Learning HOW to Read -- Any Suggestions?

TylerDurden

The Force is Strong With This One
Long ago I came across a quote that really stuck with me; it was something along the lines of: "Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting."

In another instance, when I'd first come across P. D. Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous (ISOTM), and I was wondering how accurately it recounted Gurdjieff's philosophy, someone told me of how, when Ouspensky presented ISOTM to Gurdjieff, that Gurdjieff jested Ouspensky certainly had a good memory! In other words, I believe the jest was to say that while Ouspensky did in fact capture what Gurdijeff taught, that Ouspensky didn't actually internalize anything, and was merely regurgitating it (albeit really well).

Whether or not that story actually happened, once in a while a doubt would enter my mind if I really knew HOW to read, or even how to learn (internalize) material I was consuming. I wondered - analogous to the quote above - if I was "digesting" it, and if so, how much? 80% of the material? 50%? 10%? Etc.

I have some questions for the members of this board, and feel free to tackle even just one if you can speak to it! (Any and all thoughts are welcome and appreciated):
  • How can YOU tell when you're internalizing material vs. simply memorizing it?
  • Did you consciously work on improving your level of internalization? If so, how?
  • How fast do you read, on average, while maintaining good comprehension? How would you define good comprehension?
  • Have you ever successfully tried a program/exercise to increase reading speed effectively?
  • Any other general suggestions/feedback regarding the learning "HOW" to read idea?
This self-doubt came up again yesterday when I started reading Andrzej Łobaczewski's Political Ponerology. I haven't struggled with something recently as much as I have with this book. And while I'm introductorily familiar with the topic from SOTT podcast & articles, I had trouble comprehending it (much less internalizing it) especially beginning with Chapter 2 during the discussion about the nexus of Greek philosophy, the Roman empire, and Christianity. I found myself taking 5 minutes to get through individual pages from just the reading & re-reading before ultimately giving up and feeling frustrated :huh:
 
~TD~ said:
  • How can YOU tell when you're internalizing material vs. simply memorizing it?

When tackling a difficult book, I try to summarize in my mind what I've just read. I do it in simple terms and my own words as if I was speaking to someone who never read the book. It's been a useful exercise, because I know immediately what I understood and what needs further reading/reflection.
 
I feel like internalizing or utilizing knowledge gained from reading takes time. I'm proud of myself when I spend minutes just reading whatever happens to be on my pile at the moment. There are some things that I can absorb readily, others that take spacing between bits. IE: Human Cosmic Connection was easy to read fast, since it's very well-connected, but I know I haven't thoroughly understood everything as much as I could, and will likely read it again some point soon. The Fifth Option I read much more slowly, mostly due to his language construction.

I'm not sure 'how fast I read' since I've never measured it, but I feel like I go pretty fast. If a concept is particularly foreign I might stop and ponder it or re-read the description a few times until it 'clicks'. If I really want to understand something I take notes in one of my journals.

Never tried to up my reading speed, but with all things, practice makes perfect. The more you read the better at it you become, osit.

This self-doubt came up again yesterday when I started reading Andrzej Łobaczewski's Political Ponerology. I haven't struggled with something recently as much as I have with this book. And while I'm introductorily familiar with the topic from SOTT podcast & articles, I had trouble comprehending it (much less internalizing it) especially beginning with Chapter 2 during the discussion about the nexus of Greek philosophy, the Roman empire, and Christianity. I found myself taking 5 minutes to get through individual pages from just the reading & re-reading before ultimately giving up and feeling frustrated

Ponerology is a particularly difficult work. It's like Beezelbub's Tales imho, translated from another language describing incredibly foreign ideas. There's a few books that work well as precursors so that you can understand what he's talking about, Without Conscience by Robert Hare, The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, and The Controversy of Zion by Douglas Reed were all particularly helpful for me in order to prepare me to grasp ponerology.

Take your time and if you're having trouble with one book set it aside for awhile and come back to it later.
 
~TD~ said:
  • How can YOU tell when you're internalizing material vs. simply memorizing it?

I can tell that I'm internalizing material if I find myself applying it to my life. For instance with the diet and health readings it's fairly easy to see that it's been internalized because the diet alters over time.
  • Did you consciously work on improving your level of internalization? If so, how?

Slowing down and pausing to relate what I'm currently reading to what I've previously learned from other books or materials is what I try to do. Making notes in margins, which I don't do a lot, also helps. I've fallen out of practice on making notes on what I read, but this is a good practice to take up again.

