Using Reading as a Method

March 18, 2023 · 2908 words · 14 min

When I first started college, I disliked discussing reading as a method for research. I believed that reading should be purely for pleasure, only caring about resonance and enjoyment. At that time, I pursued a superficial understanding of books and looked down on the research-like reading methods, scoffing at the meticulous and detailed reading approach.

As time passed and I encountered more complex subjects and obscure knowledge, I developed a greater respect for knowledge. I slowly realized that my reading methods and attitudes couldn’t keep up with the demands of the knowledge I was trying to acquire. This led me to explore reading methodologies, which is the basis for this article.

The Flaws of Casual Reading

In life, feelings, and thoughts, I record some things I become aware of. Many things remain unnoticed, existing in a state of sleep and chaos. When reading, because of resonance, struggle, or even distraction, the sleeping is awakened, and the chaotic becomes clear. For me, one of the greatest joys of reading is self-discovery, realizing that I have such good things within me.

Initially, there wasn’t much information on the internet, and all my reading activities were based on the university library’s collection. Most of the time, I read novels by authors like Wang Xiaobo, Yu Hua, Camus, and Hemingway. At that time, I believed that casual and random reading was a lifestyle; you didn’t need to remember what you read, just like you didn’t need to remember what you ate on a particular day. These things had already become part of your body and spirit. This change was nourishing and growth-oriented, so there was no need to force it.

I still believe this theory has its merits, but as I grew older and encountered more disciplines and theories, this casual reading habit revealed its flaws. The first time I felt the strain was during my sophomore year when I encountered economics. Out of interest, I borrowed Mankiw’s [Principles of Economics] and read both volumes in one go. Although I felt my worldview was reshaped during the reading process, and I experienced the joy of having a method to deconstruct the world for the first time, I felt empty after finishing the book. It felt like the knowledge was floating away like clouds. This was completely different from the mindset after finishing literature or novels.

It wasn’t until I read [How to Read a Book] that I realized different types of books require different reading methods. For example, not seeking a deep understanding when reading novels and literature might be beneficial, but when reading professional books, if you don’t outline and conduct thematic reading, you can’t say you’ve read the book well.

Thematic reading, also known as comparative reading, is the most demanding and challenging type of reading. Thematic reading involves reading multiple materials around a specific theme and comparing and analyzing them. The goal of thematic reading is not to fully understand any particular text but to deepen the understanding of a specific theme.

After this realization, I consciously began to explore reading methods, reducing unnecessary burdens outside of reading. After a long period of adjustment and modification, I have developed a workflow that, although it may need future tweaks, has stood the test of time.

My reading workflow consists of discovery, collection, planning, reading, and output:

  1. Discovery: Finding interesting and valuable books.
  2. Collection: Using tools to collect books.
  3. Planning: Creating specific themed book lists and reading plans based on OKRs or personal interests.
  4. Reading: Using different reading methods for different types of books.
  5. Output: Deepening knowledge understanding through knowledge output.

The Journey of Discovery

Although there are many media to obtain information in the internet age, such as blogs, websites, long and short videos, online communication, etc., I still believe that books are the best practice for acquiring systematic knowledge. But this has a premise: the reading material must be of high quality. Reading inferior content can lead to more bias and narrow-mindedness than other media.

So the first step in the reading process is to find excellent books. If I had to add a qualifier, it would be to find excellent books that interest you.

Finding Interests

Instead of starting with a vast sea of classic books, starting from your interests might be a better choice. Rather than forcing yourself to finish certain classic books, follow your inner preferences and start your reading journey from curiosity and the desire to read.

If you don’t have a specific book in mind and are unsure about your interests, try visiting a bookstore. Compared to online recommendations and e-books, physical books provide more direct feedback. Flipping through the table of contents and general content can quickly tell you if you’re interested in that type of book.

Due to pressure and competition, existing independent bookstores have unique considerations for book display and arrangement. Regularly checking the popular recommendation sections can quickly help you find newly published good books. Independent bookstores often have strong personalities.

Finding Books

If you’re not interested in visiting bookstores, you can find interesting subjects online through quality book lists, which features many time-tested classic books. If you’re interested in new books, following specific field bloggers might help.

In the early stages of reading, I suggest not worrying too much about whether the book is excellent. If you’re slightly interested, you can use inspectional reading (skimming) to judge whether a book is worth reading. Only by reading can you know if the book interests you and is worth reading. If you’re not interested in the theme, you can always switch to another book.

If you already have an interesting subject or book in mind, you can find more related books through the following methods:

  • What other books has the author written? For example, if you’re interested in [Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind], you’re likely to enjoy Yuval Noah Harari’s trilogy.
  • Which publisher released the book?
  • Many authors include their recommended and reference books in the preface or at the end. Follow these recommendations to find more books.

