Different Books Need To Be Read Differently - How To Read 101

now as a polymath as a Renaissance person as a person that desire to be more and more well-read expanding your brain with different great masters from the past one if you derive wisdom wanting to derive foresight wanting to derive everything there is to derive from these amazing entities that we call books on your shelves that you wish to read and brag to your friends about there's one specific insight that we really need to get straight this thing site right here would make or break your entire reading journey will make or break your entire reading journey that's how important this insight is and I've alluded to this insight before in the past when we talked about how to read philosophy books properly and why philosophy books are at times are at times pretty confusing how I talked about philosophy books shouldn't be read as drawn or fiction books right so from that point we've already alluded to the fact that different books are meant to be tackled differently and that different books have radically different requirements of the reader to read all these books and they have different demands on the reader and readers need to attack these books from specific angles to really get by what is happening in this books to really get by what they should do to effectively draw out a value in these reads and I've also recently very recently published a video about reading slower and deriving more value out out of the books in which I talked about the silly conception of quantity versus quantities superior to quality quantitate the quantity of books that you read is actually better than the quality being ingestion and you've seen videos on YouTube of you know I've read 40 books for the last port for months I've read a hundred books for the last for the last year and you've seen all these impressive titles that they've read and then you're they're sitting and I'm wondering to yourself I feel like I'm not reading enough I feel like I should be reading more and more and more and more and it is that knee-jerk reaction of wanting to read more and more and more and more that's perhaps driving us away from the very discussion of the ways in which we tackle books there's a term out there call to learn at fool of a person that knows a bunch of ideas but those ideas remain ideas they don't exactly go into the identity of the person they don't exactly transform Norma too personally anyway now literature when read correctly especially some of the classics they are meant for people to gain an insight into themselves into the complex condition of human beings of gaining life experiences that are otherwise inaccessible to them and in scientific treatises if rent correctly should expand your world beyond horizons you could have imagined of giving you thoughts previously not available of giving you conceptions previously not understood and history books they do a job of exposing you to the facts that history is still happening languages they open up entire doors for you to explore different civilizations otherwise never never never occur to you before so the power of books does not lie within quantity of reading the power of books really lies within how these books can actively transform you how these books can actively make a permanent change to your psychology that you can become a radically different person radically or not radically a more mature person in that sense of gaining a life experience is not available to you yet or it would take you otherwise 20 years to get you can get adding in a book you can experienced adding the book through reading fiction you can gain insights from some of the smartest people in the world some of some of the most revered philosophers some of the most accredited academics all these are available in books but you have to learn how to tackle these books correctly to get those insights there's no uniform allottee of approach here it's impossible to read every books that you own with the sort of silly genre fiction mentality if you tackle a philosophical treatise with the same mindset as a genre fiction if you read for example birds from Russells history of Western philosophy you say to yourself I'm gonna read 30 pages tonight just like just like that favorite book of mine just like that favorite fiction book of mine I'm gonna read 30 pages tonight well what you're gonna do is that you're gonna 80% of the important assigns are gonna fly over your head and you only retain about 20% of it and that 20% is kind of a shabi effort so what you what you will begin to realize as I reiterated again different books demand different sets of reading techniques different books demand different sets of parameters for you to read them and there's no uniformity of approach here there's no set formula there's no one reading strategy to improve overall comprehension and overall speed reading isn't is an arduous and an really long and sort of potentially hideous journey at a demands patience demands adaptation to different genres adaptation to different sources of reading and through adopting this mindset of the more books I read the better that's only gonna hurt you in the long run because all the books you've read all the time you've spent on these books if they don't contribute to any anything personally related if they don't exactly transform you in any way then you're just wasting your time so as an introduction today let's talk about I've brought here a stack of books on my left hand side in which I'm gonna bring them out and then give you a concrete example of how these books should be treated differently howdy spokes should exactly be placed in their specific frame specific sub-genre and how they should be tackled holistically so first type of book that we've all read some some form or another if you read it in the library if you read it from a from a Kindle e-reader they are what we call fictional genre or genre fiction anyway CH T's genre fiction books of course they can convey deep moral messages of course they can convey different things for you too for you to treat us foods for thought but the main purpose of these books is to provide an experience for you to for you to actively involve yourself with the characters for you to actively for you to actively dive into the event adventures of the characters of the story for you to contemplate about the losses the the static joys and the different things that are portrayed in these books now this is the most common type of book in my hand I have the secret history which is just one of my favorite books of all time Popeye donut art but these books are meant to be read cover to cover as soon as possible they offer you an experience that can be later that can later be analyzed but mainly you're not trying to really dwell on the words you're not exactly trying to figure stuff out but going with the flows of the characters is the main point of these books going with the flow of the storyline is what these books entail and there's no there's not exactly a specific way that you need to view these books but they're just here for you to temporarily escape from the world that you're in temporarily gain a different experience from another character temporarily gain a new set of life experiences from these books and they can be interesting at times they can be horrifying at times they can be thought-provoking but generally these fiction books are meant to draw you in are meant to keep you turning the pages are meant to provide you with a beautiful of a story so that's the first type of book that we've talked about which is genre story fictions in which these books are designed for you to have a good time generally speaking there are crossovers across all these different genres out