On Reading Books To Gain Knowledge

Introduction

To realize The Pakistan Dream you need to gain a lot of knowledge and develop many new skills. To do that effectively you would need to read many books. Some books might be assigned to you as part of a college/university course while you might choose others to develop your understanding in a particular area. For you to read, understand, and remember hundreds of books that you will read throughout your life, you would need to develop your reading skills. In this blog, I will be sharing some tips on how you can do that.

How to classify the books you want to read?

While you might not have much say about books that are assigned to you as compulsory reading, there should be a method to select the books that you choose to read. Irrespective of the classification of books in libraries and bookstores, it will be better to categorize your reading list into categories that are meant to answer the basic question of ‘Why you want to read a particular book’. ‘Adler Mortimer’ in ‘How to Read a Book’ categorizes them into

Books meant to entertain you. These would be fiction novels of various genres like fantasy, drama, mystery, poetry, etc. They are meant to be read to enhance your imagination and emotions. I also include non-fiction books on history, politics, biographies, etc. in this category, since I read them for entertainment.

Books that are meant to provide information. These are the books, magazines, or newspaper articles that provide the latest information and updates about topics that you already understand and have some level of expertise. In my case, articles and books on Information Technology, Leadership and Management, etc. are the ones which I read to update myself as I already have considerable understanding about these subjects.

Books that are meant to enhance knowledge. These are books on topics that you do not understand e.g. for me, these would be books on financial investments as I am interested in increasing my understanding of the subject but currently know way too less about it.

About the books read to enhance your knowledge

For the books that you read to enhance your knowledge, it is important to remember the quote of Francis Bacon in his essay ‘Of Studies’ where he mentions that some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

It will be good to understand what is meant by taste, swallowing, and digesting a book.

Tasting a book means a superficial reading of the book. You skim through the book rapidly picking up the main ideas or some practical tips. You can highlight the important parts. Nowadays with the introduction of ChatGPT, I just ask the AI engine to summarize the book and highlight the important parts.

Swallowing a book would mean more intense reading to try and grasp the ideas and arguments presented in the book.

Digesting a book would mean not only reading the book but also contemplating it. Such books present ideas that are new to you possessing the ability to evolve and upgrade your thinking. Generally, such books would give you a new way of thinking or even motivate you to alter your lifestyle.

Increasing your net worth

Your knowledge will increase when you read books on areas that you know nothing or little about. The more varied areas you gain understanding and knowledge about, the more connections you would be able to form in your brain and come up with better solutions to problems that you or society faces. Reading such books would be the difference between you and your peers who prefer to read only novels, newspapers, or worse – social media feeds. Let me give you a simple example.

Suppose you are a fresh graduate of computer sciences with a major in software development. Besides your knowledge of software development and deployment, if you can invest time to read a book and learn about the basics of accounting and finance, your net worth will increase immediately. As it makes you capable of either making a new or understanding existing software on finance and investments, much more easily than your peers who only know software development. Software such as SAP or Oracle Financials are critical for the operations of major corporations worldwide and thus would open a lot more options for you in the market than your peers, hence increasing your net worth. All of this is because you chose to spend a few weeks enhancing your knowledge about accounting and finance by reading, understanding, and remembering a few books on the topic.

The difficulty in reading books to enhance knowledge

Reading such books, though, would pose the highest level of challenge. They would require more time and effort to read, understand, and remember. A reading session of such books should leave you more tired than reading sessions of books that you read for amusement or information.

The cumbersome process of reading, understanding, and remembering such books would mean two things (a) you would have to select the right books (b) your reading process must be different than the reading process of novels and newspapers.

The whole process of reading, understanding, and remembering books might take you anywhere from a week to a month to a year. This is a considerable investment of your time; therefore, you should be careful not to select books that would waste your time and effort.

Similarly, the reading process by which you read books to develop your knowledge must be different from the books you are reading just for pleasure. The process of reading books to enhance your knowledge would require you to take notes, re-read passages multiple times, and read supporting literature. Something which you would never do when you read a novel or a newspaper. That is why ‘Adler Mortimer’ mentions in ‘How to Read a Book’ that these would be the books that would leave you the most fatigued.

In the subsequent sections, I will be giving some tips on selecting books and the reading process.

How can you select books?

