We hardly think about how we walk. If we ever have be conscious of the procedure, our movements would appear forced and clumpsy. So is reading. We must have ingrained habit of reading built in since learning alphabets. And we don’t think about it.
Yet, while preparing for a company training session, I came across How to read a book by Paul N. Edwards, which does exactly that. This reading manual for non fiction books suggests we re-examine our reading habit.
Unlike fictions, which needs to hold readers in suspense while the plot unveils, non-fiction readers look for fundamental ideas the book has to offer, arguments to back up, whether they are credible and how do they fit into readers’ existing knowledge. And some readers may start reading with a specific question in mind. In other words, the purpose of reading was to understand, challenge and synthesize.
For those reasons, non-fiction reading should not be treated the same as reading novels. Instead of letting authors leading the pace, readers better follow their own agenda, poke around, ask questions. And the above manual offer techniques to do that efficently.
Interestingly, looking at this topic, there is also another paper on how to read a paper. The same structure of multi-pass reading, from high level view of idea to more detailed argument. Before investing the time, decide first whether it will add anything of value to you by gauging the main idea first.
Along that line, I can offer my own three passes version of reading pull requests, which has taken up a large part of my professional time (only diminishes recently thanks to AI code review). First, read the PR’s title and description and linked ticket to know the background, and have a mental model of how you would do it yourself. Then 2nd pass, diff your model with the PR code changes to find differences and try to identify the rationale behind it. And the 3rd pass to zoom in risky lines, find the git history behind those.