How to read

Presumably, you can all read - that is, process strings of letters into words and strings of words into sentences. If that's all it involves, however, how dry an activity reading must be! There is so much more you can do to enrich your reading experience.

Define your purpose

One of the most important steps to take before starting a book is to make a distinction between reading for leisure and reading for work. The processes for these two categories will differ greatly; the aim of reading for leisure is to indulge your own interest in the novel - to really take the time to savour a story - whereas reading for work demands efficiency and effectiveness - note that the definition of the latter may vary depending on your project. 

Another reason to define your purpose for reading is that it helps you to focus on finding only those answers relevant to your project. This is particularly important if you're doing research; you won't have the time to read every word of every chapter in each of the ten books you're planning to attack. Better to make a plan: what is the question you're trying to answer? Which sub-questions does that question break down into? Which are the key words you need to look for?

Reading for a high school English essay

The purpose of English assignments is to test your deeper understanding of a novel as well as your ability to formulate an argument regarding that novel. There are three stages to this reading process: reading the novel, understanding it, and thinking critically about it. 

The first step is the most important one, and the easiest. Read the book. Early. It sounds like a no-brainer, but it's surprising how often students don't get past this first hurdle. It's important to find ways to make your compulsory reading more enjoyable. Often, researching as you read - finding short informative videos and reading articles about the novel - can help you to understand what's going on in the book, making the reading less of a bewildering challenge. If all else fails, start with a movie adaptation to find the rhythm of the narrative. Just make sure you do read the whole book eventually, because nothing's going to help with the third step more than experiencing the story first hand. 

Understanding the text is a little harder. You might be surprised to find that reading critical essays on it is actually one of the easiest ways to do this. 

Nay, stay thy protestations!

Why is research the best policy? Because instead of having to do your own thinking, you can get a leg-up from experts who have studied the text much more intensely than you're likely to, and who are often writing to target school students. There's nothing wrong with reading Sparknotes; it's a good starting point for your research, offering a broad, often surprisingly pertinent overview of a wide range of texts. Go deeper - look for collections of critical essays or chapter-by-chapter analyses in your school or local library. Depending on the detail of the analysis, these can be used either to clarify the broader message of the novel, or to inform on a specific theme if you've already chosen your question.

The final step is to define your own opinion on a particular theme in the text. There's no one way to go about doing this. It should be the product of your personal experience with the novel and the research you've undertaken to answer a particular question about it; do you have an original argument to make? Here's where your timely reading of the novel comes in -  generally, the longer you've had to think about a topic, the more sophisticated your arguments are going to be. It doesn't even need to be a period of active thinking; the stories we read often simmer in the back of our minds, resurfacing at odd moments to colour our everyday experiences.

Reading articles

There are a number of reasons you might be reading an article. You might be reading one for research on a recent event, for an analytical essay, or simply for your own interest, over a morning coffee (guess which one I prefer). Although the appropriate depth of reading varies depending on your task, the same points of evaluation can be applied by every reader - soundness of arguments, reliability of claims, and snappiness of style. 

Getting the most out of your article reading involves a process similar to the one you would follow when reading novels for an assignment. The importance of research in shaping your evaluation of an article should be emphasised; do lots of reading around the topic so you know when a journalist is trying to pull the wool over your eyes with an ad-hominem or a creatively edited quotation.

 Reading for tertiary studies

Read, read, read! The library and the internet can teach you so much more than a lecturer can. Research for your assignments should come from a number of sources; textbooks, encyclopedias, journals, databases, archives are your friends. 

Half the work of most university assignments is in figuring out how to approach the task. Often, you'll be thrown headlong into a topic which you don't even have the vocabulary to describe - Exhibit A: yours truly, who found herself having to write an essay on Gothic cathedrals before she even knew what a flying buttress was (it's not as ridiculous as it sounds). How, then, to start? A good way is to look up your topic in an encyclopedia - Wikipedia is a perfectly respectable starting point - and aim to just understand what is meant by the words. Look up any related words that crop up - I consulted the Penguin Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture constantly during my first year. 

After you've filled yourself in on the content your lecturers expect you to know, you will be better informed to judged how to proceed with your research. Perhaps you have discovered a juicy point of contention to further pursue, or a particularly interesting aspect of the topic which calls for your attention. Go find all the material you can on the subject, from all perspectives.

Remember that research isn't a finite process - you will constantly be discovering new arguments and perspectives, any one of which might radically change your thesis. So just keep reading. 

Reading for pleasure

There's nothing wrong with reading a book for the immediate pleasure it gives you and never thinking about it again. That's human. We read what we need in the moment, let ourselves be seduced by glossy covers and thrilling blurbs. 

But I think there's a case to be made for reading our special stories with care. Some stories, be they novels, plays, or films, deserve to be taken out again and again, to be experienced in different contexts, and with a growing understanding. To Kill a Mockingbird is my favourite example of this; each reading of it yields up something that I've either forgotten about or never noticed. Graeme Base's luminous picture book, The Eleventh Hour, is another example, although what you find in it is entirely different. 

Sometimes there is a story so captivating that your curiosity about everything in it is endless. In such cases, you might be compelled to find out more about the setting, as a way of deepening your sense of connection to the story. In my case, reading about America's history of racism and slavery has enriched my understanding of the poignant observations Lee makes in To Kill a Mockingbird. The more you read about a topic or event, the more relevant, touching, and vivid the stories around it become.

Read early, read smart, read with the heart!

As always, just keep sippin'. 

Some resources:
Speed Reading in a Week is a great book which teaches effective reading. The tip about defining your purpose comes from here.
Joshua Foer's Ted talk on memory techniques helps with retaining the content you've read.

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