But I want to give you a few more practical tips that might not be so obvious. First of all, I am going to suggest that you should try to read books more than once. This is especially true if you are reading non-fiction. As someone with a PhD in philosophy, I can tell you this. I have never been able to intelligently discuss a work, whether that was a book or an article, after just reading it once. Oftentimes, when we approach a work, we don’t see what the author intends, especially early on. And so, since we can’t see what the author intends, what the message is going to be or what the thesis is that’s being argued for, since we can’t see that, we can’t quite understand how all of the early pieces, this foundation that’s being laid, how they’re all going to kind of come together and then support or actually fail to support this conclusion or this message.
What I want to say is evaluating a book or an argument in a book is often very holistic. And so, we need to be able to understand the whole in order to understand the parts, even while those parts help us to understand the whole. And I have found that the best way to do this is to read a book twice. The first time you read it, I call it sort of the fast and dirty method. You’re going to read it fairly quickly, and you’re going to try to see what the point is, what is the author trying to get you to believe or to understand. After you think you’ve established that and you’ve grasped it, you can then go back and do your slow read.
Now, this doesn’t have to be something that you do immediately. In fact, you might want to take a little bit of time between your fast read and your slow read. But really going over for that second pass is tremendously helpful because now that you understand the point of the work, you’re able to see how all of those little pieces come together. Now, this might be harder for us to do with fiction. Typically, we don’t like to reread novels within a year or two of reading them. But I do think, especially – and so maybe this point is a little bit more geared towards non-fiction.
I remember when I was trying to read Hegel for the first time. I had a professor who was a Hegel scholar, and when I asked him how I should approach Hegel as someone who had never read him, he said, “Read all of Hegel.” And of course, if you know anything about Hegel, I think you’ll know that this is scary advice to receive, especially if you’re fresh out of your undergrad days and you’re just cracking into German idealism. But I do think he had the right idea.
I tried to read a lot of Hegel very quickly. Hegel is notoriously difficult to read. I don’t think I could reconstruct a single one of Hegel’s arguments, but I was able to grasp a larger picture of Hegel and sort of the shape and structure of his thought. And then, when I went to write a paper at the end of that semester on a more specific issue, I did a slightly better job than I would have if I hadn’t tried to sort of binge read Hegel. That said, my Hegel paper was not very good, possibly the worst paper I wrote in graduate school. I don’t have a copy of it anymore
, and I’m fairly glad about that.
My second piece of advice is that you are going to want to take notes, but you’re not going to want to take notes while you read. There are a lot of people who get really hung up about taking notes as they read. And so, if they’re reading a work of philosophy or let’s say a work of history, they’re going to write down every point they think is important, and they’re always taking notes, they’re always marking up those books. A lot of these notes, frankly, are garbage. They aren’t actually helpful for your own thoughts. They’re not immediately helpful for understanding what the author was intending or trying to understand the author. And you’re going to produce such a volume of notes that sorting and sifting through them is really quite difficult.
I prefer when I’m taking notes on a book to lightly annotate, so I use a pencil. I just use a little check mark next to passages that I think are relevant, and maybe I’ll write less than a sentence in the margin every so often. Sometimes, if I’m feeling kind of fancy, I use these book tabs. They’re brightly colored, and I place them next to quotes that I think are going to be relevant. At most, I write about a paragraph at the end of a chapter where I try to summarize what the argument was and where we are in the dialectic. That really should take 10 minutes at most per chapter. By the end, you’re left with at most a page and a half of notes, maybe two pages. You’re left with some light annotations. But what have you done? You have set yourself up for your second read. You have now set yourself up to go and read it slowly again and then decide what actually gets to be a note.
Your notes are actually kind of a limited resource because you need to be able to understand them all and place them together to form their own kind of cohesive unit. So, as you are reading the second time, you can look through these passages that you’ve marked and decide which ones actually deserve to be turned into notes. That’s where you can add some of your own commentary. I might do a video one day which is about my own note-taking method. I do kind of have one; it’s a bit of a system. But I think Ryan Holiday and I have basically the same method: lightly annotate, turn them into physical note cards, and then sort them. I do think that the labor of going through your physical annotations is quite useful. It’s for this reason that I don’t use apps or software. I just really prefer to keep it kind of simple and analog.
