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Comment by jonnybgood | Hacker News Reader

The game changer for me was actually learning how to read a book. I no longer approach books the same way after having read How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler [1]. Once you have a method down, you can go through books rather quickly and retain knowledge. My biggest epiphany is that you don't need to read a book in its entirety to know all that it has to say.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Intelligent-Touchstone/...

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Yes! How to Read a Book is amazing. We spend so much of our lives reading, yet very rarely view it as a skill which we can develop, nor do we have goals for our reading other than to absorb as much information as possible.

One of my favorite ideas from the book is the idea of reading for "enlightenment":

"It is true, of course, that you should be able to remember what the author said as well as know what he meant. Being informed is prerequisite to being enlightened. The point, however, is not to stop at being informed."

You don't just want to memorize what an author said, you want to elevate your level of "understanding" to a point where you understand the topic nearly as well as the author does! With that as a goal, your focus quickly shifts from reading 100 books in a year to properly educating yourself.

Could you give a summary of what you learnt from it?

There is a good summary on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book.

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