there which I'm not exactly gonna dive too deep into this is only an introductory episode so after that genre fiction distinction so genre fiction are meant to be read with the intention of having a good time with the intention of entertaining a thrilling tale the second type of fiction in which I would call literary fiction and hearing my hand I have Marcel Proust in search of lost time volume number one this is um a seven-volume series actually seven parts there are seven parts within the three volumes that I have these books are a whole a whole nother can of worms in which generally speaking there are crossovers between these categories but generally speaking these books they are a there are critically examinations into human conditions there are critical examinations into what it means to be a human being it is no surprise that most of these books are works of realism works of um works that are meant for you to take in the life experiences of the characters the plot point might not be as exhilarating as something like the seeker history the plot points are simply are at times a little confusing a little unparalleled a little a little too bland but the core message of these books always do well on the specific characters and experiences that they create so these books are not exactly designed for you to have a good time in Auto some of these books can certainly give you a wonderful time when you read them and these books should not be read at the same speed as a genre fiction book because they're not designed for you to turn the pages quickly they're not designed for you to read 20 pages a night Marcel Proust there's a really great analogy by another youtuber called better than food book review Marcel Proust Swann's Way is a meal it's analogous to a meal that's meant to be tasted slowly it's it's analogous to a it's analogous to a dish that you don't want to finish too quickly in which these pages are just packed full of descriptions packed with beautiful imagery the poetic sense of the verses and a poetic and the music of the sentences all of these need to be need to be appreciated slowly in which it carries literary merit every sentence counts so these books are meant to be read so much more slowly demand more attention all these flags of collective quotes and analysis and demand more concentration from you to try - for juice for literary fiction so it's very different from something like the secret history so that's another two things you know we need to that we need to make even though this is still work of fiction this is radically different form of fiction than the page-turning genre NOLA fiction and lastly we have the category of nonfiction or the category of what I would call treatises or reading material that convey meaning or a reading material that put you into a state of active thought that give you fonts that you've never had before so right here I have to collect the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and I have Bertrand Russell's history of Western philosophy both of these books I have not finished and there's a good reason for that these books are incredibly packed full of dense information packed full of historical references and packed full of illusions specific to the society to the condition and to the historical period that the author lives in so if you want to make sense of these book if you want to make sense of these works polenin preliminary historical research is required and because these books they convey information because they convey such thought promote Pirozhki material and they put you in such state of different thoughts and they expose you to logically complex arguments they expose you to propositions expose you to claims to different theories different backgrounds these are the type of books that you need to read the slowest absolutely the slowest it's like a text book you couldn't exactly get through five pages five pages of a great text book that quickly in which these books are meant to be read deliberately notes needs to be taken on every other page you need to capture all the thoughts within the books it's really like studying and studying a subject in university that these books need to be treated with the reverence off it's not literary fiction it's not exactly something that you can read on the bus but it's a very specific very deliberate effort to try to learn something about the world that we're talking about here so when you read these types of books you need to slow way down way down way down and demand a thousand percent concentration in deriving the key theories deriving the key arguments and deriving the key propositions from these books and usually these books they're not meant to be read only once but you but generally you would do an overall inspectional reading and then you come back to the book to and read it again and this time you really annotate the out of it you really understand whole implication of these of the entire treatise of the entire philosophical work so those are two brief three categories that I want to talk about and these are not all two categories this is just an introduction to bring you in to bring your awareness in to the fact that hey different boost need to be write differently and this is a crucially important thing that we need to become aware of and this is a thing that if you get it wrong you're gonna turn into a learner at four and lastly just a book recommendation there's a book by the title of how to read a book that I've derived much of the material talked about in this episode from that book and it's just a remarkable rundown it's a remarkable manual users manual in terms of how to rebook successfully and effectively so if you are interested in the stuff that I've talked about in this episode I recommend you to check out that book how to read a book by Adler Jay Morton I think I believe that's he's that's he's named dr. dr. Morton and that's all I have for today remember different books needs needs to be read different books need to be read in different manners not every book is created equal and don't dwell on this quantity quantity quantity sort of this knee-jerk reaction of I need to read warm warm more and more stacking more books on my shelf because that's please I'm gonna work and lastly just to plug in some of my own stuff here the learner disguise my first fiction my first work of fiction in which marks the beginning of my writers journey is officially out that you can click the link on the channel banner to check it out I also leave a link in the description down below this is a short little story about how not to use knowledge as a stagnant thing how knowledge is meant to be integrated with life not the other way around how knowledge isn't exactly supposed to dull a person but to turn him into a better individual in which the main character felling love and and how love came to came to break him out of he's stagnant ways of thinking and then overall it's just a very Elm it's just a very short story about much of the things I've learned for the past couple of years of self education and much of the things had to learn about human conditions of snobbery of oddest kind of stuff packed into this book so give it a read if you have to if you don't want to no worries but hope you guys still like the like today's video and this is Robin front from the quirky inquiry and I should be signing off right about now

Channel: Robin Waldun

Views: 251,876

Keywords: how to read a book, self education, autodidact, renaissance man, how to be a renaissance man, how to be a polymath, marcel proust, emerson, the secret history, reading, how to read better, how to read more books, the quirky inquiry, rc waldun

Id: qcvCxz-v638

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2019