The Journey of Collection

Book Categorization

After discovering excellent books, ideally, you would read them immediately. However, reality often doesn’t allow this, as various work and chores occupy our time. To prevent forgetting to continue reading later, I often save the books and categorize them for visualization, preparing for future reading plans and thematic reading:

  • On one hand, we can’t always start reading a good book immediately upon discovering it. Especially when conducting thematic reading, we might read multiple similar books at once, so we need to collect and categorize similar books before reading.
  • On the other hand, the number of books collected out of interest might far exceed the number we can plan to read, so we need to plan and select before reading to see if they meet the thematic reading needs and current reading priorities.

The first step is to categorize the books of interest in one place. The tools and processes for this step need to be:

  • Automated: Automatically add book names, authors, ISBNs, covers, etc., and support manual additions.
  • Flexible: Add and delete book fields to better organize and categorize, such as book categories, completion dates, ratings, etc.
  • Visual: Good page support, customizable to display the required fields and images, such as displaying currently reading, want to read, and read pages.
  • Note support: Combine with subsequent output, integrating with notes to reduce management pressure.

Given these requirements, I currently use Notion, whose database functionality covers the last three needs. Combined with its Chrome extension Save to Notion, it perfectly achieves the first automation function. The overall process is simple, highly customizable, and Notion’s minimalist design makes it my favorite solution. Of course, you can choose any tool you like.

The entire saving logic process is as follows:

First, customize a book resource database in Notion, setting up related database fields such as book name, author, reading status, cover image, category, etc.

screenshotr_2023-3-19T16-44-26

Next, organize views through the database, listing currently reading, want to read, read, and planned reading lists at the entrance. This creates a basic library system. If you want a similar setup, you can click Guangzheng Book Template to copy the template and create your database and book management system.

screenshotr_2023-3-19T16-57-50

Planning Reading

From the previous text, you can see that I used to be a fan of random reading. The main factor that led me to planned reading was the need for thematic reading. When you need to view a theory or phenomenon dialectically, relying on one author’s perspective often leads to bias. One book often can’t provide a complete view of knowledge.

Therefore, we need to obtain different authors’ and perspectives on the same issue. For example, in economics, Keynes and Hayek, two contemporaneous economists, can have completely opposite views on state interventionism and economic liberalism. Such examples are numerous in books and life. We need to maintain a calm and humble attitude towards thematic reading to gain insights.

In the past, I easily idolized a book or author while reading, but after a few years, rereading the book often led to disappointment, and I couldn’t understand why I was so passionate about it. Later, no matter how reasonable or excellent a book was, I kept a certain distance.

Additionally, some knowledge has high thresholds. If you don’t read in order, it can lead to ineffective reading and loss of interest. Many philosophical theories build on or critique predecessors, so skipping earlier theories can lead to confusion.

Therefore, making a reading plan helps build a personal knowledge system. Planning reading doesn’t mean planning how many books to read in a year or month but clarifying the areas of interest, listing themed book lists, and setting a reading order.

Once the plan is made, the number of books in the planned list is often more than what can be read. At this point, you can continue to trim the list to ensure the quality of the reading content.

Reading

When the plan is made and reading begins, I suggest giving up on everything else besides reading itself. I’ve seen many discussions and arguments about reading, such as choosing reading devices, paper or electronic, and selecting e-book reading software. I believe these comparisons and choices are meaningless. No device can replace your thinking, and no tool can replace your dialogue with the author.

In my childhood, I rented books from bookstores, borrowed books from the library in college, and chose electronic reading after renting a house for work. These different reading methods made no difference to my reading itself; it was still a dialogue with the author’s soul. Using paper books or expensive electronic devices didn’t make the process smoother.

However, in terms of reading efficiency, I must admit that buying books is not as good as borrowing them! Borrowing books is not as good as renting them! Rented books are often more enjoyable than bought ones! Human laziness and flaws are fully reflected in me at this moment! So if you have the conditions to borrow books, give it a try.

In summary, I don’t recommend any devices or tools to assist reading in this section and suggest readers give up on investing time in reading tools and focus on reading itself! Reading one more book’s content is more valuable than spending time on reading tools, methods, and processes. I hope we can all encourage each other!

Of course, reading methods are not limited to tools; some cognitive aspects require methodological thinking. For example, how should different types of books be read? How should books of varying difficulty be chosen?

Categorized Reading

Before reading, we often need to understand a book’s category, which helps us view issues and knowledge dialectically.