Right, so now that you’ve decided that you’re going to read a book twice, that you’re going to take notes but you’re going to do it in this kind of intentional way, you’re not going to be too messy about your notes, the third thing is you need to pick the right books. A lot of people just decide they want to read more, and there is real value in reading widely. But what often can happen is that when you look back at all the books that you’ve read, you realize that there’s no narrative to your journey. You just kind of picked books that you thought sounded interesting.
Now, on the one hand, you should sometimes just read a book because it sounds interesting. I think this is great. But for most of the time, you should be picking your books for a good reason. Now, figuring out those reasons is a little bit easier if you’re, say, a student engaging in a long research program, and most of you watching this video aren’t engaged in that kind of research program; you just want to read more. So, you’re not picking based on how to further your research program. Let me give you a couple of sample reasons or questions you might ask yourself.
One, are you just interested in a particular topic? For some of us, that’s going to be very general. Say you really like politics and maybe you want to understand what the great minds have thought about politics. Well, in that case, you should probably read some John Locke, some Adam Smith, some Marx, and maybe some later Marxists. And you should read John Rawls if you want to understand theories of liberal democracy. You might want to read Martha Nussbaum, another great philosopher writing about these things, also with a kind of ancient eye as she is also a Greek scholar. You might want to read some Confucius or other works of Chinese political philosophy. You might want to read Thomas Hobbes. That is a fairly diverse collection of texts, but all of them will help you better achieve your goal, which is to kind of understand the deep problems of politics.
Maybe you don’t have one of those driving interests; however, and you’re just really interested in one particular author. Often when we talk about the great books, we make this mistake of thinking that we should only talk about the best books by that particular author. Now, one of my favorite authors is Fyodor Dostoevsky, and I’ve only read a few of his works. The works that I have read are so astounding to me that I just know he’s near the top. But as I’m thinking about what I want to read going into 2023, something I’m considering is, why don’t I just read as much Dostoevsky as I can, you know, as I can handle in a year? And I’ll read three or four more novels. There’s a lot of value in that because you’ll understand the highs of an author’s corpus, but you’ll also understand the lows because not every book by them is going to be astounding.
Frankly, Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, which is my favorite book, and if he wrote any other books, they just won’t be as good as Crime and Punishment in my mind. And I can’t go into it expecting that, but I know that Dostoevsky is capable of greatness, and I want to see what else he can do. So, you might pick an author, or you might pick a really specific sub-genre. Perhaps you’re really into Afrofuturism, and you want to understand how that genre has kind of developed over time. So, those are a few different ways to pick how you’re going to read, either to further your research program or to just help you understand that big topic that you keep coming back to in your own thoughts or to explore the life and work of a particular author. All of these, I would say, are good reasons, and this is not an exhaustive list.
My main point and the one I really hope you take away from this video is that you should be thinking about what you want to read, maybe crafting yourself a little plan because what you read isn’t just a matter of what books you buy and spend your time with. You’re actually deciding what kind of person you want to be. As with anything where we are actually engaging in moral or self-formation, we just have to think through it. This really isn’t something that we can ever leave to chance.
Finally, one last point, and this is purely practical, almost nothing philosophical about it. It’s just something that really helped me: get in the habit of carrying your book with you or carrying your Kindle with you if you read an e-reader or always having access to your audiobook if that’s your preferred way to consume a book. You will find time to read throughout your day. Maybe you work at a desk job and you take a longer lunch, and you might be able to read for 15 minutes. That 15 minutes is better spent with a good book than it is on your phone. Or when you’re about to go to sleep, try to read for just a couple of minutes before you turn off the lights. Keeping your books with you is really going to help you find that extra time to read, and it’s going to turn reading into a second nature. It’s truly going to become habitual, and once it becomes habitual, you’re going to find that you do it more often, and then you just become a better and better reader. Again, we’re
trying to practice becoming readers, and we want to make it easy for ourselves to practice. So, pick a good book and pick it for a good reason. Keep it with you as often as you can, keep a pencil in your pocket so you can take a few notes, and be prepared to revisit these great works. Alright, that’s all I have for you now, so I’ll talk to you next time.