Non-fiction books as such are not the greatest tool for learning. Their purpose is to help us deepen our understanding of a certain topic but they often do not achieve this objective very well. The knowledge books contain briefly passes our brain when reading but we eventually end up forgetting the most of it. I picked up this idea in this essay.
This brings up the question: How to make reading a book more useful.
Here are some initial toughts:
- Reading alone is not enough. Highlighting is neither. There has to be some form of further interaction with the content of a book, i.e. its ideas, concepts, and arguments.
- Reading the whole book might not be necessary.
- The combination of reading and writing about it might be powerful.
Disclaimer: Not everything has to be optimised for its usefulness. It is also totally okay to read books and forget about them again.