How to read

Please excuse the patronizing title. I know you can read otherwise I'd not be worried you'd be offended by what I wrote. What I mean to point out is something hopefully more constructive and useful. In normal life we tend to think of reading as something which is done wholly and linearly. When we sit down to read a novel most of us start with page 1 and proceed all the way to the end in page order. We're less rigid about magazines and newspapers, perhaps selecting several articles of many, glancing around the sections to see what is most tempting, maybe reading the editorials, or sports before anything else, and so on. Academic reading is even less rigid than that: we rarely read anything wholly or linearly from pagge 1 to finish. I recall someone saying that for academic purposes reading a book is like 'gutting a fish'. The point is to rapidly strip out, understand and evaluate the structure of the argument (ie the 'bones'), identify the important sections of the text from the unimportant (ie the 'meat' from the 'guts')--what is important and unimportant will depend on what you need to get from the book, which will change. You don't start on page 1 of the text. First you do a 'smell test': do you recognize the author, who is the publisher? You check table of contents to get a sense of the structure. If your interest is piqued you may flip to and skim the introduction or the chapters that interest you. Or you scan the index to see what topics are covered and in what detail. You will want to makea judgment about the level of scholarship too which can often be gleaned quite quickly from looking at the extensiveness and appropriateness of the bibliography and especially the endnotes. Then you start to read the text skimmming some sections while reading others carefully, taking notes, cross-referencing within the work or with other texts. In short, academic reading is reading for a specific purpose: gaining information in order to build your knowledge and understanding. And to do thsi effectively you need to, first, employ the right 'tools' by which I mean the scholarly architecture of academic writings I have just described which tell you what kinds of data, theory and rhetoric is in the book and where, and, second, apply the appropriate technique by which I mean reading either very carefully, thuoghtfully and thoroughly with a view to commiting something to memory, making it a permanent part of your understanding, or preserving it (ie taking notes) for your own use later, or 'skimming' a text pulling out the crucial points, flagging areas for subsequent focus, or simply building a working familiarity with the author's main thinking. The trick is to be able to switch from one form to the other.

Personally, I read A LOT. And not just because it's a part of my day job. I read at home, at work, on the train. I read while I walk from Embankment station to the College on the Strand--the key is to know where you're going, keep one eye on the book, the other on obstacles 8-10 feet ahead (generally people get out of the way)--and I'd read on my bike on the way from Maidenhead station to my house if I could figure out a way to hold the book and the handlebars simultaneously. Basically, I read all the time I'm not doing something otherwise necessary to the sustainment of life which is a good habit to have for anyone interested in knowledge; but it's a practical necessity for MA students so if you are not similarly habituated you should work on being so. What's vital, however, is that you always ask yourself what am I reading this for? If it's general erudition then by all means read from cover to cover letting your mind wander and explore. Thsi is very pleasurable. But if you're reading to research an essay or doing a particular unit readings you need to be mercenary and unsentimental about it.

In other words, when you look at a unit's readings and see a half dozen articles, some book chapters and maybe a book or books to read in a week what is required is for you to make some quick judgments about what is to be skimmed and sampled. Unless you have extraordinary endurance and time on your hands do not sit down with a reading list systematically ticking off each item as you complete it. Also do not treat a reading list like the tablet handed to Moses by the Almighty. It's never the complete and final word. Always remember to browse around a subject. Unlike G*d you're teacher thinks more highly of you when you hand back the tablet saying 'thanks but I think you missed a few commandments; I've scribbled a few ideas in the margin...' Read, read, read. But read smart.