  • How fast do you read, on average, while maintaining good comprehension? How would you define good comprehension?

I'm not really sure how fast I read but I can go at a pretty good clip. But again, slowing down and actually reflecting on what I'm reading helps comprehension. Googling things that I'm not familiar with helps as well. I can have a pretty good understanding of some things when I read but depending on the topic (i.e. science) some are more difficult than others. My main issue is remembering what I've read well after I'm done reading it. I don't expect to become a human encyclopedia but I would like to improve this aspect. Again, taking notes would help. There's something about the mechanics of writing longhand that aids in understanding and retention.

I haven't tried any speed reading courses or anything. I'm mainly concerned with comprehension and retention.

And Political Ponerology is a very dense read. Don't beat yourself up over slogging through it. Read a little at a time. And it's okay if you don't completely understand every single thing that you read. The good thing about books is that they can be read multiple times. :)
 
~TD~ said:
I have some questions for the members of this board, and feel free to tackle even just one if you can speak to it! (Any and all thoughts are welcome and appreciated):

  • How can YOU tell when you're internalizing material vs. simply memorizing it?

I feel like the information is internalizing when i feel it connecting with personal experiences.

~TD~ said:
  • Did you consciously work on improving your level of internalization? If so, how?

I've learned to monitor my understanding as I read. When understanding seems to be getting foggy, it means that I read past something I didn't fully understand or took as granted when I shouldn't have, so I go back and attempt to find out what it was.

~TD~ said:
  • How fast do you read, on average, while maintaining good comprehension?


  • I don't know, but I know it varies and depends on perceived complexity of the topic and how much I know about it beforehand. If I don't have to look up words in a dictionary or etymology or suspend my reading to go off and research an area the author makes reference to, then I can often read with comprehension as fast as the author can type, or faster.

    ~TD~ said:
    How would you define good comprehension?

I start out with a clear mind and it stays clear through the end of the writing. That doesn't mean that my knowledge has expanded necessarily because the author may be disinforming...it just means I'm clear on what he is saying.

~TD~ said:
  • Have you ever successfully tried a program/exercise to increase reading speed effectively?

I considered it once. I acquired a speed-reading course, but once I read through it, I lost interest. It wasn't what I was looking for because I didn't realize I'd be sacrificing comprehension for speed if the written material was important to me.

~TD~ said:
  • Any other general suggestions/feedback regarding the learning "HOW" to read idea?

Material with a lot of presumed opposites created by grammatical negatives like "no", "not", etc is especially difficult. Often I must deliberately untie the (k)nots to find out what the author is really affirming to be the case. As this Iron John post mentions, "not being a woman" is not the same as saying "is a man." Aristotelian legacy and all that.

~TD~ said:
This self-doubt came up again yesterday when I started reading Andrzej Łobaczewski's Political Ponerology. I haven't struggled with something recently as much as I have with this book. And while I'm introductorily familiar with the topic from SOTT podcast & articles, I had trouble comprehending it (much less internalizing it) especially beginning with Chapter 2 during the discussion about the nexus of Greek philosophy, the Roman empire, and Christianity. I found myself taking 5 minutes to get through individual pages from just the reading & re-reading before ultimately giving up and feeling frustrated :huh:

It's definitely not light reading. Fortunately for me I was already familiar with many of the subjects that make up most of Łobaczewski's groundwork or context. I would strongly recommend others do at least some cursory research into those areas mentioned, even if it takes forever to finish the book because it all connects together. This effort may also help you to spot ponerology dynamics as patterns that repeat themselves in different contexts.

Of course, you could also read through the entire book once and then go back and deepen your knowledge and understanding in any other area that interests you, because, as stated previously, all is connected.
 
You can check out Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a book.

_http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Intelligent-Touchstone/dp/0671212095/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405922364&sr=8-1&keywords=How+to+Read+a+Book%3A+The+Classic+Guide+to+Intelligent+Reading&dpPl=1

A summary can be found here.

_http://www.willmancini.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Sums-How-to-Read-a-Book.pdf
 
~TD~ said:
How can YOU tell when you're internalizing material vs. simply memorizing it?
It's a tricky question, because there's various ways to internalize material - and various levels with regard to each.

There's applying it practically, which shows that you've internalized it in some sense. But there may be differences in how it is applied. It may be simply taking it from rote memory and applying it without really understanding why - and it may be applied with understanding. In school we mostly do the former, while in real learning we must achive the latter.

