I try to mark the pages I like, or bend the corners on ones I own. So that I can quickly lift the quotes that resonate for me and summarise in digital notes.

I also like rather than to summarise the book, to just lift the best quotes directly and reformat them in the order that provides a decent summary.

Wasn’t always that way but it’s been useful to refer back to, rather than needing to necessarily pick up the whole book again.

One downside is that it means I can stop mid page to write down something of interest. Therefore it has slightly changed the way I read books now.

i have a tendency to read and then forget in a few days. subsequent read-throughs are needed for me to comprehend the whole thing. my brain is always wanting to distract me, which also makes me read slower.

writing summaries is a good idea. i definitely remember better after writing things down. i think for me personally, i need to be better at concentrating on the reading instead of having my attention pulled away.

I don't see comprehension as an issue. I have never been a particularly fast reader, but as I have gotten older I read much more slowly. My retention is also not great. When I was studying for the bar exam I took a prep course which entailed simply writing down what the lecturer spoke for 8 hours a day. This went on for 3 months. It was boring as hell, but effective. I had gone to law school in a different state than where I was seeking admission, so I had to cram a lot into my head, while absorbing the material enough to be able to discuss it while writing the exam. It worked. I passed, but I honestly felt like I forgot everything three days after the test. If I tried to read that stuff on my own I am sure I would not have absorbed it as well.

When I got sick and tired of being single I read How to Be a 3% Man, Winning the Heart of the Woman of Your Dreams 20 times in a year. That gave me time and repetition to internalize the lessons and also reflect on what was then going on in my dating life. It turns out this method worked.

Another way to learn in a deeper way about something was when I really started to learn about Bitcoin. It's more than just reading, and re-reading its about writing, discussing, asking questions. Back then I co-authored a book about bitcoin, that was helpful challenge.

So I would reply to the question like this: when reading a book for the first time, I don't take pressure of understanding it all. If it's good, I'll reading again as many times it takes. Usually I take notes, ask questions and discuss about the book with someone to gain deeper understanding.

My favorite way to increase comprehension is to underline good parts. Once I've read a few chapters, I'll copy the underlined bits out and add in why they caught my eye, whether surprising, beautiful, powerful, or by generating good ideas. At the end of the book, I've got a page or two of quotes and leads to follow. I then score each book 1-10.

I made a small shelf with just the 9s and 10s which are seen on a daily basis. This the good stuff, the top shelf, the cream of the crop. It's great having them close at hand for an additional reading.

I've always had very good reading comprehension, but it comes at the cost of being a pretty slow and easily distracted reader.

Not everything but I'm there for the dialogue

Most modern books are easy to read and comprehend. It’s the older books that are difficult. I read the first 1/3rd of von Mises’ The Theory of Money and Credit several years before I discovered Bitcoin. It was very difficult. It seemed like most sentences required that I read it multiple times, and think it through to really understand and follow his train of thought. I then might have to re-read the full paragraph to keep track of where he was going and what he was trying to explain.

there’s definitely a group of book readers that do it to tell their friends how many books they read each year, i guess there are forms of signaling in all hobbies.

i bet one would learn more by intentionally reading as slowly as possible than by trying to race through books just to check them off a list.

i kind of wonder how extreme you could go with this approach… if you were only allowed to read one page per day, how much more information would you absorb?

This is why I can't do audiobooks, I just don't absorb the information I'm hearing, it's the same to a lesser extent with e-readers for some reason - give me a proper, paper book any time. At least I retain around 7% of that information!

My technique is to use readise.io

On my kindle, every highlight I save is aggregated into readwise into an easily readable and digestible format. Sometimes I have over 100 highlights for every book. Every couple of months, I would re-read my highlights and I’m also able to export them as a PDF and save them separately. It’s been really helpful for me to recall the things I’ve read,

Reading a book isn't a binary process. It's a gradient. Some books you fly though, not really paying attention, some you need to read, re-read, read discussions about it, think, discuss, etc. Some books I read and have no idea what's going on, but I let all the terminology wash over me and I pickup tidbits here and there. Then I read it again later after I've read some more stuff. Depends on how much I care. I read a LOT of really random stuff or I listen to lectures. I don't stress if I don't understand some concept. It's clear once you start working with the material.

Most people I've met have had reading ruined for them by school. Instead of thinking of reading as a fun, intellectual exercise they think of stress and boring. I heartily recommend How To Read a Book https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=81F5C5943EFCB5F70B7CABEEC89AFA41 if you want some help here. Really helped rehabilitate me after school even though I was reading for pleasure already.

I build reading comprehension by annoyingly and imposingly re-teaching the content to the first unfortunate person to cross my path after a fresh insight.

Mansplain++

SO...if my math is correct, you wrote it the "book" word 14 times :)

My point of view is very simplle about books...I choose only books with a topic that interests me (or I need to my job), this mean that I reading "deeply", with more attention. I don't write summaries, but on the interesting / important pages of the book, I put a "bookmark" (acolored self-adhesive sheet, which appears at the top of the page) with 1-2 keywords. My "reading ratio" is around 1-2 books / week (it depends on length, topic, and how much time I have).

