How Should One Read a Book? (Pt. 2) - Tetragrammaton
“Our investment in reading changes the book because the book has changed us. ... If books are merely a means of transferring information, then perhaps, yes, a book is a waste of time. If a summary of its thesis and key points could be presented in a brief article or Substack post, why not just save the hours and read the Substack post? All the more
... See moreSpeaking from personal experience, however, it feels clear that for our brains, the act of reading and reflecting on a book is not all that different from the act of writing one. In both cases, we are seeking out novel connections, combining existing concepts to produce new ones. So why do we think of the act of consuming, as opposed to producing, ... See more
To study the way we read is to study the way the mind works: the way it evaluates a statement for truth, the way it behaves in relation to another mind (i.e., the writer’s) across space and time. What we’re going to be doing here, essentially, is watching ourselves read (trying to reconstruct how we felt as we were, just now, reading). Why would we
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