Understanding has been described as adding information to our being. Here's one attempt to explain that. When we understand, we see connections, implications, patterns - the information is not just stored up in our heads, but it forms part of the fabric of our lives. Both practically (when applicable), and in terms of how we interpret what we experience. The information is then part of what we "are", because we live it.

There is also the very big question of how we internalize things, when we do. We organize our experiences along with any other information we take in into structures; see Schema (psychology) on Wikipedia. These structures shape what we assimilate and how we do it (and bad schemas, which most people leave unchallenged, form blocks to learning). Whenever our schemas are too narrow or distorted, we need to "think with a hammer" to really be able to improve our understanding. (And that can hurt due to cognitive dissonance.) Otherwise, we just keep building on top of a foundation at odds with reality.

~TD~ said:
Did you consciously work on improving your level of internalization? If so, how?
It's mostly developed as a spontaneous process for me, building habits. Pausing and exploring connections that have come to mind is a big part of it - I often read for a while, then my mind feels "filled" with connections that have popped up and I take a break to contemplate. Then I repeat the cycle, reading and then contemplating.

I don't know if that specifically is a common way to learn from books - since learning styles vary. Some people just think as they read, and then they're done, while it seems I need to do some of the heavier processing away from the book, while focusing on nothing else.

Another aspect is making use of connections that appear later on - days, weeks, months. Something may pop up in the mind, related to old material explored, and some deliberate exploration may connect it to the current situation, and/or other things, leading to some new understanding.

Then there's of course practice - and more generally, experience. Depending on the subject, it may be the one really big key to understanding; or it may follow from understanding; or some combination. Usually it seems a combination.

~TD~ said:
How fast do you read, on average, while maintaining good comprehension? How would you define good comprehension?
I'm a fairly slow reader. Some are way quicker, some slower, while maintaining good comprehension.

As I see it, for comprehension, there should both be retaining the key information that was part of the material read, and connecting it to other things. No connection, no comprehension.

If information is retained, then sometimes comprehension can also grow later, as experience and/or other material leads to making connections.

Basically, I no longer worry about speed - I just try to explore meaningful connections as much as possible, so that I assimilate the material as "densely" as possible. Then it sticks, and with experience as well as later reading, comprehension keeps building.

~TD~ said:
Have you ever successfully tried a program/exercise to increase reading speed effectively?
No.

Apart from such programs, I'm also somewhat familiar with memory techniques - but I stopped delving into that because it seemed counter-productive. I was looking at people who relied on such things to memorize entire books, and it seemed to me that as they got wrapped up in all that memorization, they lost something else. They seemed to no longer understand that there is such a thing as "understanding", focusing exclusively on memorization, with their minds filled with the automatized activity (through their training) of using visual processing to store and retrieve endless amounts of data.

~TD~ said:
Any other general suggestions/feedback regarding the learning "HOW" to read idea?
One thing that comes to mind is the older collection of SOTT essays called Essays on Life on Planet Earth. One of the things it addresses is "how to think", which I think is really at the core of "how to read". A minor suggestion, but perhaps it may be useful.

~TD~ said:
This self-doubt came up again yesterday when I started reading Andrzej Łobaczewski's Political Ponerology. I haven't struggled with something recently as much as I have with this book. And while I'm introductorily familiar with the topic from SOTT podcast & articles, I had trouble comprehending it (much less internalizing it) especially beginning with Chapter 2 during the discussion about the nexus of Greek philosophy, the Roman empire, and Christianity. I found myself taking 5 minutes to get through individual pages from just the reading & re-reading before ultimately giving up and feeling frustrated :huh:
Perhaps each of us have our particular challenges. The first time I read Political Ponerology, I memorized a lot of details - they were interesting and memorable - but the depth of comprehension was limited and has gradually grown in the years since. The reading itself wasn't too difficult for me.

However, something like Laura's Secret History of the World is incredibly difficult for me - way, way, way more difficult than Political Ponerology. When my mind encounters all these unfamiliar names and dates, everything slows to a crawl and it's like my mind is spinning through mud, getting nowhere. Either that, or I read quickly and remember none of the specifics, only a general impression. Comets and the Horns of Moses was in part easier - but again, in parts of that book the barrage of names and dates brought my mind to its knees. No fault of the author, rather my particular weakness when it comes to reading and learning.

I've thought of a strategy for tackling those books again: Using pen and paper and mapping out the connections between groups of related names and dates. Then I may be able to refer back to the paper to look up those details and so avoid losing track.

