A certain type of guilt tends to accumulate around certain books. You are aware of them. They were purchased with sincere ambition, placed on the shelf at a slight angle, their spines intact, and then stealthily avoided for months, if not longer. Gravity’s Rainbow, Ulysses. Time and Being. For someone else, it might be Dostoevsky, Proust, or an intricate history of the Ottoman Empire that once seemed indispensable in the bookstore but is now merely ornamental. There is no irrationality to the guilt. In fact, it’s an indication that you think those books are worthwhile. The ambition is not the issue. It’s the strategy.
One of the best ways to develop as a reader and thinker is to read a book that seems a little challenging. The problem is that most people approach challenging books in the same manner as they approach easy ones: they sit down, turn to page one, and continue reading until something stops them. That approach virtually ensures frustration when dealing with a difficult text. The density builds up. There are numerous unexplained references. It is difficult to understand anything because of the low-grade anxiety caused by the unfamiliar vocabulary or syntax. The book is put back on the shelf after a few chapters, or occasionally a few pages. The guilt intensifies.
Ryan Holiday, a longtime writer and reader, has argued for a different approach: viewing a hard book as a task to be completed rather than a passive experience. His main piece of advice, which sounds almost insultingly straightforward but is actually underutilized, is to read the introduction, the preface, the translator’s notes, and the editor’s apparatus before you touch chapter one. The purpose of those preparatory materials is to get you ready for what comes next. They draw the landscape. They explain the author’s intentions and the state of culture at the time the book was written. Ignoring them in favor of “the real book” is similar to traveling to a foreign city and choosing to experience it genuinely rather than consult a map.
Serious readers believe that annotation is meant for students, not for those who read for enjoyment or personal development. That’s something to think about. In contrast to passive reading, writing in the margins—highlighting a confusing passage, circling a word you don’t know, or noting a question the text raises—keeps you physically involved. Additionally, it generates something helpful: a record of your own perplexity, which is more instructive than you might anticipate. Examining your marginalia at the end of a chapter frequently shows that you understood more than you anticipated, that the text was working on you even though it didn’t feel like it, and that questions you had on page four were subtly addressed by page twelve.
The “confusion list” is a related tool that merits further consideration. Instead of pausing each time you come across something you don’t understand, like a philosophical term, a cryptic historical allusion, or a sentence that just won’t work, you take note of it and continue. Once momentum is lost, it is difficult to regain. Long pauses to look up information disrupt the experience and seldom provide the desired level of illumination. Many of the items on the list will have resolved themselves through context by the time it is reviewed later, at the conclusion of a chapter or reading session. those that haven’t developed into helpful starting points for external research.
A similar point about reading in multiple passes was made by Mortimer Adler, whose 1940 book How to Read a Book is still strangely relevant in a time when reading itself must fight for attention with everything else. The purpose of the first read is to gain an understanding of the argument’s structure, follow the story without overanalyzing it, and allow the book to become familiar to you. During the second read, you should be critical, ask questions, and show skepticism. You should also be aware of the author’s true intentions beneath what they seem to be. It’s still unclear if the majority of readers will tolerate this strategy, and to be honest, not all books merit two full passes. However, the approach is nearly infallible for those who do.
More than most readers would like to acknowledge, setting micro-goals is beneficial. When applied consistently, twenty minutes a day with a challenging text results in more genuine comprehension than a long session driven by ambition and guilt. It takes time for dense material to settle. It is probably less beneficial to read fifty pages of Hegel in an afternoon and then do nothing with it than to read ten pages, go for a walk, and mentally go over the concepts. In between reading sessions, the brain works hard to connect, consolidate, and make sense of things that seemed unclear while you were sitting with the book.
It’s difficult to ignore how much of this depends on consent. permission to move slowly. permission to not grasp everything at first. Permission to utilize all available resources, including scholarly introductions, discussion groups, and summaries, without feeling as though you’ve cheated the book. Gritting their teeth and persevering are not the readers who benefit most from challenging texts. Even though they are not yet familiar with all the references, they are the ones who approach the reading as a dialogue in which they are permitted to take part. It’s not an exam. It’s an invitation. You are welcome to bring assistance.
Alyssa Bennett as editor at vclib.org, oversees editorial coverage of literary criticism, cultural analysis, political commentary. Alyssa brings rigorous research discipline, in-depth knowledge, experience, and an approachable editorial voice to subjects that most readers find thought-provoking and culturally significant. Her career spans the intersection of literary journalism, political writing, and educational publishing.