It happens to me since I fell in love with reading as a kid: if it is for pleasure, I can read 200 pages a day; if it is for study I can be days with a single page or read without paying attention.
When I was a kid I was often a bit embarrassed by how slowly I read. My peers would rip through books and quickly finish them while I was still only a fraction of the way through. Now I know that it was just because I had a different reading style. While I didn't necessarily get as meticulous as you've described, taking notes and such, I still always read slowly, carefully, and with intention, thinking about what I was reading as I went along, frequently stopping every few pages to think even more about what I had just read, and often going back again to reread various passeges, pages, and even whole chapters, to think about them again and make sure I fully understood and got the most out of what I was reading. My slow and thoughtful reading style apparently helped me academically, though, because I always got very high grades, high marks and glowing notes on my book reports, and consistently tested at the top of my class in reading comprehension, to the point that, by the 3rd grade, I was told that I was reading at a college graduate level. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was raised by two university librarians, lol.
This video came at the perfect time for me! I just started a book I was hoping to read more analytically than I typically do, but wasn't really sure how do to that. Thank you so much for sharing your recommendations!
I think analytical reading is something authors need to keep in mind. Rather than getting defensive over their creations, we need to remember that once the art is out there, it becomes the consumers'; the world's art.
Not always. Arthur Miller was pretty annoyed when he met a student who was convinced The Crucible (1953) was a warning against the evils of witchcraft, and had no interest in understanding anything about McCarthyism.
I suck at analytical reading. I had a course of german lit in uni once for a single term, and the teacher literally asked me if I, well, had a medical condition because my interpretation was so inane (I'm not even gonna get into how unprofessional and insensitive that was of him). Since then I just gave up on the 'curtains were blue', as you put it, way of it, and my analytical reading has been literally whatever I make it out to be, and honestly, it made me feel so much better. I get to my own conclusions, follow my own goals and never seek to meet other people's expectations. Love videos about books, hope you make more of those in the future!
I really appreciate this breakdown of the process. Even though I am an advanced PhD student myself, I often struggle to articulate what is meant by "critical reading" or "analytical reading." The ironic thing, though, is that when I was doing my coursework and exam prep, I had to learn how to fast-track my reading. Instead of getting to savor the texts and take my time to understand them, I was forced to use certain strategies to speed up the process in order to be ready in time for in-class discussions. It wasn't until earlier this year (as I've been working on my dissertation) that I felt justified in reading a little more slowly. I read "We Have Never Been Modern" by Bruno Latour, and the book grabbed me so forcefully that I felt I had to engage more deliberately than I had been taught.
Not going to lie....I was bummed when I read the post that you were taking a wee break from the historical video essays. I'm one of the history buffs you were worried about letting down & I wanted you to know that you have no reason for worry. I've enjoyed the videos you've posted since then & am still learning new things, which I love! Thank you for being you! Lots of love! ❤😁
thank you so much for your support! I really appreciate you saying that as I needed to take the pressure off myself and was really scared of letting people down
Love this video!! Love the idea too. Just read The Crane Husband and compared it to the classical Crane Wife folktale and the Crane Wife essay from the New Yorker. I compared and contrasted not only to understand the authors differences but mostly for my own reflection, to understand my own life and transitions in it, what I want in life, what the world is willing to give and what I'm going to have to wrest from the world. It was really fun reflecting on it with my husband, strengths and weaknesses of authors, perspectives (like you said) and then how it relates to us. Got so much out of those stories.
This is applicable to art as well. My mother attended the Art Student's League in the early 1950s on 57th Street (then) in Manhattan. In the 1990s a PBS program "Sister Wendy's Odyssey" featured a nun criticism art work. My mother was annoyed to no end that the nun would described emotions and meaning the long dead artist who could not be interviewed for confirmation, supposedly inculcated in the paintings. My mother would say," what if it's just a painting! Means nothing at all, the artist just wanted to paint that!"
