How to Read A Book 1

I started this book late last week after finishing the Cancer Code. I may write up the Cancer Code at some point, but for now I don't think there's a lot of benefit in doing so. The book explores the history of Cancer treatment and how this disease has been much harder to understand and therefore find a treatment, despite the significant investment of money and intellectual efforts. I found the book extremely informative, but also depressing. I'm glad I read the book, but it was a lot and I will probably have to read a lot more on the subject to have any reasonable understanding. There are some general take aways I found helpful. First, be careful with anything that can suppress your immune system. Second, avoid type 2 diabetes and obesity in general. Third, be careful to avoid anything that creates prolonged cellular damage. Beyond that, there's no magic mix of vitamins or key foods or such that has yet been determined to make a huge difference. There is hope that this will change in the near future- the understanding of the disease in the last few years has changed dramatically. I've got my notes still on the book and I may add it then.

The last several days I've moved back to a book I'm much more comfortable with, and pretty eager to read. I'm still trying to develop some better practices about building up my general knowledge in a way that is going to stick with me and build up over time. My readings into Zettelkasten let me to this book titled, How to Read A Book.

It's by no means a new book. In fact, the principle author, Mortimer J. Adler, passed away in 2001. The original version of the book was published in 1940 and the revision I'm reading done in collaboration with Charles Van Doren was published in 1972 (which is interesting given the edition I am reading was published in 2011...). I think this book falls into the category "why am I just finding this now?", along with The Inner Game of Tennis, when I first read The Goal, and probably lots of other books. I think the issue with books is that beyond a few classic pieces of literature or major works in science or philosophy, lots of books fall out of popularity rather than staying relavant for their message or content.

I'm not sure that this book is going to be a gamechanger for me, but what I hope is I can take the practical tips he suggests and implement them at least in motivation in my own system. So far, I think I need to do more prework before investing a lot of time reading a book. I had started this idea by tracking the purpose and what I want to get out of the book, but he mentions strategies of pre-reading and even the notion of speed reading or skimming (there were apparently lots of speed reading courses available in 1972). Then from that initial work, decide from there if the book is worth investing more effort.

I think part of my problem is that I try to be selective about the books I acquire. I don't want to admit if/when I get sucked into buying something that is more marketing than substance, so I dutifully read it to the same level of detail as some sort of classic. I need to stop that. If the book ends up being a lemon, I ought to move on.

At any rate, I'm enjoying this book, and this may be the last book I attempt to take notes using my previous system. I suspect the new one will incorporate most of the old, but I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to build at this point. Time will tell.