For example, when reading professional books like economics and political science, we might need to ask many questions to aid reading, such as:

  • What is this book about?
  • What is the significance and content of this book?
  • What is the author’s purpose?
  • Is the content of this book true?
  • Did your views on the book change significantly before and after reading? Will you adjust your views?
  • What do you think is right or flawed in the book?

This is because some professional books require us to summarize and analyze their themes and compare them later.

But if you’re reading imaginative literature or storybooks, the above focus points are meaningless. In imaginative literature, you might need to pay attention to not resisting the story’s imagination and influence, and you don’t need to find consensus, themes, or arguments. If you use standards suitable for conveying knowledge and aligning with truth to view novels, you won’t gain any resonance the author wants to bring you.

Layered Reading

Besides focusing on categorized reading methods, some books and materials require layered reading, choosing the appropriate difficulty based on your level, such as:

  • Introductory: Stimulate personal interest and understand the general scope and concepts of a field. Help you decide if you’re interested in the theme and want to continue researching.
  • Proficient: Basic textbooks and general knowledge books in a field, requiring a complete system structure.
  • Professional: Having a considerable understanding of the entire field, conducting targeted and extended reading on a specific direction or school of thought.
  • Pioneer: No need for much explanation, far beyond my capabilities. The book’s effectiveness likely no longer satisfies you; go study papers.

Most professional books require layered reading. The only reminder I have is that for levels above introductory, such as building a complete field knowledge system, try to choose foreign textbooks. See which textbooks are used by the best schools in this field. You can search for commonly used textbooks at top universities through the Open Syllabus Project to avoid having your interest ruined by unqualified textbooks.

Trust me, if you can’t get through introductory and proficient-level books in a field, it’s not your problem; it’s the author’s problem.

Unity of Knowledge and Action

Hiding what you’ve learned in your heart is not only shameful but also harmful. Whatever we don’t strive to share will inevitably be lost from us.

Whenever I finish a book, I initially feel proud, thinking I’ve mastered a lot of knowledge. But as time passes and memories fade, I have to pessimistically admit that knowledge won’t always belong to me. So I explore ways to retain knowledge longer, including but not limited to these methods:

  • Active reading: Asking questions to the book and author.
    • What is this book about? How does it develop its theme step by step, breaking down key issues from the core theme?
    • What does the author want to express? Identify the main ideas, statements, and arguments, and combine them into the author’s special message.
    • Is the book reasonable? Is it entirely reasonable or only partially?
  • Taking notes:
    • List outlines and key points.
    • Answer the active reading questions above.
    • Connections between books on the same theme, different authors’ views on the same issue.
    • The author’s and your views.

After these efforts, does the knowledge belong to you? I have to despairingly admit that the loss of knowledge may slow down but still continues irreversibly.

Moreover, writing full notes can make me deny my ignorance and shallowness, thinking that the notes I wrote are the knowledge I’ve gained. The sense of superiority from notes leads me to self-deception and vanity.

Over time, I found that sharing knowledge and teaching others might be the only way to address this issue to some extent.

Only when I struggle to find words while sharing do I face my ignorance. Only when I can’t explain myself while sharing knowledge do I recognize my biases. This embarrassment helps me escape ignorance and bias, learning knowledge with a humble attitude.

So perhaps only through sharing and teaching can we face ignorance and shallowness. Even through practical action and unity of knowledge and action can we fully grasp knowledge.

So how do we share? It is definitely a great joy in life to have friends around us to share, discuss and debate. If not, it doesn’t matter. In the era of the Internet, we can publish articles, such as on our own blogs or online platforms. We can also expand by making videos or holding sessions to find more like-minded friends.

Summary

Looking back at all the content above, we have derived some processes to assist reading from the need for theme reading. However, all tools and processes can only serve as auxiliary means. Remember not to lose sight of the big picture and get caught up in the vortex of tools.

The only valuable thing about reading methodology is reading itself. Reading one book’s content multiple times is more valuable than spending time on reading tools, methods and processes.

There is no universal method of reading for everyone in the world. The method itself represents strong personality traits and preaching. If you have better or more suitable methods, you can discuss them with each other in comments.

This article was written on the eve of a disruptive productivity revolution when OpenAI just released its GPT-4 model. Throughout modern history since industrial revolution, we may be on the eve of steam engine or information technology revolution; with changes in productivity comes increased social unrest - inflation, unemployment and war are products at this bottom point of Kondratiev cycle (economic wave). The harder times are,the more precious thinking becomes especially because AI cannot replace thinking itself

Reference

  1. https://sspai.com/post/78133
  2. https://book.douban.com/top250
  3. https://galaxy.opensyllabus.org/
  4. How to Read a Book"