Perhaps you, and others having difficulty with Political Ponerology, could try devising some strategy suitable to that book? No idea concretely what that would be, the challenge being a different one, but you may be able to come up with something.
 
~TD~ said:
  • How can YOU tell when you're internalizing material vs. simply memorizing it?

Often when I am reading material that I can not relate to personally, or have very little previous knowledge of - my attention can drift and I seem to store information without truly understanding the content. For instance while reading the 'Big Five' psychology books I was able to relate via my own life experiences which resulted in a sort of internal 'connecting the dots'. Here is when it actually feels like my being is interacting with the information and resonating with it. I can often recall this information and attempt to apply it better when I feel 'connected' to the book.

However, when there is little or no previous knowledge, interest, or perhaps the book is complicated - it can be particularly tedious attempting to read and internalize the material. I had experienced this with The Web of Debt - although not a particularly complex book, my attention drifted often and of the two chapters I completed - little was internalized because I was forcing myself to read it, rather than actually wanting to...

I think everyone is 'called' and drawn to different types of information based on their individual interests/experience/knowledge and it eventually snowballs as you gain more awareness and connect the dots...

When I first took interest in 'New World Order' conspiracies - religion, history, psychology, diet and science all seemed quite boring at the time. Although as I continue to gain awareness and am able to start seeing how each of these areas of study is interconnected - the more likely I am to be 'drawn' to read a book about it - and perhaps the more likely I am to 'internalize' the information.

Psalehesost said:
~TD~ said:
This self-doubt came up again yesterday when I started reading Andrzej Łobaczewski's Political Ponerology. I haven't struggled with something recently as much as I have with this book. And while I'm introductorily familiar with the topic from SOTT podcast & articles, I had trouble comprehending it (much less internalizing it) especially beginning with Chapter 2 during the discussion about the nexus of Greek philosophy, the Roman empire, and Christianity. I found myself taking 5 minutes to get through individual pages from just the reading & re-reading before ultimately giving up and feeling frustrated :huh:
Perhaps each of us have our particular challenges. The first time I read Political Ponerology, I memorized a lot of details - they were interesting and memorable - but the depth of comprehension was limited and has gradually grown in the years since. The reading itself wasn't too difficult for me.

However, something like Laura's Secret History of the World is incredibly difficult for me - way, way, way more difficult than Political Ponerology. When my mind encounters all these unfamiliar names and dates, everything slows to a crawl and it's like my mind is spinning through mud, getting nowhere. Either that, or I read quickly and remember none of the specifics, only a general impression. Comets and the Horns of Moses was in part easier - but again, in parts of that book the barrage of names and dates brought my mind to its knees. No fault of the author, rather my particular weakness when it comes to reading and learning.

I've thought of a strategy for tackling those books again: Using pen and paper and mapping out the connections between groups of related names and dates. Then I may be able to refer back to the paper to look up those details and so avoid losing track.

Perhaps you, and others having difficulty with Political Ponerology, could try devising some strategy suitable to that book? No idea concretely what that would be, the challenge being a different one, but you may be able to come up with something.

I have not actually attempted Political Ponerology yet - It is still sat in front of me on the bookcase :lol: Although I certainly agree with Psalehesost in regards to Secret History of the World. This book I found extremely difficult as well, so many dates and names... What did help while reading that was to take notes and to draw a general timeline and some diagrams just with arrows and names to keep a general idea of what was happening. Now looking back at the notes I don't seem to have internalized many of the details whatsoever but looking back at the time certainly helped me keep track and I do think I now have a brief understanding of some of the ideas and concepts the book was trying to convey.

Perhaps if finding a book difficult and you notice your attention drifting, put it down and try reading something else, then you can come back to it when you feel ready?
 
Chrissy said:
When tackling a difficult book, I try to summarize in my mind what I've just read. I do it in simple terms and my own words as if I was speaking to someone who never read the book. It's been a useful exercise, because I know immediately what I understood and what needs further reading/reflection.

Puck said:
If I really want to understand something I take notes in one of my journals.

Thanks, Chrissy & Puck -- this one sounds very practical. As the supposed Albert Einstein quote goes, "if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."... I'll see if keeping a journal with a chapter/section summary does the trick.