Books can be recommended to you, enforced on you (as part of a curriculum or course) or you might develop a curiosity to read a book. You might also want to read books to develop an understanding of a specific area. Unless the book is part of compulsory reading you have a choice whether to read the book or not.

As mentioned in the last section; reading, understanding, and remembering, or in other words digesting books require a significant investment of your time, therefore it would be better if you ask a few questions before you start reading a book.

Find out what is the Book About

When you go to a bookstore or a library, you see many books. Some with shiny front covers and/or titles that are designed to attract you. Before you give in to their charms, it will be good to check what the book is about. You can find that out by

Read the Book Title, Subtitle, and Table of contents. Skim through the Introduction/Preface of the book. After doing that ask the question, are you still interested?
If you do not have a specific book in mind but rather want to increase your knowledge in a particular area, find the best books in that area and read their reviews. Give weightage to reviews by specialists in that area. Are they recommending some other books? You can also consult specialists of the field that you know on the books that they recommend.

Find out about the Author.

Who wrote the book?
What is his worldview?
What is his expertise on the topic?

Why Would You Want to Read The Book

Finally, ask these questions to understand why you want to read the book.

Why do you want to read the book? For Amusement, Information, or Understanding?
Which existing or future role would the book help you in? Are you about to move from a technical to a managerial role? Are you about to get married or have a child?
Do you want to extract practical tips from it or do you want to enhance your understanding and increase your net worth?
Are you interested in critiquing the book and challenging the author and his assumptions?

Asking these questions would help you decide not only whether you want to read the book or not, but also how fast you want to read it and what your reading process is going to be. This would lay the groundwork for the next section on ‘How to Read’ this particular book.

How to read a book to understand and gain knowledge

As explained above, for the books you are reading to enhance your knowledge and understanding you need a method to read such books so that you can maximize the knowledge that you extract out of the book. Below are some guidelines that might help you out in reading, understanding, and remembering what you read in these books.

Understand the structure

Start by reading the title, subtitle, table of contents, and preface of the book. Make sure that you understand how the book is arranged and the various topics and sub-topics it attempts to cover. This would make a mind map or skeleton of the book in your mind. For complicated books, you might want to write the structure/skeleton in a separate notebook and keep on adding to it, as explained later.

Trying to understand the structure may also help you in finding out which portions (if not all) are more relevant to you.

Understanding Important words, terms, and passages

Important Words and Terms. When you come across important words or terms, make sure that you understand their meaning and the context in which the writer has used them. Do not proceed before you are sure that you understand them. A word can have multiple meanings. The author might be using the word with a meaning that is different from what you know it to be. The author might be using it as jargon, or he might not agree with the way that the word is generally defined. Good authors explain the meaning of such words and the context in which they have used them. Therefore, it is important to read such words and terms carefully and be sure that you understand how the author wishes to use them.

You can find important words and terms by noticing that.

The author has highlighted such words.
The author is arguing about the general definition of the word.
The author has used the words or terms in the title and the preface.

Important Sentences and Passages. Note the important sentences and paragraphs and ensure that you understand them before you proceed. Important sentences or passages might be the ones where the author is

Providing a solution or some practical step(s) to overcome problems.
Have mentioned something that is most relevant to you.
Trying to form an argument and providing his understanding of it.
Giving evidence to prove his argument.

You can judge if you have understood these important passages if,

You can summarize them in your own words.
You can explain the author’s arguments to another person? Imagine yourself in front of a class and explaining the topic.

If you cannot then it means that you might not have understood this important passage and should be re-reading the passage as many times as it is necessary.

Note Taking – Maintain the structure.

Note-taking will be the most important step if you want to remember what you have read and understood in a book. Therefore, it is important to start by creating a mind map of the structure of the book in a separate notebook or blank paper. You might want to create some additional maps as well e.g. when I read books on history, I tend to make different kinds of notes e.g. world map of the time, a family tree telling me, who is related to who, and an important dates e.g. date of the war, date of a birth or a death, etc.

Once a structure or a mind map is created, you need to keep it updated as you read the book. You can update it by adding (a) subheadings (b) arguments/propositions (c) important paragraphs

This structure or mind map will serve as your index and might look different from the index or table contents provided by the author. Make sure that what you add to the mind map are just single words or terms or very short sentences. The real meaning is to be understood and not be written in the mind map.

