“I have never met a person I admired who did not read more books than I did.”
Kevin Kelly , “99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice“
It seems easy to suggest that one needs to read books in order to become more knowledgeable and, generally, a well-rounded person. But these days, “reading” can mean many things, from turning the pages of physical paper volumes to listening to audiobooks to watching instructional videos online. Of course, movies and books have coexisted for years, but nowadays the boundaries between the media become blurred. The amount of content available is also remarkably huge. It actually makes it difficult to digest the information effectively. The over-abundance of material in almost any field makes the experience of learning similar to drinking from a fire hose.
Take chess, for example. As far as hobbies go, there is an incredible amount of literature available for those who want to learn the finer points of the game or to teach it to others. Reading chess books, particularly collections of annotated games of masters has been traditionally viewed as a necessary, and perhaps the most efficient, training method. Anders Ericsson, the author of “Peak”, who introduced the proverbial 10,000-hour rule, identified reading and playing through annotated games as the common and defining practice method of top chess masters. But similar to other fields, chess books come in a variety of forms. As far as analyzing positions, reading from a paper book and setting them up on a physical board sounds like a horrendous waste of time, when interactive versions of the same books can be read and played through on any electronic device. E-versions of chess books not only save time, but also, perhaps more importantly, allow us to read and practice almost everywhere, in small chunks of time throughout the day, since we constantly carry our smartphones anyway.
Yet the physical aspect of the game still has value. For my nine-years-old daughter, for example, it is the the wooden pieces themselves, setting up and moving them on the board, what provides motivation to play. To my daughter, chess is not an intellectual practice or a philosophical model of human life. It is simply a board game. Of course, once you start doing anything, it is much easier to continue. She also enjoys solving “mate in one” puzzles from László Polgár’s enormous collection called “Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games“. It is a physical paper book, which in combination with a physical board and pieces provides just the right pace that prevents information overload for someone, who takes her her first steps.
Beyond hobbies or entertainment, e.g., in the area of academic learning, reading books have conventionally been the way to acquire new information. In my experience, recent forced transition to remote teaching resulted in an abundance of online material in the form of recorded lectures, examples, tutorials, course notes, etc. Like in chess, the most effective type of practice is the one you can sustain regularly. So if you are taking a university course and going through a textbook with a highlighter is not your thing, chances are there are video lectures that you can watch as a change of pace, if nothing else.
In the context of learning, an important thing is that reading needs to be active in order to be effective. This means taking notes. Ideally, you would paraphrase and summarize what you’ve read, but even copying passages verbatim is substantially better than doing nothing. This goes back to well-established concept in education that actively engaging with information is necessary for transforming it to knowledge. Interestingly, how exactly you do it doesn’t matter much, statistically speaking. So taking notes is an easy way of accomplishing that.
