Slowly. I'm not that smart so I go through tech books slowly so I can hopefully retain more of it and maybe even apply the knowledge day to day as I acquire it. I've always been jealous of people who rip through a dense (knowledge dense, not pages dense) tech book in a weekend and say they got it all. The books that are more code oriented, I read on the computer so that I can type and run the code as I work through t…
In my experience each chapter takes about 2 hours to read and digest. Then I need an hour to summarise and reflect. Followed by another 3-4 hours of practice. By this point I can honestly say I understand and can use the material.
So 6-7 hours per chapter. Most books I read have around 12 chapters and so take a good 72+ hours to read a book. Due to work and family commitments I can only read 3-4 tech books like this per year so I try and pick only the best works.
The value you can get out of this way of reading is phenomenal.