Puck said:
Ponerology is a particularly difficult work. It's like Beezelbub's Tales imho, translated from another language describing incredibly foreign ideas. There's a few books that work well as precursors so that you can understand what he's talking about, Without Conscience by Robert Hare, The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, and The Controversy of Zion by Douglas Reed were all particularly helpful for me in order to prepare me to grasp ponerology.

Another great idea; after all, taking on Calculus with no knowledge of Trig or Algebra would be difficult too! Great feedback, thank you.

Odyssey said:
And Political Ponerology is a very dense read. Don't beat yourself up over slogging through it. Read a little at a time. And it's okay if you don't completely understand every single thing that you read. The good thing about books is that they can be read multiple times. :)

Glad I'm not alone in finding Political Ponerology a challenge. And that is a great point! Similar, I suppose, to re-watching a good movie a few years later and realizing you understand so much more a second time around after years worth of additional life experience.

Thank you to everyone who posted, Psalehesost, Anthony, Keyhole, and others, for sharing your thoughts & experiences. Very insightful. I really resonated with the idea of connecting personal experiences to what I'm reading (both reflecting on the past, as well as learning to recognize and connect what I've read to current experiences). "No connection, no comprehension." -- makes absolute sense.
 
  • How can YOU tell when you're internalizing material vs. simply memorizing it?

For me, it is when I "live" the material. I dissociate and get into the characters of the book. It happened very well for me with Castaneda's books.

  • Did you consciously work on improving your level of internalization? If so, how?
There could be a balance between being conscious and automatic while doing the reading. If I read about Castaneda's stories and, for a moment I unconsciously slip into Castaneda's character, I might be conscious in some way of his written experience/live in his skin, but not necesarilly conscious of the whole process.
  • How fast do you read, on average, while maintaining good comprehension? How would you define good comprehension?
Depends. If I am very interested in a subject, I can even read a book in a day. I enter in a state of flow and the reading goes very fast. In other times, it takes 1 month because it is complex, or "he doesn't" like it.
  • Have you ever successfully tried a program/exercise to increase reading speed effectively?
Yes. Reading. :lol: It might sound funny, but i think it is only reading that will increase your skills. There is speed reading, where you try to read without the inner narrator, and reading with basic keywords. You just skip the other words of connection.
  • Any other general suggestions/feedback regarding the learning "HOW" to read idea?
Knowledge has multiple layers of understanding. And understanding is directly related to your perception, your being. No matter HOW you read, it is totally upon how much you want to grow. The more you grow, the deeper the levels of understanding can be achieved. One book like this is ISOTM. One can read it once, and after 5 years of struggle and new realizations the books has a newer meaning, deeper.
 
I had the same question, there's a good book but it's in spanish. Basically, the tip overall is to first give a fast read to the paragraphs, like your give a fast scan just to acknowledge the sort of density of info you are going to read, and to spot more or less the relevant points for you. Then you read the book again, slowly and with joy.

In my opinion, my best way to understand a book while reading it and aferwards, is to add notes to it, my own commentary to the book and this is easy if you have PDF or e-books. Also I keep a sort of journal of my readings, so I add all my ideas, my assumptions and my questions that I feel are relevant. Just like in a sott editor, but with your book, while adding a commentary you sort of internalize the info in it.

Btw, if you are having a hard time with political ponerology, maybe you can read a bit of social psychology? after a while, just understanding the basics then you can go to the next level, that may be political ponerology.
 
Prometeo said:
Btw, if you are having a hard time with political ponerology, maybe you can read a bit of social psychology? after a while, just understanding the basics then you can go to the next level, that may be political ponerology.

Maybe that would help some people struggling with it. However, the greatest issue most people seem to have is with the wording and phrasing - more dense than many are used to, and perhaps with too many unfamiliar words.

