Continuing onto the second skill highlighted in Robin Good’s article “What We Really Need to Learn to Be Successful in Life – Part 1″ is How to Read.

Reading is my most favourite activity.

Reading is critical thinking for me. However, it’s also HOW we read that is the most important skill and I believe many people have lost this skill in an age full of distractions.

Let’s see what Robin Waldun says about this. He says that we need to learn how to read differently depending on the types of books we are reading.

In the last few years, I have focused my reading efforts on fiction over non-fiction as I find the former allows me to place myself into other situations, environments and experience what the character is going through. It allows me to put myself in their shoes and use the reading experience as some kind of personal transformation.

Slow and Immersive Reading

Recently I read War and Peace and decided to REALLY read it.

I used post it notes, tabs, scribbled in notebooks. The book was dog-eared, spine cracked. It looked like it had gone through the Battle of Austerlitz itself. It became my companion everywhere. I read it slowly, analysed and explored the characters and the situations.

I watched YouTube clips about the battles, I watched the four series Russian epic movie on it at the same time. I learned more about Napoleon in that book than anywhere else as he “came alive” and decimated the picture I had of him in my mind before War and Peace.

That’s when I realised this is HOW you read a book – you LIVE it.

With my reading and gleaning my own life lessons, I decided to create a YouTube channel called Life Lesson From Books. I had hidden all my old Activate Learning videos and instead, made public only those videos related to books, how I read and what lessons I learn from reading.

I’ve written a lot over the years about how I take notes when I read and how I read on this blog. In the past, I have used different software applications and online tools to help me take notes such as Evernote. (Simply do a search on this website on “Note Taking” and you will see the articles OR if you can’t be bothered, you can watch the video below)

However, in recent times, I have simplified my note taking of books simply by making the books themselves into NOTEBOOKS. That is, if there’s no intention to give them away, I’ll scribble in them, put post it notes into them and then keep them LIKE an actual journal/notebook. My husband has a mini heart attack when he looks at my books and cringes at what they look like. Of course, not all books are like this – only ones which I have decided that they need to be EXPERIENCED.

War and Peace, goes without saying is a book that needs to be experienced.

(I’m eyeing off Crime and Punishment or Brothers Karamazov as my next reading immersion experience and think about how they’re going to look like after I am done with them).

Books on How To Read

I checked some of Robin Good’s curated links on How to Read and to be honest, there’s so many more that you can explore.

Over the years I have come across some excellent books that helped in this – focussed on adults, not children learning to read – and these helped somewhat but the ultimate lesson for me is that it’s necessary for you to find your own system.

Some of the books I’d recommend are:

• Mortimer Adler: How to Read a Book
• Harold Bloom: How to Read and Why
  

One of the most recent books I read on How To Read Fiction is by James Wood. It was a great way to consider what techniques authors use to help us immerse ourselves into the reading journey and come out of it transformed.

Another YouTuber who I follow is Leaf By Leaf whose book collection I envy and who shares thorough analyses of all the books he reads. His video on 31 Books on Reading is an amazing collection on the topic.

So How To Read?

One YouTuber who I LOVE to watch is Benjamin McEvoy who does Hardcore Literature who has been a great inspiration for me to read more classics. He shares some excellent tips on How to Read which has helped me too.

However, the BEST video that I found about How to Improve Your Reading by creating unconventional goals (what’s not to love about doing things DIFFERENTLY to others?) is this video by Benjamin where he uses the book and reading to create his own experience around it. Some fantastic ideas about how you can make your reading COME ALIVE! (Who needs TikTok distractions when you can do these?!)

Oh wow, reviewing all these YouTube videos now make me want to pick up Dostoyevsky again. I’m DRIVEN by wanting to immerse myself into the classics once again.

Sigh. Reading. Is there any better joy in life?

So over to you.

What do you think about reading as a skill for success in life?