How do you guys read books that you don’t feel like reading?
I consider myself a decent reader. If I’m very interested in a book, I’m able to stay up all night, reading it as much as I can until I feel like if I read anymore I’ll get fired for sleeping on the job. I love to read fantasy books, but usually most interesting fiction books are able to keep my attention.
The trouble I’ve got is with non-fiction books. Books that are talked about as “must reads”. Books like Sapiens, The Selfish Gene, Pale Blue Dot, or any textbook/technical documentation. I’ve tried again and again to read non-fiction books. Breaking it up into smaller chunks, listening to them as audiobooks, or just slogging through it page by page. But nothing seems to stick in my head if I grind through them.
Now, before you go “Hey naznsan, just don’t! Life is too short to read books you don’t want to read!”, the thing is, I want to read these books. Some of them explain things I’m decently interested in. Some of them I have to read for work/education. I just seem to have trouble either focusing, staying motivated, or retaining any information in such books.
So does anyone have any tips or suggestions on how I could read such non-fiction books like I read my fiction? Or am I doomed to just slog through page by page, relying on my notes to do all the remembering?
If you’re not interested, your brain will come up with thousands of excuses to avoid something you don’t enjoy and you won’t be able to fight back. I mean, if Sapiens can’t keep you entertained, then I don’t know what can. You can find other mediums to expand your knowledge: documentaries, YouTube, podcasts, articles or audio books. You can read fiction and learn about this world some other way, it’s fine.
I put them in the toilet and I really take their “shit book” nature seriously. Somehow, it works.
But this is my shitposting time on lemmy.
Focus on why you want to (want to) read them - what about it interests you? If you can try to boil that interest down to a few questions, that’ll give you something to be on the lookout for, which might help you stay alert.
Be “mindful”: if you feel your attention slipping, just sort of “notice” that it’s happened, without emotion or judgment, acknowledge what distracted you and then go back to it.
Try to make a specific effort to “do something” with the text you’re reading - read out loud, visualize or sketch, rephrase/summarize when writing notes, mindmap… whatever works and might engage some different parts of the brain.
Use your finger to follow along! It sounds childish, but there’s a reason children do it, because it’s an easy way to boost comprehension and reading speed.
I also use audiobooks to listen while I read, for particularly challenging stuff.
Besides that, just practice. If something is too hard, ease into it with something a little easier. Reading is just like any other skill, you have to practice it and get better. Try harder and harder things to train your muscles.
I can relate to this. I have a hard time with many books even if I am interested in the subject; interesting content doesn’t mean that that content is easy to get through or engaging throughout.
I usually read a few things at a time and I’ll often choose these types of books to listen to when I’m doing chores and errands. I might not feel motivated to sit down and give the book my full attention, but I can handle an hour or two of passive listening. The downside of having my attention split is that I will definitely miss things and have to pause and go back, but that doesn’t frustrate me nearly as much as when I’m fully concentrating and still find myself rereading the same paragraph without absorbing anything. It might take me several hours to listen to a book that should theoretically take me half the time to read, but in the end I’d rather have finished the book however long it took! This doesn’t work for highly technical books where you really need to have the text in front of you the entire time, but I haven’t had problems with the type of non-fiction you’ve mentioned.
Another thing that really helps me is having the book in both text and audio formats. I’m able to retain the information much better if I listen and later skim through the text I covered to note what stuck out to me. It’s a bit of a waste of library check-outs, but having the ability to switch between formats helps me get through the material faster. It sounds like a chore but it doesn’t actually take much time to do.
Lastly, sometimes I do just lean into the “boredom” and read a little before bed since there’s no risk that I’ll binge the book and stay up all night.
It sounds like you’re already doing a lot of this (audiobooks, notes) so if that’s the case, I guess the main thing that helps me and might hopefully help you is just being okay with the glacial pace and extra effort?
Find a reason to want to read before you start.
Read favorable and unfavorable reviews until you feel the urge to make up your own mind. Do enough background research to form a preliminary opinion of your own, then see if the author’s reasoning matches yours. Get two books on the same subject, and switch whenever you start to get bored; then compare their approaches.
In general, approach nonfiction not as information to passively absorb, but as an argument someone is trying to persuade you of.
Fiction and fantasy books involve your imagination. A good author can create a world in your mind, so you see the characters and the places they are in. It’s immersive. It’s the kind of thing I tend to read most often. But technical books, not always so much fun. What helps is to read and try to involve your imagination as much as possible. Read a few paragraphs, think about what is being conveyed and imagine it. Book discussing a machining process? Create a vision of the part, see the mill cutting the piece, imagine yourself running that machine. Taking time to see what is being written about. It might be a slower process than reading straight through, but it really helped me with retention in school. I’m definitely a visual learner, and if I can “see” something in my head it helps keep me more interested and able to work with a concept.
Honestly, you’re likely to just slog unless you start finding the book or info interesting at least. I can read non-fiction and devour it like fiction, if the content is interesting. A
recent example was Algorithms to Live By. I got my degree in computer science and already knew most of the algorithms mentioned - but the way they explained them was far better than my professors, and they related them to uses in your actual life, not just technical uses. It was a super cool and interesting book to me and I read it super quickly - then again a few weeks later to take notes for fun.
On the flip side, I’ve had more books than I can mention that are just unbearable to read. Not sure if the topic just wasn’t as interesting to me even though I thought it would be, sometimes the writing is just bland, or hundreds of other reasons. Those books I’ll skim to see if it gets better at some point, sometimes it does and just the intro was very background heavy, other times not. If skimming it doesn’t turn anything up or arouse any interest in me, then I just leave it.
The biggest thing is interest though. If it’s a topic or event you know you’re interested in then that makes it far easier to read the book, but even then sometimes the author is just bland or has a writing style you don’t like. In that case, I would recommend finding a similar book by a different author, sometimes reviews will be able to help. If you’re reading for your own pleasure or interests though, don’t be afraid to put down a book that just isn’t speaking to you even if other people call it great.
This is why I like having ebooks. I have them on my phone and I find that I might be more able to read something heavy on a lunch break at work than before I go to bed at night.
Generally though I’ve been having the opposite problem - I can’t get into fiction at the moment, nothings grabbing my attention although I did read Yellowface which was excellent
