Notes on reading slowly
I read fewer books last year than any year of the past decade, and remembered more of them than all of the others combined.
At some point reading turned into a counting exercise. Books finished per year, pages per day, a shelf of covers as evidence of a life of the mind. I hit fifty-two one year and could not, in December, summarise a single argument from March.
Finishing is not the goal
A book is not a task with a completion state. Abandoning one at page sixty because it stopped teaching you anything is not failure, it is judgement. The only obligation you have to a book is to be honest about whether it is still doing something for you.
Reread the good ones
The books that changed how I think are, without exception, ones I have read at least twice. The first pass is orientation, learning the shape of the thing. Only on the second do you have enough of the whole in your head to see what the parts are doing.
Ten books read twice will change you more than a hundred read once.
Slow reading also means stopping mid-page to stare out of a window, which looks like nothing and is actually most of the value. The thinking happens in the pauses, not in the pages.