While reading you might get a lot of thoughts or arguments for/against the passages you are reading. You can capture your thoughts in a separate notebook, but always, focus more on understanding the author’s POV. Make sure that your notes are written separately in your notebook as at this point you do not want to mix your inputs with what the author is trying to tell you.

Okay to Skim through some parts

Some passages in the book might not be relevant to you or your understanding. It is okay to skip them to save time and effort. But it is a good idea to add the passage/heading/chapter that you are skipping in the mind map or the structure of the book that you are maintaining in a separate notebook. I generally tend to avoid but if you want you can mention the reason you are skipping the part. I usually use a red pen for such portions and do not usually write the reason, since I would be able to tell by just reading the topic name that I have put.

Completing the Reading

Upon completion of the reading, review the structure or the mind map of the book that you have been updating throughout the reading of the book. Are you able to understand all the parts mentioned in the structure? If not, read those parts again.
If you can understand, try to write a short unity statement. e.g. The book believes xxxx is a problem and provides yyyy, zzzz, aaaa as arguments. Finally, it gives the proposal and solution of pppp and qqqqq to solve those problems.
Writing the unity statement would help you summarize the book into a very short passage of your own words. When you can do that, you have understood the gist of the book. This would help you in (a) Explaining what the book is about when someone asks you about what you have learned from the book, and (b) Making you remember what the book is about so that you may refer to it, anytime you wish to in the future.
Preserve the mind map and the unity statement in your file (online or physical) as a note. Make sure that you read these notes frequently to preserve the message of the book in your memory.

Some additional activities after completing a book

The following are some additional steps that you might consider taking once you have completed the book. These steps would help you in re-enforcing your understanding and help you remember the key areas from the book.

Critique the Book

Review the mind map, unity statement, and other notes that you might have written regarding the book. Ask yourself are all the propositions and arguments presented in the book explained and answered? If some are missing or you do not remember, read the marked passages again, using the structure you have been maintaining.

Find out which arguments the author failed to answer, and which problems were not solved. Or not solved to your satisfaction.

Do you agree with the arguments, proposals/solutions provided in the book? If not, why not? Write it, in your own words.
Make sure to clearly state the argument and the provided evidence. (or opinion)
Provide your counterargument with evidence.

Extract From Your Notes

Extract quotes that you were moved by and write them in your Quotations Notebook. I maintain a separate notebook where I write quotations, lyrics, stanzas, etc. I read passages from my quotation notebook frequently. It is surreal.
Extract practical steps that you feel would be helpful to solve a problem that you are facing. Arrange them into a checklist or a ToDo list.
Extract the list of articles and books that you found in the book that intrigued you and add them in your ‘ToRead’ list.

Write

Write an article/blog/book about the book. You have already written a lot of notes, so would not have to start from zero. In addition, you can mention

What you have learned from the book.
What you have implemented from the book.
What you find missing in the book.
What parts do you disagree with? What is your supporting evidence?

Share your work with people that you know would be able to provide good feedback and engage in discussion.

Conclusion

The steps might seem to be too much work but are necessary if you want to read, understand, and remember the important books that you read to understand. As you practice reading more and more complicated books, these steps will become second nature to you.

However, sometimes you might be tempted to skip all or some of the steps. It is okay if you do that. I do it as well. Sometimes some books are just too attractive to ignore. For such books going through the book selection process seems to be a waste of time. Give into the resistance and dive into such books head-on. If you wish, ignore even the note-taking and mind maps. Just read. If you feel the book is worthy enough you can always read it again to take notes.

I also find it helpful to make checklists of various things that I do repeatedly in my life. Checklists help me optimize the action. It also helps me to delegate the action to someone else by sharing my checklist. Book reading is also an action that we do repeatedly. So why not make a few checklists on ‘How to Select Books’, ‘How to Take Notes’, and ‘How to Read Books’? The good thing about checklists is that they are your processes and do not have to be perfect. You can always add/remove items. e.g. your checklist on ‘How to Select Books’ can start with two steps (1) Pick a Book (2) Read the Book. Later you can add more steps that you find relevant to your reading process.

Finally, I would say that if in a year you can read anywhere from 2 to 12 books to enhance your knowledge and understanding about areas which you knew little or nothing about, just imagine where your overall knowledge and understanding would be. Remember it is not about how many books you read; it is about how many you remember.

Do share your reading experience and tips in the comments section below.

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