This is a very useful discussion on how to read a book. I've read lots of classics in recent months and having these tips in mind would have been useful. I'm reading Ulysses right now. If someone asked me why, though, I'd have to echo George Mallory (and sometimes I feel reading this novel is right up there with climbing Everest) and say "because it's there"!
haha I did my masters thesis on Ulysses, you have my foulest support! *Edit: It should have said fullest support, but autocorrect had other ideas. I like it. I shall keep it. Know though that it is intended entirely positively.
I've started recapping books, inspired by many booktubers, and noticed I've had to apply a more analytical reading style to my approach. I love it, it gives me new insights into books, especially rereading those I'd already read when I was younger.
This video came at a perfect time for me!!! I just read The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz and it really hit home for me. I’ve seen so much of the mindsets he describes reflected in today’s politics, on both ends of the political spectrum, and also in religion. It’s kind of scary tbh but it’s comforting to have more words for what’s happening around me
Wow, throughout my entire studies at uni no one has explained this so well and so understandably. I wish I could go back to studying now after watching your video 😂 thank you!! 😊
Extremely informative video, so huge thanks! :) As a medievalist-in-making, having an actual structured method for analytical reading really helps a lot. Even the 'guide-books' that they recommend us at my faculty fail to make a clear description for the process of actually studying academic literature.
Thank you for this video. Some your points I've developed for myself while reading for pleasure. Especially when I first tackled longer novels I would reread passages/paragraphs or even entire chapters to let the story "sink in". I wish I would have used this when reading for school assignments. I think an analytical reading course should be a prerequisite for university. Knowing the methods of analytical reading would've helped me immensely!
This was really helpful. I have to come to terms with taking longer with some books, but I'm getting there. I used to do it before social media; just focus on the book I was reading. But now with booktube and bookstagram, etc., I find it more difficult to not think of how many books there are that I'd like to read. Also, not having anyone to discuss it with is a downer.
Iron Man, song by Black Sabbath, has so much lore and so many theories about what's going on in the song, but ask Ozzy and he's all "Oy, he's a man, and he's iron. Right?"
Thank you. In 2019 I read the Bell Jar rather passively, and I've just begun reading it a second time with the intention of taking something away from it.
This sounds like the most useful thing I'm unlikely to do in a while. I shall get back to it, once I have gathered more understanding of things. Also: I think this works for other kinds of mediums (medii?) as well: I've like a particular character in the second Sonic Adventures game so much, I poured so much meaning into him that the curtains weren't just bloody blue anymore. Thank you for an other excellent video
Hey Cinzia. could you summarize the steps ? When you do a second pass, second reading in fiction, do you first read the entire book and mark passages..or do you do it chapter by chapter? for example read chapter 1 and then read it again and look stuff up before going on to chapter 2?
Hello, I am a new subscriber and I truly enjoy your videos immensely. Keep up the great work! Also, I was wondering how much you read per day on average? Do you go by page count or length of time?
Not quite if this is the same but I have for some years after reading a fictional book would read a factual book on a similar or adjacent subject. Thomas Hardy's Trumpet Major with Dragon Rampant (D.E. Graves) the Royal Welch Fusiliers time during the napoleonic wars my latest excursion. Rereading I Claudius/Cladius the God at the moment with Mary Beard's SPQR and Emperor of Rome ready on the shelf.
Sometimes deviating from an author’s intention can be detrimental to the text. Not everything is open to multiple interpretations, and you can’t approach Animal Farm in the same way you approach Finnegan’s Wake.
It would be so interesting if Karl Marx had read and written a review of Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. It is not just a quasi-fantasy of talking horses intended to prevent cruelty to animals. It is a description and critique of Victorian capitalism where the cruelty to animals is a direct result of economic cruelty to humans. And how does analysis apply to science fiction? In his novel A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C Clarke used Plato's Allegory of the Cave to explain infrared perception of reality. But another SF book had the galaxy rotating over 26,000 years to account for the periodic behaviour of some annoying aliens. The rotation actually takes 200,000,000 years. Inconveniently long for the time scales of intelligent species. Now mankind is being assaulted by technology on a weekly basis. How are we going to cope? Out, out damn laser! Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez
I really hope this is OK to say and not breaking any sort of rule, but I am very, VERY charmed by the fact that you leave some of those repeated moments you could’ve easily edited out. I did not expect it, and I kinda love it, and sorta hope you don’t reupload it w/out those.
