juliet's tomb

Reading wisely

05/22 2023

Pictured: 'To Ireneo Funes reading is no fun.'

The topic on what one should get out of reading is contentious, for some reason I cannot understand. The most commonly held view, of course, is that when one reads non-fiction one ought to remember the things one reads, while fiction is what one reads when one wishes to relax, and remembering is secondary. But some people that I've met have been on either opposite side, some have expressed the view that even when reading fiction one should aim to remember and grasp everything (try that with War & Peace and call it relaxing!), while others have expressed the view that most everything they read are things they cannot remember after putting the book down. While I certainly agree more with the latter statement (what fun is a view on life where you cannot even read without expectations!), I must say that all three views seem somewhat naive in my opinion. I read with the goal of enjoyment, but I still read for information (which most people enjoy in some way or form), I just don't overthink it. Here is my entire reading process, which is identical for fiction, non-fiction, and textbooks (although I'm much more inclined towards rereading and making summaries in the case of textbooks): Read. Underline things you like, either if they're facts you want to remember, or if they're just put together nicely, and scribble why you want to remember it in the margin (or not if the reason is self-contained in the quote). After finished reading go through the highlights, and ask yourself the question if it is worth spending say 15-30 min in total to learn the highlight. If it is, then make an Anki flashcard for it. Repeat.

Now, of course everybody is different, and no one solution is universal. For some reason, however, I haven't seen this exact methodology anywhere else before. The internet is rife with positive sentiments towards the "second brain" kind of reading/notetaking, like the book How to take smart notes or the classic How to read a book where the goal with reading (especially non-fiction!) is to really make sure that you understand it by creating summaries, summaries which then are broken into more atomic notes, which are then connected to a larger network of similar notes¹. While this undoubtedly works for some people, I just find that personally it is way too much work to be worth it unless I wanted to be a non-fiction writer. In just the same way taking no notes or highlights and just hoping that some things stick doesn't seem like a satisfactory solution. What both lack, however, is something that I think can be summed in the lack of thought given to the purpose, why do you want to remember something? If the goal is to write a non-fiction book then I think a second-brain á la Zettelkasten is probably the best idea. But if you're like me and want to remember things so that you can bring them up in conversations, or have them pop up in your head while you're writing other things, then that becomes way to time-consuming to attempt. So, the way I bring the two together is to incorporate some kind of repeating learning technique which simulates that purpose, simulates having the question/context in which I want to use it (e.g. "Anecdote about fish in cuisine in Ancient Rome") and its answer (e.g. "They raised fishes in artificial pools, which was really expensive, even 'splitting mountains for the benefit of his fish'").

The actual creation of good flashcards is therefore the (well okay the second) most important part of the reading process if the goal is understanding, which to my surprise is way more difficult than what I thought. Creating bad flashcards is really easy, just copy a quote as the answer and make the question something akin to "What is that quote with how soft Juliet's face is?", but that makes for some terrible flashcards. There are some great tips here going into more detail, but I've pretty much boiled it down to three steps which works for me:

1. Understand the answer first: this is without a doubt the most important step, and it is tempting to say that "Oh, but I'll just create a flashcard and learn it that way." That doesn't work in my experience, not at all. Just learn it first.
2. Contextualize the cards: as previously noted this is, at least for me, a really important step. Why do you want to learn that particular thing? Try to figure that out, and emulate that in the question.
3. Keep them simple: self-explanatory.