On Reading

Some thoughts on reading books slowly and taking notes by hand.

There’s a version of reading that’s about accumulation — finishing books, tracking counts, filling a shelf. And there’s another version that’s about something else: slowing down enough to let a sentence land, to disagree with a paragraph, to put the book down and think for a while.

I’ve been trying to do more of the second kind.

The trick I keep coming back to is writing by hand while I read. Not summaries. Just reactions — a word, a question, a push-back. It slows everything down in a useful way.