READ MORE BOOKS IN THE NEW YEAR

 READ MORE BOOKS IN THE NEW YEAR TO SHARPEN CONCENTRATION.

We are anticipating the New Year 2024 as 2023 draws to a close. In 2024, we aim to accomplish multiple goals, while we reflect on our prior accomplishments, relationships, challenges, and learnings.  

"I spend my entire day reading in my office." One of the wealthiest individuals in the corporate world, Warren Buffett, sums up his day like this. Perched. Perusing.

He encourages everyone to read more, which is a goal we can all support. I assume that you too are in a similar situation. One of our most common goals is to read more.

How then do we go about doing it? And after we have all that knowledge, what are we supposed to do with it?

Reading more and keeping everything in mind is a conversation with many facets and intriguing possibilities. I'm pleased to outline a few options below for reading more and remembering it all, and I'd love to hear your opinions as well.

In the New Year, I aim to read twenty books, consisting of both fiction and non-fiction. I plan to concentrate on my reading habit because I've noticed that my attention span is getting shorter and that I've been spending more time on digital devices. This is really concerning.  Reading books that will increase my brain's plasticity through newer learning is my sole option if I need to focus better.

I will be able to achieve this goal and make sure that I retain the information by using the method I shall describe in this blog. I plan to divide up the knowledge I've gained from the books into different phases. For some, I desire in-depth knowledge, and for others, I only want to be aware of the essentials.

I shall adhere to the three standards for choosing a book to read:

ü  Examine books thoroughly before beginning to read them. It should be of interest.

ü  Examine a book's central idea and the author's goals to get the larger picture.

ü  Examine each book's significance and reasoning.

Do an inspectional read every time I want to pick up a new book.

Most individuals desire to learn how to read faster so they can spend less time reading books. I constantly advise them against it. should accept reading slowly. One thing about saving time with books that I've discovered is that it doesn't happen while reading. Making the initial decision about what to read is where time is saved.

Unfortunately, many non-fiction books aren't really meant to be read all the way through. This is where inspectional reading, as defined by Mortimer J. Adler, comes into play.

An inspectional read aims to provide answers to the following two questions:

ü  What is this book about?

ü  What genre of literature is this?

This can be accomplished by quickly reading the cover text, table of contents, editor's summary, and title page. Crucial passages in chapters that pique my interest, as well as the introduction.

When I'm done, I should be able to decide if this book is worth my entire attention. I will read it completely if I do choose to read it cover to cover, but I won't look up any terms I don't understand. This is the reason why reading a book hurt and slows me down. Even if I don't fully get everything, knowing the main points of the material will enable me to go deeper into these topics in the future.

Try doing a thorough analysis of a book to identify the core idea and the author's aims.

This is when reading analytically is useful. I can truly examine the book after I've read it. This is where making notes, underlining, summarizing, and giving the material a lot of thought become your go-to techniques.

I'll research the answer to the following query: "What was the author's intention when choosing to write a book under this title?"

Not only is it quite easy to classify a book by its title—math, history, how-to, or self-help, for example—but keeping in mind the book's principal objective will help you draw later connections between seemingly unrelated but complex subjects and the major theme.

The next step is to identify the major topic of the work by trying to condense its ideas into a few phrases and listing all the various themes and subplots. Making a mind map of those connections will be helpful so I can understand how the different sections of the book relate to one another and the overall story.

This plot would be like the book's bones on an x-ray, but the precise structure, possible side stories, and other reoccurring themes would be more like the book's flesh. Significant as well, but meaningless without understanding what's underlying.

Raise more inquiries concerning books, considering their significance, and reasoning critically.

Reading analytically and with inspection makes it easier for me to read more carefully and comprehend what I read. But I believe the most crucial lesson to be learned from reading literature in general is this: Always challenge the meaning and reasoning of a book.

If you choose your books wisely, it won't help you recall irrelevant information from them, and even if you think you understand everything, it won't matter if the reasoning in the book is incorrect.

I always ask myself two questions after finishing a book: "Is this true?" and "So what?" if it is.

The first thing to do is to make sure the book makes sense; if it doesn't, it's obviously not relevant. To accomplish that, I can look for instances when the book makes contradictory claims at various points, leaves arguments unanswered, or in some other way falls short of providing a satisfactory response to the book's primary questions.

This is my choice before deciding whether to skim or read it analytically.

Mortimer J. Alder and Charles Van Doren in their book How to Read a Book, describe in detail these three stages (elementary, inspectional, and analytical reading) that inspired me to categorize my books to read and focus on improving my reading habit in the New Year.