Some friends asked me about how I read my books, instead of repeating myself, I decided to capture the process here. Ok, I lied. Instead of forcing them to listen to me in person－to be less annoying－I will send them a link here instead. (Ok, ok, they didn't even ask).

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Like most of the Facebook-celebrities, I have a complicated relationship with reading.

After "done" reading a book, I would go to brag to others about how great it is. For most of time, being polite as my family and friends always are, they will ask "What is it about?". Then they would probably hear "er.. it's something like this, like that, err... I promised it is much better than what I said".

I struggled with that for countless times. Bragging rights for small talks in cocktail party asides, I wanted to optimize as much as possible my reading experience. That meant maximizing comprehension and retention within the same amount time spent.

Let's back to square one, what do most of us struggle with? These are my personal experiences, but I imagine lots of people will find them resonate:

1. Only has a vague sense of what the book is about after a while.
2. Feeling bad for not completing a picked-up book.
3. Self-loathing, boring to re-read an incomplete book.

Problem #1: Only has a vague sense of what the book is about after a while.

Well, I would argue that there is nothing inherently wrong with #1. What you're able to actively recall is declarative knowledge, which is not the only thing you get out from reading a book. A good chunk of it is probably lurking out somewhere in your mind, the world view, the feeling, the procedural knowledge awaiting to be pattern-matched has probably being ingested to a non-verbalized form.

Problem #2: Feeling bad for not completing a picked-up book.

You have my full sympathy. That nagging feeling you got when abandoning a book for whatever reason (it's boring, it's difficult, it's too long, or just simply out of interests, or the interest now place its eyes on a different book). We all have that completionism instinct. I guess that is from a very misconception of "done" reading a book. When someone says he/she read that book, what does that actually mean? What differentiate between a careful analytical read from a mindless single pass?

This kind of pondering has made me shift my relationship and interaction with books to a more dynamic manner. I treated my book collection as a tsundoku, and reading more syntopically rather than like a queue of tasks. When I decide to "adopt" a book after some inspectional reading, it is there to stay with me indefinitely. I don't feel guilty to put it aside for awhile. I enjoy leaving a part of it "undiscovered" and get unveiled from time to time. I feel joys when encountered something that I could find relevant in an ever-complete book, and happily read the relevant part again now with real-life experiences.

Problem #3: Self-loathing, boring to reread an incomplete book.

This is the most interesting one. Unlike the other two, you cannot just "flip the mindset switch" it is rather a technical and mechanical problem. The problem is further amplified if you do syntopical reading. The major pain resides in the dilemma of having to decide whether to re-read a certain part. You did have a hazy reminiscence that you already read it. But it is hazy enough that you felt the need to read it again.

Here is how I deal with it: I highlight while reading on Kindle, those highlights sync to Readwise, and from there into my notes where I progressively summarize and review them through spaced repetition. Each step is a natural filter — not everything cascades through the whole pipeline. The result is a searchable library of passages I personally found relevant, surfaced when I need them rather than re-read when I don't.