Read Slowly And Finish More Books - How To Appreciate Difficult Books

now there's a silly image out there that I want to veer you against a lot of people nowadays when they think of reading books when they think of being a better rent person when they think of reading the greatest classics there's always an anthesis unofficial see I don't know if you've noticed this or not but any person that you point out there or any entrepreneur people that you see out there there's a hidden there's a hidden need for you to read more and more and more in this informational age and now there are apps out there for you to read a book in 15 minutes that would otherwise take three hours for you to finish and there are all these spark notes and all these summaries and Audis all these things out there that's trying to grab your attention that's trying to give you the sweetest synopsis of the story to get the gist of the story for you and a lot of YouTube videos they don't get me around easy to videos are awesome they do a brilliant job I bring out the key points from a novel from a philosophical work but in the process of doing so as we're trying to as we're trying to condense the amount of time for information exacting ingestion what we've lost perhaps it's just the pleasure of slowing down the pleasure of slowing down and there's just a silly image out there of if you read a most amount of books then you are the most educated then you are the most enlightened human being that you are the most revered out of a bunch then you can recite facts from bacon from Newton from from the mathematics of golfy alive nuts you can recite all these facts and then have these concepts bouncing around in your head you can recite passages from the kajita doli dunce from the French Revolution you can tell us how the ancien régime fell apart what are some of the causes of the French Revolution and yada yada yada see there's a mistake out there in which if you can recite all these facts if you if you all these facts all together then you are king then you can go off on to your Mary Wayne but have we actually asked ourselves this crucial question what is literature for what is literature for now you would have noticed by Dan if you sit down and ask yourself the question yes you can read very fast to very vast volumes he can watch videos on all these topics and know a bunch about it I mean I have a friend he's uh he's really into Marxism and he's read widely but he said to me I've never actually read in-depth dad in depth into any other books but yet all these ideas are still in my head but there's a deeper point here in which I covered before in should you read difficult books the episode on surgery difficult books in which is that the idea that you found on the internet so we're a very effective medium through YouTube videos or a blog post through a summary sparknotes cliff notes so we're all these services well you were getting is just a flat camera picture what you're getting is just a flat snapshot snapshot of the entire thing well I can tell you right now that great expectations is about pip fall in love with a girl at the same time falling for the ambitions of other people and becoming and becoming a puppet of other people's ambitions I can sum it up for you right there and you can quote me you can quote the fast you can quote Dickens but never will you ever get that full psychological revelation never would you ever derived a true joy out of reading books if you just go for these broad point summaries if you just aim for reading a hundred books per year if you just aim for reading as fast as you can now when you when you take a look at me and when you take a look at some of the books I recommend Wow two weeks past he's read three books already I read all these books there's a little secret that I forgot to disclose just hey I am an extremely slow reader now people notice for me by now that I read really damn slowly I've tried speed reading before in the past but it didn't really work well for me so I've developed this very sort of slow and steady pace for all of my readings and one of my favorite things to do to do is to grab a dictionary and go to to go to the bookstore and sit down and just just to enjoy a very difficult book sometimes an hour would passed Bailey gone through three pages but those three pages are some of the most delicious pages that I'm ever gonna taste while still if you're slow reader how do you read so many books I mean you're recommending all these books to us I do it on a daily basis that's the entire secret really I read on a daily basis and there's really nothing more to Don on a daily basis I would always clock in one to two hours always o'clock in those pages two chapters of Dickens or maybe a few pages of Joyce it's just like after dinner dessert once it becomes a habit once it becomes a part of me I don't even have I don't even have to think about it and every morning I just grab a book and I just read a few lines and put it away and then before bed a few hours before bed I just snuggling bet and pick up a book with my dictionary and then just read about 10 to 15 pages and put and and put it away see it's all about routines and most people talk about I don't have time I don't have time well it's all about routines I read on average for for busy days on average about 30 minutes but on non busy days about one to two hours and it would vary throughout threats throughout the period but it's all about setting that block of time where you know that you should be reading where you set aside as time that you you say to yourself well this is my time to slow down and read this is my time to devote myself to reading should I ever tell you that reading is not supposed to be enjoyable upfront especially at a type of books if you really want to derive true enjoyment out of these older texts trained remit enjoyment out of Dickens or Thoreau or out of Shelley do you choose to derive deeper pleasure from reading these books you have to slow down you have to slow down and the power of having a routine is that you remove all two excuses and resistance once you're getting to the groove of it you start to discover that it's actually really enjoyable once you actually get into the groove of it you start to begin to realize what the hell have I been doing before I should have been doing this all day long but then again you get tired you you you fall asleep and and you you repeat the entire thing tomorrow resistance is just a part of reading because instant gratification most of us were so accustomed to all these evening information coming at us that we really said it set a time to really slow down and appreciate a book and that's that's something that I really really appreciate it's just that clean moment in the day where all troubles goes out at a window where I can just sit there and just appreciate a couple of chapters of Dickens a pre-shaped perhaps a few pages of Joyce a few pages of an essay from Emerson all these great things don't buy into the vision of hey I've read so many books look at the shelf behind me I know I've devoured so many volumes he's so few time well if you stretch out your time if you be patient enough as to have a longer time horizon just read a few chapters per day what you're gonna find out is that you're gonna be reading so much more you're gonna be deriving so much more pleasure and then reading wouldn't seem like a far-fetched thing out there for certain people well you you to have became a reader you to have became added great connoisseur of classical literature and you too perhaps when conversing with your friends next time with would actually withhold information because well if you truly understand a piece of literature at that feeling that cannot be putting two words anything that can be putting two words it's um it's it's not the true satisfaction that you've gained from reading the greatest pieces of the literature if someone recommends you a book for example the bookstore lady recommended great expectations for me well you can see it as she struggles to putting two words in terms of how much the book meant for her and that's the true power of literature it really is a form of self therapy and I want the same for you so patience is the key and also having a broader time horizon instead of trying to rush it off to finish it in one week stretch it out into four months for example a very very difficult book such as Ulysses she would read it well if you try to read it in two months well if that doesn't work stretch it out into four month what's wrong with reading only three pages of a extremely dense book per day but you need to get if you want to get the flavor be patient and make it a mandatory daily practice and over time your bookshelf the books on your bookshelf are gonna get more books are gonna be stacked within your bookshelf as you're going to start to develop a very deep sense of appreciation for all these books now that is all for today's video I hope you guys enjoyed it shall see you in the next one

Channel: Robin Waldun

Views: 363,168

Keywords: how to read more books, how to read literature, how to read difficult books, how to become a polymath, read more books, how to read, renaissance man, polymath, rc waldun, the quirky inquiry

Id: e8ubri9UCkQ

Length: 10min 14sec (614 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 15 2019