Reading, here is not a general reference to the act of learning, just talking about the act of reading, and only talking about non-fiction literature. It should have been more than twenty years since I started reading, but there are still many problems with the technique and effectiveness of reading. Every time I finish reading a book, I seem to have never read it. I just flipped through a reading record I wrote last year, but I can't remember a single thing from the book.
How to read is the most talked about in Chinese and English classes. But what we face are texts and articles, and almost every one of them emphasizes careful and slow reading. But reading is often a "three-minute enthusiasm" thing. After a week, it is difficult to pick up the book again. Classic literary works, except for novels, are quite dry. I remember reading "How Steel is Made" twice with patience, and since then, Paul Kacha has become a frequent visitor in my compositions; those big classics of world literature are not even dared to be opened, let alone bought. Let me ask, how many unopened classic masterpieces are there on everyone's bookshelf?
After reading Yang Zhiping's book "Smart Reader" and participating in the reading camp, I discovered many problems that existed in my previous reading.
First of all, before reading, there is the selection of books. I have paid attention to the quality of books, but the criteria for selection are debatable. For example, I used to look for bestsellers or books that are currently popular or books that are at the top of various rankings. It's not that these books are not good, but there is too much commercialism mixed in, and the true value of the books is not the focus anymore. Looking back at the books I have read in the past, I can't say that they are all of low value, but the proportion is not low either. Yang Zhiping mentioned in the book the criteria for selecting books in a minimal book list: books by the greatest contemporary wise men in the field, books that systematically summarize the field, and books that are the origins of the field. Following this criterion, take a look at the books I have read to see how many second-hand information they are.
Furthermore, when the book is in hand, especially a carefully selected "book". I can't help but treat it as a treasure, hoping to read it from beginning to end without missing a single word, so as to live up to the careful selection and the money spent on the book. But as mentioned above, reading relies on this "three-minute enthusiasm", once the enthusiasm is gone, no matter how expensive or delicate the book is, it may be ignored like a concubine banished to the cold palace. I have had books lying beside my pillow for months without being opened, I don't know about others. Yang Zhiping mentioned the method of "sampling reading" in the book "Smart Reader", which really resonated with me. It is a tool specially designed for this situation. Sampling is widely used in statistics. Reading a few chapters from a book can give you a glimpse of the whole. Pick up a book, take a look at the table of contents and preface, and start reading the parts that interest you; or simply sample the book by dividing it into sections and read the corresponding chapters. There is no need to make reading too solemn, nor worry about missing the key points. Just like I'm sprinkling water everywhere in this article, the moisture in the book should also be squeezed out. When reading and becoming interested, or when encountering something you don't understand, go back and read the preceding chapters. The efficiency of reading will naturally be different. And if you can't continue reading from beginning to end, it is most likely that you will miss the content that is truly valuable to you.
After that, finding the story synopsis and arguments in the book is naturally a long-standing focus of everyone's reading training. I won't talk much about it.
Finally, let's talk about the way of taking reading notes. Card notes - this is a note-taking method used by many writers and scholars, such as Nabokov, Luhmann, Lu Xun, Qian Zhongshu, etc. The first time I learned about this note-taking method was from the book "The Card Note Writing Method", which recorded Luhmann - a contemporary important German sociologist, using card notes to complete his doctoral degree and obtain a teaching position in one year, and published 58 books and hundreds of papers in his lifetime. At that time, I thought it was a revolution in "content productivity". I also wanted to learn and use it. Card notes made me start to enjoy writing. As someone who graduated from a science and engineering background, Chinese has always been a nightmare for me, and I never thought that I would have to write articles after graduating from elementary school. But card notes changed my perception. Cards greatly reduce the psychological burden of output, and writing can be so "casual". Yang Zhiping divides cards into nine types in the book, which are easier to apply and organize in the process of reading compared to the flash note, literature note, and permanent note in "The Card Note Writing Method". Card notes are truly a revolution in "content productivity" for me. The number of words has never been so simple, haha.
Looking back, I haven't spent much time in libraries and bookstores. Why did I suddenly start to like reading? Is it for show? Not necessarily. Faced with the difficulties of life and work, no one can show the way. I can only silently search for answers in books. The wheel of history rolls on, as if history repeats itself. Everything that happens today has naturally been encountered by those who came before. When I am confused, books are the best consolation.
I highly recommend Yang Zhiping's book "Smart Reader", not an advertisement, not an advertisement, not an advertisement.