How to get the most out of your book: 1) Read it 2) Read it Again 3) Save it until you need it to level a piece of crooked furniture, then place the book beneath the short leg.
That should be part of teachers education :( Like seriously it chouldnt depend on teachers , are they fun enlough to make exploring that fun. Lively, care about the characters, o world, implications. maybe invite and let students make up questions about it and ngage? . Like some teacher did apearently , "write an defense for a character fictional or real" why isnt that , thats how you get to read, engage lively? Ok this video is, wow good, should really be taught in schools. The take notes of what interests
It happens to me since I fell in love with reading as a kid: if it is for pleasure, I can read 200 pages a day; if it is for study I can be days with a single page or read without paying attention.
When I was a kid I was often a bit embarrassed by how slowly I read. My peers would rip through books and quickly finish them while I was still only a fraction of the way through. Now I know that it was just because I had a different reading style. While I didn't necessarily get as meticulous as you've described, taking notes and such, I still always read slowly, carefully, and with intention, thinking about what I was reading as I went along, frequently stopping every few pages to think even more about what I had just read, and often going back again to reread various passeges, pages, and even whole chapters, to think about them again and make sure I fully understood and got the most out of what I was reading. My slow and thoughtful reading style apparently helped me academically, though, because I always got very high grades, high marks and glowing notes on my book reports, and consistently tested at the top of my class in reading comprehension, to the point that, by the 3rd grade, I was told that I was reading at a college graduate level. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was raised by two university librarians, lol.
This applies to writing, too. Drafting can be fast for me, and revision is much slower and more conscious.
This video came at the perfect time for me! I just started a book I was hoping to read more analytically than I typically do, but wasn't really sure how do to that. Thank you so much for sharing your recommendations!
Glad it was helpful!
I think analytical reading is something authors need to keep in mind. Rather than getting defensive over their creations, we need to remember that once the art is out there, it becomes the consumers'; the world's art.
Not always. Arthur Miller was pretty annoyed when he met a student who was convinced The Crucible (1953) was a warning against the evils of witchcraft, and had no interest in understanding anything about McCarthyism.
I suck at analytical reading. I had a course of german lit in uni once for a single term, and the teacher literally asked me if I, well, had a medical condition because my interpretation was so inane (I'm not even gonna get into how unprofessional and insensitive that was of him). Since then I just gave up on the 'curtains were blue', as you put it, way of it, and my analytical reading has been literally whatever I make it out to be, and honestly, it made me feel so much better. I get to my own conclusions, follow my own goals and never seek to meet other people's expectations.
Love videos about books, hope you make more of those in the future!
I really appreciate this breakdown of the process. Even though I am an advanced PhD student myself, I often struggle to articulate what is meant by "critical reading" or "analytical reading." The ironic thing, though, is that when I was doing my coursework and exam prep, I had to learn how to fast-track my reading. Instead of getting to savor the texts and take my time to understand them, I was forced to use certain strategies to speed up the process in order to be ready in time for in-class discussions. It wasn't until earlier this year (as I've been working on my dissertation) that I felt justified in reading a little more slowly. I read "We Have Never Been Modern" by Bruno Latour, and the book grabbed me so forcefully that I felt I had to engage more deliberately than I had been taught.
Not going to lie....I was bummed when I read the post that you were taking a wee break from the historical video essays. I'm one of the history buffs you were worried about letting down & I wanted you to know that you have no reason for worry. I've enjoyed the videos you've posted since then & am still learning new things, which I love! Thank you for being you! Lots of love! ❤😁
thank you so much for your support! I really appreciate you saying that as I needed to take the pressure off myself and was really scared of letting people down
♥️📚♥️
Love this video!! Love the idea too. Just read The Crane Husband and compared it to the classical Crane Wife folktale and the Crane Wife essay from the New Yorker. I compared and contrasted not only to understand the authors differences but mostly for my own reflection, to understand my own life and transitions in it, what I want in life, what the world is willing to give and what I'm going to have to wrest from the world.