Short answer - not always, not really, but I still read a ton, and in my humble opinion I synthesize that which I don't completely understand, at least a little bit, into a broader understanding of the world.

Longer answer and a story - I know I forget a LOT of what I've read. How could I actually remember all of it? Just recently, I got to almost the end of a book I'd read previously (I had forgotten I read it previously), without having even a glimmer of "Oh, I've read this before". And then, in the book, I got to a story, as opposed to some dry facts. The story was somewhat emotional, lots of detail-rich imagery.

Anyway, it was at THAT point, late in the book, that I remembered I'd read it before. Or rather, I'd come across that same story before.

What that really made clear to me was, the power of STORY. Telling a story, as opposed to giving some facts.

I mark important part, then when finished I write all quoted by hand. While writing I also practice my handwriting as I'm into calligraphy. Then I keep those writings as book summaries.

Whenever I read a book I try to understand as much as I can, but there are more complex books that I have to make an extra effort, there are even books that I have to reread more than 1 time to understand them completely or most of them.

I wish I had the same motivation as you to go the extra mile.

On my case, depends on the topic...if I'm reading as a hobby or for learning.

When I want to get the book 100% , I try to read some summaries of it and get into a book club conversation.

Nowadays you do research based on what you are looking for. We live in a time where artificial intelligence and search engines exist. Copilot Chat is much more interesting and meaningful than reading a book. 😎🤩

I am like the majority, I really want to read books, but after a day I lose time and not consistent. Even if I complete book, its hard to remember everything. Only some glimpse, so it feels like I should read that again.

When I pick up a book to read I place a piece of junk mail (already folded on three) with a blank side as my bookmark for the book and the place where I take short notes about sentences or paragraphs that interest me, together with their page number. For short books, a single A4 might be enough, but many times I add a second or more pieces.

When I finish reading the book, or some times a chapter or a part of the book, I review the notes and come back to some of the pages to re-read them and further think about them. And afer a few weeks I go through them again in a similar way.

Most of the times, I just kept those notes either inside the book (if it was mine) or in an archive (after returning the book to the library), and I rarely processed them further, unless I needed to use them for something, like writing about the topic, or discuss it with other people, etc.

With all the movement about taking smart notes, building a "second brain", etc., in recent years, I learnt about the book How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers, and Zettelkasten, and then identified the notes I use to take as literature notes (by those methods of note taking).

Now I'm starting to revisit those literature notes after finishing reading the book to take some new (so called "permanent") notes on Logseq, where they get linked to other notes, ideas, etc., and I can find them easier than browsing through all my "literature" notes.

I don't have a huge collection of notes on Logseq yet, but I'm enjoying the process, and I definitely appreciate being able to find and access them quickly and easily.

If I read it once... I vaguely understand the points made but can't argue them. I really need to listen + read + write notes to absorb the info.. especially if it's a new/novel idea to me.

It depends on the book, some are just impossible to understand like being and time.

I have to read slowly or read books multiple times to comprehend … same with movies and tv series

I think it's based on the speed of reading and the distractions around you.

The more of those, the less I internalize.

I know I'm gonna lose some people here but I usually consume books as audio books. It started when I decided I needed to be "more well read" and I started listening to books on my daily commute. I have found that my comprehension and retention of audio books far exceeds when I read a book. I know that for many people it is the inverse. That said, there are certainly books that do not work as audio and some that are better for me as audio.

In my experience most books have a LOT of fluff. Actually, most books suck. I have started and never finished many books for this reason. My perspective is that there is a tradeoff of time and attention with reading a book. I try to glean the valuable info from books. The main idea. When a book is very information dense I may re-read it. There are a few I have read multiple times but it is a very small number. Some books are just so info dense that I have to slow down

Writing summaries is a great way to internalize the knowledge from a book. I don't have a habit of doing this but I do jot down notes and quotes in a text file. What works for me is talking to people, usually my wife about what I'm reading. This year I have been trying to do a better job of journaling and writing as it is one of the best ways for me to clarify my thinking on a topic.

I think one does not have to completely understand a book being read on the first try and that's probably impossible anyway.

Go through a book, see which chapters, themes caught your attention the most, go through them again if they are interesting or you'd like to dive deeper, and so on. If you really like the book but feel like the whole picture is missing or you didn't appreciate certain parts enough, read it again after some time - there's even a saying that really greatly written books get better with each reading.

In this regard, I'd say that rereading is even more effective than summarizing but to each his/her own I guess

I like to transcribe the book with my pencil as I read on a large notebook. The more senses I involve in learning, the more I retain.

Yep, unless we are dealing with some archaic, esoteric physics. I console myself by reminding myself though that nobody really understands that.