When it comes to the contents (what is expressed), Political Ponerology covers a broad range of things, and if the language is not too much of a problem, then it's easy to get an overall picture of each. You can kind of form several large "thought packages", or information chunks, based on the material. For example:
  • There's the examples and descriptions of how psychopaths can influence people - and the variations in susceptibility to the process. It's easy to see the relevance, both in relation to history and to the world we presently find ourselves in.
  • There's the broad historical concepts; for example, how societies cycle through stages: becoming hysterical and vulnerable to pathological influence; then gradually taken over; then ending up suffering through a living nightmare; then wisening up and eventually recovering; and then it all repeats. You can see how our societies have gradually become more and more hysterical throughout the last decades, and then how this has been exploited since around the time of 9/11 - and the horror that has begun to unfold globally. Then there's other examples going back a bit in history.
  • There's the descriptions of various kinds of pathology, their characteristics and the roles they play. Plenty of other material we've shared and discussed helps grasp this better: Personal experiences, interviews, books like Character Disturbance.
  • There's the discussions of different kinds of pathological groups: on the one hand, things like organized crime whose nature is 'obvious', and on the other hand, political and other powerful groups that start out benign and respected but are then taken over by psychopaths. And how psychopaths take over organizations, maintaining the old facade while radically changing the real nature of the group on the inside.
  • The psychological tricks of psychopaths and other pathological people.
If the reader's brain isn't hampered by the language, then with all we've learned, there's tons of things to connect the information with. And then, our brains put the pieces together into increasingly large information chunks, and understanding is achieved. Once it sticks, then you find that the material keeps 'clicking' in relation to new things you learn elsewhere. Understanding keeps growing over time.
 
Psalehesost said:
Prometeo said:
Btw, if you are having a hard time with political ponerology, maybe you can read a bit of social psychology? after a while, just understanding the basics then you can go to the next level, that may be political ponerology.

Maybe that would help some people struggling with it. However, the greatest issue most people seem to have is with the wording and phrasing - more dense than many are used to, and perhaps with too many unfamiliar words.[…]

If the reader's brain isn't hampered by the language, then with all we've learned, there's tons of things to connect the information with. And then, our brains put the pieces together into increasingly large information chunks, and understanding is achieved. Once it sticks, then you find that the material keeps 'clicking' in relation to new things you learn elsewhere. Understanding keeps growing over time.

Agreed. The forum has a wealth of information that helps to break down the more obscure/archaic language in the text. Even "ponerology" would fall into this category and explanations to those unacquainted and uninterested in psychological studies could come across as verbose. Words such as "nescience" can be found without too much trouble, or the term "instinctive substratum" which is a broad and complex term describing the issue of cognitive processing, "system 1" versus "system 2, the primary foundation for feelings and emotions and thought which is tied to our physical structure. (bio-physical psycho-spiritual) The "psychology and cognitive science" board has many separate threads analysing and discussing the details that will mitigate any difficulty in understanding. Enter most unfamiliar words/terms from the book and I'm sure there will be plenty of answers dating back to the first time the book was acquired and edited by Red Pill Press.

A few threads such as "affective neuroscience", "political ponerology book discussion" "polyvagal theory" and others tie many things together along with other "basic" psychology books that are part of the recommended reading list. And as always, there's many articles from SOTT. Speaking of SOTT, there's a recent article by Laura with examples that are useful. All that one need do is to read, and ask if unsure.

FWIW.
 
I'm going to have to take the time to read this thread thoroughly later, because it really speaks to questions I've had about my own learning. I've been concerned that I've not been absorbing what I've read on the forum, in related works, and on SOTT properly and this may have lead to some of my problems.

What brought me to this thread was actually this book:
Anthony said:
You can check out Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a book.

_http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Intelligent-Touchstone/dp/0671212095/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405922364&sr=8-1&keywords=How+to+Read+a+Book%3A+The+Classic+Guide+to+Intelligent+Reading&dpPl=1

A summary can be found here.

_http://www.willmancini.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Sums-How-to-Read-a-Book.pdf

Anthony also suggested it in the thread, Why am i scared of the forum? I think it is a quality recommendation, after ordering the book and starting on it. In fact it has lead to several realizations, perhaps most notably some new perspective regarding knowledge, being, and understanding. Secondly, it has given me new ideas to make my reading of SOTT and the forum more active and productive, and this is when I've hardly reached the advice yet. :P ;)

So far it appears that the most important and fundamental idea in the book is: Good reading is an inherently active and effortful task, and the results will depend on your effort and skill. (That is, when reading to increase your understanding and not merely for information.) The book appears to provide a good framework within which to understand the task of reading, and I'm only beginning on the more instructional parts, so I can't really speak about those yet.

Anyway, the book is very well written, and as you may notice, it's got me sort of excited. :-[ ;D Sooner or later I will very likely start a thread for it, but first I'll give this thread a proper read.
 
While I have done a course in Speed Reading, I find that I rarely use this skill unless I'm in a hurry, and skimming.
We have to realise that the brain is pretty smart, and you can read whole pages at a time. Your brain photographs them.
Your main task is to recall what you have photographed.
So it comes down to how your brain files away the information.
The better your internal filing system, the more you will recall.
OSIT.
 
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