It was really fun reflecting on it with my husband, strengths and weaknesses of authors, perspectives (like you said) and then how it relates to us. Got so much out of those stories.
This is applicable to art as well. My mother attended the Art Student's League in the early 1950s on 57th Street (then) in Manhattan. In the 1990s a PBS program "Sister Wendy's Odyssey" featured a nun criticism art work. My mother was annoyed to no end that the nun would described emotions and meaning the long dead artist who could not be interviewed for confirmation, supposedly inculcated in the paintings. My mother would say," what if it's just a painting! Means nothing at all, the artist just wanted to paint that!"
This is a very useful discussion on how to read a book. I've read lots of classics in recent months and having these tips in mind would have been useful. I'm reading Ulysses right now. If someone asked me why, though, I'd have to echo George Mallory (and sometimes I feel reading this novel is right up there with climbing Everest) and say "because it's there"!
haha I did my masters thesis on Ulysses, you have my foulest support!
*Edit: It should have said fullest support, but autocorrect had other ideas. I like it. I shall keep it. Know though that it is intended entirely positively.
This exchange made me giggle. 😁 Wishing you both a wonderful day. ✌🏼🖤
@@CinziaDuBois 😂a Freudian slip
Thank you for doing this video. I really appreciate your explanation of your method.
I've started recapping books, inspired by many booktubers, and noticed I've had to apply a more analytical reading style to my approach. I love it, it gives me new insights into books, especially rereading those I'd already read when I was younger.
Thank you so much for sharing this skill with us Cinzia!
All of my HE students need to listen to this!
This video came at a perfect time for me!!! I just read The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz and it really hit home for me. I’ve seen so much of the mindsets he describes reflected in today’s politics, on both ends of the political spectrum, and also in religion. It’s kind of scary tbh but it’s comforting to have more words for what’s happening around me
Very well stated really wish I had an explanation like this before my college days. Well stated and concise really appreciate your work Cinzia
Starting my next Master's module tomorrow, so this came at the perfect time. Thanks for sharing your insights!
Wow, throughout my entire studies at uni no one has explained this so well and so understandably. I wish I could go back to studying now after watching your video 😂 thank you!! 😊
Thank you so much for this. After your last video, I thought about suggesting a video on reading academically. This was fantastic material.
Thank you for this explanation. It is the first time I have understood how to read analytically.
Thank you!!! I’m excited to apply what you have taught.
Thank you, this was useful. I’ve forgotten about active reading skills and this was a lovely and enjoyable summary to watch.
I really loved this video. You helped me very much! I can tell you have a lot of experience, just who I intended to find and learn from.
Extremely informative video, so huge thanks! :)
As a medievalist-in-making, having an actual structured method for analytical reading really helps a lot. Even the 'guide-books' that they recommend us at my faculty fail to make a clear description for the process of actually studying academic literature.
This is so useful for everyone 💗
Thank you so much ✨❤️
Thank you, I will pass these on to my kids.
Thank you for this video. Some your points I've developed for myself while reading for pleasure. Especially when I first tackled longer novels I would reread passages/paragraphs or even entire chapters to let the story "sink in". I wish I would have used this when reading for school assignments. I think an analytical reading course should be a prerequisite for university. Knowing the methods of analytical reading would've helped me immensely!
This was really helpful. I have to come to terms with taking longer with some books, but I'm getting there. I used to do it before social media; just focus on the book I was reading. But now with booktube and bookstagram, etc., I find it more difficult to not think of how many books there are that I'd like to read. Also, not having anyone to discuss it with is a downer.
Oh my gosh. Someone who gets it and explained it. I now know how to do this. Thank you❤❤❤
Thank you! this is a really clear and helpful explanation 💜
Iron Man, song by Black Sabbath, has so much lore and so many theories about what's going on in the song, but ask Ozzy and he's all "Oy, he's a man, and he's iron. Right?"
