On Reading

Part I · Chapter 1

Well informed or well read?

Part I · Chapter 2

One life, many lenses

Read one biography of Napoleon and you have an opinion. Read four and you begin to understand him. Each is true in part; reading them together is how you form a judgment of your own instead of borrowing someone else's.

Part I · Chapter 3

Reading and ignorance

The more well-read you are, the more you understand how little you actually know, and how little you will be able to know in the course of a life.Reading and ignorance

The limits of what we know are only visible from inside a well-stocked mind. Reading does not cure ignorance; it maps it.

Part I · Chapter 4

Reading and personal growth

Five reasons to read

Life experience

Books let you live an enormous variety of lives without leaving home.

Self-evaluation

Every book is a kind of simulator: what would I have done in that situation?

Heroes

Books let you think deeply about the people you admire, and why.

Communication

Reading well is the foundation of writing and speaking well.

Leadership

Leaders who read borrow the experience of everyone who led before them.

Part I · Chapter 5

Great commanders were great readers

The habit runs through the history of command. These are leaders who read widely, often in the middle of war.

• 
  Napoleon

  Had read more than most adults by the age of nine, and carried a travelling library with him on campaign.

• 
  Douglas MacArthur

  Read voraciously from childhood and built a library of some five thousand books.

• 
  Chester Nimitz

  Kept reading even through the Pacific war, often rising at three in the morning to read for two hours before the day's work.

• 
  Jim Mattis

  Argues in Call Sign Chaos that the basic nature of man has not changed in recorded history, so the past is the best teacher a leader has.

Part I · Chapter 6

What reading gives you

What a reading life gives back, as listed in the talk.

• Personal growth and reflection
• Knowledge, imagination and creativity
• Leadership
• Self-evaluation
• Judgment and conviction
• A richer intellect
• Stress relief
• Vocabulary
• Better conversation and connection
• A sharper mind with age

Part II · Chapter 7

Why does one read?

Knowing why you are reading tells you how to read, and how fast.

Entertainment

Reading for pleasure and escape: the novel, the thriller, the story well told.

Information

Reading to know what is happening: news, reports, briefs. Fast, and best done in the small gaps of the day.

Understanding

Reading to grasp ideas you did not hold before. The author knows more than you do, and reading closes that gap. It is learning from an absent teacher.

Writing

Reading in order to write, speak or teach: the most demanding purpose, because you must master the material well enough to pass it on.

Learning from an absent teacher

Part II · Chapter 8

What should you read? Your reading bouquet

Read across kinds of books, not only within one. A daily basket keeps something ready for every kind of moment.

Part II · Chapter 9

The four levels of reading

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”Francis Bacon

Each level includes the ones before it. Match the level to the book and to your purpose. The method draws on Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren's How to Read a Book.

Part II · Chapter 10

Active reading: four questions

Active reading is the reader's obligation, from inspectional reading upwards. Ask four questions of every serious book; the last matters most.

1. What is the book about as a whole? Find the leading theme.
2. What is being said in detail, and how? Identify the main ideas and arguments.
3. Is the book true, in whole or in part? Make up your own mind.
4. What of it? Where are you at the end of it? What has changed in your thinking?

Part II · Chapter 11

Reading speed

“Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.”Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren

Focusing and regression

When attention drifts, the eye slips back over lines already read. A pointer or a finger keeps it moving forward.

Speed and the type of reading

Inspectional reading is quick because you read less of the book, not just faster. Analytical reading takes the time it takes.

Comprehension and retention

No speed-reading course improves understanding. The aim is to read at different speeds and to know when each is right.

In short

• There is no recommended or ideal reading speed. Different kinds of reading need different speeds.
• Concentration and speed go together. When attention drifts, the eye slips back over lines already read; a pointer or a finger helps avoid this regression.
• Comprehension and retention matter more than pace. Nurture concentration, comprehension and speed together.

Part II · Chapter 12

Extrinsic tools

Do everything you can with the book itself before reaching outside it. Then these help, used sparingly.

Experience

What you already know and have lived through.

Other books

Read alongside, before or after the book in hand.

Commentaries and abstracts

Useful after your own reading, risky before it.

A dictionary

For the words that carry the argument.

Web research

For facts, context and the author's other work.

Part II · Chapter 13

Disagreeing with a book, and difficult books

There is no book so good that no fault can be found with it. First be able to say “I understand”; then you have earned the right to agree, disagree or suspend judgment.

Part III · Chapter 14

Owning a book

Buying a book is not owning it. Owning a book is the start of the journey of reading it: marking it, arguing with it, keeping what matters.

Underlining

Mark the major points and the forceful statements.

Vertical lines in the margin

Flag a passage too long to underline.

A star or mark in the margin

Use sparingly, for the ten or twenty most important passages in the book.

Numbers in the margin

Track a sequence of points in an argument as it develops.

Writing in the margins and on the end pages

Record your questions, answers and your own outline of the book.

Your own small book of books

A notebook of the books you have read, with the ideas worth keeping from each.

Part III · Chapter 15

Making it stick

Notes, reviews, extracts and discussion are what make reading stick.

Three kinds of notes

Methods

Linear notes

The familiar method: headings and points written in order as you read. Simple, quick and easy to review.

Mind maps

The central theme in the middle of the page, with ideas branching out from it. Good for seeing how a book's arguments connect.

The Cornell method

Divide the page into a wide column for notes, a narrow column for cues and questions, and a strip at the bottom for a short summary in your own words.

Index cards and placeholders

One idea or quotation per card, or flags and sticky notes in the book itself. Cards can be shuffled, sorted and reused across books and projects.

