Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

I took a course at UChicago on how to read a book based on Mortimer Adler’s book of the same name, and the takeaway is that the first reading of a book should be a quick one (table of contents, skimming, dipping into pages). Only after a book is shown to have promise are we then to engage in deep reading which not only involves summarizing but also syntopical reading, which is to read other books around the same topic.

One thing that has really helped me is to scribble notes in the margins and to write a précis after every chapter, then a précis on the inside cover of the book to summarize all my chapter précis.

Finally all good books should be read twice or more. Good reading is rereading. This is a hard rule to follow because nobody has time to read the same book twice but the truth is you can’t understand a book deeply on first reading because you don’t have the lay of the land and the benefit of retrospection. A rereading helps you focus on details missed the first time around. To be honest though, very few books meet my bar of my willing to reread them.

But I lean towards reading for comprehension. I have a wiki which includes all the books I've read. The good ones get their own wiki pages with the main things I learned, and other notes.

A key point is that I don't take notes while I read. I only do it LATER -- because if you can't remember what to write down for a few days, then you probably won't retain it, and it may not be worth retaining.

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As a specific example, when thinking about this -- I wonder if anybody has read "The Signal vs. The Noise" by Nate Silver? I remember reading it because a friend had a copy.

Many years later, off the top of my head, I can't remember a single thing in that book. Question for other readers: can you remember a single thing from it?

I think maybe it's because I kinda knew most of the stuff in that book? I will refer to my notes.

On the other hand, I've been re-reading Antifragile by Taleb, which I first read in 2012 I believe, and it struck me how many things I absorbed unconsciously from that book, which I didn't ascribe to it.

For example I remember talking about "hormesis" during COVID, i.e. small errors and stress. And also I took up some light weightlifting because I thought it was a good complement to bike riding. i.e. having 2 different kinds of exercise

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edit: Just went to back to my notes on Silver's book (finished January 2014). Surprisingly I was extremely positive on the book -- I said the writing was engaging, it's well-sourced, very good set of topics (weather prediction, earthquakes, terrorists, poker, basketball, financial markets), and novel insights

Though the funny thing is that I didn't say what the actual insights were. The only one was the importance of knowing when you don't know, which I also got from Taleb

So maybe I should go back to that book and see if I still think it's good, and if there were insights I didn't get elsewhere

It's funny perhaps that my perception of the book has been clouded by Silver's reputation. I think he has been criticized for "predicting the present" and of "horse race coverage", and I think that's true now. But back when I read the book, I probably had a much more positive impression of him!! Very interesting

The reason many people accumulate wealth is to spend it, not to stare at it insecurely. It goes without saying that knowing more things expands the number of things you can do.