Thank you. In 2019 I read the Bell Jar rather passively, and I've just begun reading it a second time with the intention of taking something away from it.
Brilliant as always! You’ve got a great mind and always a joy to listen to your thoughts and can’t wait for the next video ♥️
Thanks for this so much!
This sounds like the most useful thing I'm unlikely to do in a while.
I shall get back to it, once I have gathered more understanding of things.
Also: I think this works for other kinds of mediums (medii?) as well: I've like a particular character in the second Sonic Adventures game so much, I poured so much meaning into him that the curtains weren't just bloody blue anymore.
Thank you for an other excellent video
This really makes me glad I didn't go into literature for uni cause I would have haaaaaated this. Hope y'all enjoy this though🖤
I can apply some of these to reading mathematics, as well.
Hey Cinzia. could you summarize the steps ? When you do a second pass, second reading in fiction, do you first read the entire book and mark passages..or do you do it chapter by chapter? for example read chapter 1 and then read it again and look stuff up before going on to chapter 2?
Do you think you could do a video on how to write an effective book review please?
Thank you for this video. I’m a master degree strategist and I suffer in analytical reading.
Hello I really found this video very interesting, is there anywhere i could find more información on analítica reading?
The best way for reading is this for me - what is the writer REALLY TRYING TO SAY ? De profundus . And then connect the dots with other lit .
This is off-topic, but can you do a video or series on history of the stories in Nursery Rhymes of England from 1886?
Hello, I am a new subscriber and I truly enjoy your videos immensely. Keep up the great work! Also, I was wondering how much you read per day on average? Do you go by page count or length of time?
Not quite if this is the same but I have for some years after reading a fictional book would read a factual book on a similar or adjacent subject. Thomas Hardy's Trumpet Major with Dragon Rampant (D.E. Graves) the Royal Welch Fusiliers time during the napoleonic wars my latest excursion. Rereading I Claudius/Cladius the God at the moment with Mary Beard's SPQR and Emperor of Rome ready on the shelf.
What type books would you not read ? , Science., Business. Math, Engineering....?
Sometimes deviating from an author’s intention can be detrimental to the text. Not everything is open to multiple interpretations, and you can’t approach Animal Farm in the same way you approach Finnegan’s Wake.
It would be so interesting if Karl Marx had read and written a review of Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. It is not just a quasi-fantasy of talking horses intended to prevent cruelty to animals. It is a description and critique of Victorian capitalism where the cruelty to animals is a direct result of economic cruelty to humans.
And how does analysis apply to science fiction? In his novel A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C Clarke used Plato's Allegory of the Cave to explain infrared perception of reality. But another SF book had the galaxy rotating over 26,000 years to account for the periodic behaviour of some annoying aliens. The rotation actually takes 200,000,000 years. Inconveniently long for the time scales of intelligent species.
Now mankind is being assaulted by technology on a weekly basis. How are we going to cope?
Out, out damn laser!
Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez
I like your... elocution
I really hope this is OK to say and not breaking any sort of rule, but I am very, VERY charmed by the fact that you leave some of those repeated moments you could’ve easily edited out.
I did not expect it, and I kinda love it, and sorta hope you don’t reupload it w/out those.
Well, my uneducated guess is to read it. Or alternatively, you can roll up the pages for cigarettes.
How to get the most out of your book:
1) Read it
2) Read it Again
3) Save it until you need it to level a piece of crooked furniture, then place the book beneath the short leg.
Have you read all those books?
❤
🌹♥️🌹🖖
59th
Commentārius deīs algorythmī.
That should be part of teachers education :(
Like seriously it chouldnt depend on teachers , are they fun enlough to make exploring that fun. Lively, care about the characters, o world, implications. maybe invite and let students make up questions about it and ngage? .
Like some teacher did apearently , "write an defense for a character fictional or real" why isnt that , thats how you get to read, engage lively?
Ok this video is, wow good, should really be taught in schools. The take notes of what interests
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