Thank you to Alex Chan for allowing me to repost this article which discusses her non-fiction reading method. You can find this article in its original form on the author's website. It was originally posted on November 16, 2020.
How I read non-fiction books
by Alex Chan
I’ve spent a lot of this year reading books. That was the plan, even before the pandemic – I have a large pile of unread books – and then I just got more time to read than I expected.
We all have an idea of what “reading a book” means, but it means different things to different people. Everyone has their own styles and approaches to reading, and there’s no one right way to read a book. I’ve developed a bit of a process around how I read – particularly around non-fiction books – and in this post I’m going to explain that process.
But before we ask how to read a book, we need to ask: why do we read books? There are lots of reasons you might read a book, and they’ll affect what you want to get out of a book, and how to approach it. My process works for me and lets me get what I want out of books – but it may not work for you, if you read for different reasons.
Most of my non-fiction reading is for pleasure. I don’t need to remember everything in detail, and I have no immediate use for the information. But I do want to remember the key ideas, and I want to be able to find a book again later, if there’s an idea I want to revisit.
Image Description: Two stacks of books create a hallway of reading material viewed through a fisheye lens with a bright window at the center.
Credit: Aibek Skakov / Pexels
When I’m reading, I keep a notebook and a pen to hand. At the end of each section or chapter, I scribble a few notes and move on. I’m trying to capture the major ideas, interesting stories, or passages I want to save verbatim.
My initial notes are handwritten because handwriting is flexible – I can write sentences, or fragments, or even sketch tiny diagrams. It’s a minimal interruption from looking at the book. I’ve tried using a variety of digital devices for this step, but they’ve never worked as well.
Every so often, I take my pile of handwritten notes, and I type them into my computer. I turn them into full sentences, add any extra details I thought were worth noting, and generally tidy them up. I’ll even recreate diagrams if I find them useful.
When I type up my notes, I include chapter names, page numbers, and occasionally a passage quoted word-for-word. Combined with full text search, this gives me something to skim to remember “What did I learn from this book?”, and pointers to the parts to re-read if I want to find a specific story or detail.
I never actually write in my books. I understand why people do that, and if I was using a book as a detailed reference, I might try it – but it’s overkill for what I want. I want notes that I can read for basic recall, not a comprehensive list of everything explained in the book. I can skim much faster if all the notes are in one place, not scattered through the book. (I also give away a fair number of books once I finish them, so it’s useful to have the notes separate from the book.)
This process slows me down, but it dramatically improves my retention rate. Since I started doing this, I’ve been much better at remembering the main ideas of the books I’ve read – and notes plus memory are a powerful combination for storing the details. ✨
From Alex Chan
I’m a software developer, writer, and a hand crafter, and I live in the UK. In my day job I build software for digital preservation, and I think a lot about archiving and long-term systems.
This website is where I share stuff I find interesting or fun. That includes notes on technical problems I’ve solved, personal reflections or thoughts, and fun toys that I’ve built.
I’m queer and trans, and my pronouns are “they” or “she”.
I hope you like it!
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