Reviews

Writing a review is the most complete note of all. It forces you to state the argument, judge it and say what it means.

Part III · Chapter 16

Choosing books and making lists

All books are not equal, and they are not to be read equally, so the first skill is choosing well. For lists to start from, see the Recommendations.

Part III · Chapter 17

Books, devices and access

Part III · Chapter 18

There is always time

1. Time is the ultimate wealth. As Morgan Housel argues in The Psychology of Money, control over your own time is the real measure of wealth. Reading is one of the best uses of it.
2. A day has only 24 hours. A typical day has 16 to 17 waking hours. Take out work and you are left with about six. That is why time for reading has to be managed, not hoped for.
3. All days will never be equal. Work, family and personal growth compete for the same hours. Some days will give you two hours to read, others ten minutes. Both count.
4. Time comes in slots and windows. A slot is a sliver: ten minutes in a queue, a commute, a wait. A window is a longer stretch you can protect. Learn to see both.
5. Time can be found, and it can be created. Finding time means using the gaps that already exist. Creating time means deciding that reading matters more than something else, and giving it that place.
6. Small slots add up. Three ten-minute slots a day add up to roughly 52,000 words a week. That is a 200-page book.
7. Keep a daily reading basket. Hold something for every kind of slot: a news aggregator for information in the gaps, a book for understanding in the windows, and professional reading at least every few days.
8. Make reading for understanding an event. Serious books need concentration and the right surroundings. Give them a special place and a special time.
9. Always have something to read. Carry a book or a device. You may have the time and still not read because nothing is to hand.
10. Watch the screens. TV, the internet and the phone: how much is too much? It is your time, so value it. The perils of digital distraction are known to all.
11. If you have lost the habit, set small goals. Set daily goals by pages or minutes, and track your reading with a reading log.

Part III · Chapter 19

TV, mobile and internet: how much is too much?

“Books are not read by the majority because they read the Internet, which is like junk food for the mind.”Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Part III · Chapter 20

Nurture your reading, and make it personal

Part III · Chapter 21

Libraries, your own library, goals and logs

A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage. Own one.From the talk

Reading goals and logs

If you have lost the habit, set small goals, by pages or by minutes, and keep a reading log. It shows you what you read, and what you keep avoiding. See the Bookshelf for a log kept since 2019.

Part IV · Chapter 22

The talk in brief

The talk is a journey in three stages that ends in a habit for life. Each part in a few lines; follow a heading to read it in full.

Reading is not a hobby to fit in when there is time. It is a way of life: chosen, nurtured and kept up, one book at a time.From the talk

Part IV · Chapter 23

Reading in the age of AI

In an age of information overload, why read whole books when answers are readily available?

AI

can help you answer questions.

Books

can help you understand questions.

Judgment

helps you decide which questions matter.

Ask AI for the causes of the First World War and you will get an excellent answer in seconds. Read Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers, Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and A. J. P. Taylor, and you begin to understand how complex the question is. But faced with a real decision, with uncertainty, incomplete information and human consequences, neither AI nor books can decide for you. Judgment remains irreducibly human.

Read the full essay: Why Read When the Machine Can Answer? →

Part IV · Chapter 24

What does well-read mean?

Not how many books, but what they leave behind.

• The dictionaries define well-read as having read widely and acquired a great deal of knowledge from books. The emphasis belongs on the second half.
• Quality matters more than quantity. Most books deserve only an inspectional reading; a few deserve an analytical one; syntopical reading is for the very few.
• Reading is like cycling: the sum of many small skills. Master the parts and the whole looks after itself.

Part IV · Chapter 25

Getting children to read

Seven habits that help a young reader.

1. Create a reading-friendly environment Books within reach, a comfortable corner, and screens out of the way.
2. Make reading a routine A fixed time each day, such as before bed, turns reading into a habit.
3. Choose the right books Let children follow their own interests, at a level that stretches without discouraging.
4. Make reading fun Read aloud, act out stories, visit libraries and bookshops together.
5. Talk about books Ask what they liked, what surprised them, what they would have done.
6. Celebrate milestones A first chapter book, a tenth book finished, a reading log filled in.
7. Be patient Every child comes to reading in their own time.

Part IV · Chapter 26

Words worth keeping

Lines on reading from the talk, by writers, soldiers and thinkers.

“Who is everywhere is nowhere.”

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

“The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them.”

“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”

“I cannot live without books.”

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”

“I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.”

“Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.”

“Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

“Have books ‘happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is ‘yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you.”

“Did you know that it’s actually possible for you to say, ‘I don’t know enough about this to have an opinion’?”

“Books are not read by the majority because they read the Internet, which is like junk food for the mind.”

“Reading is an honor and a gift from a warrior or historian who—a decade or a thousand decades ago—set aside time to write.”

“Books are of the people, by the people, for the people. Literature is the immortal part of history.”

Portraits via Wikimedia Commons: Seneca, photo by Calidius (CC BY-SA 3.0); Cicero, photo by José Luiz (CC BY-SA 4.0); Francis Bacon by Paul van Somer; René Descartes after Frans Hals; Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds; Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale; Henry David Thoreau by Benjamin D. Maxham; Jorge Luis Borges by Grete Stern; Carl Sagan, NASA/JPL; Richard Feynman, Nobel Foundation; Haruki Murakami, Ministerio de Cultura y Patrimonio del Ecuador (all public domain); Nassim Nicholas Taleb, photo by Sarah Josephine Taleb. Portraits are cropped and toned.