About reading methods

Read only one book at a time. Zeng Guofan, a politician in the Qing Dynasty, read it like this: "A hundred schools of thought contend and sweat, or he wants to read, but it is not appropriate to read a person's books from east to west." This reading method is most suitable for people who want to practice basic skills and lay a solid foundation for academic research.

2. Wave gradual method

Read one book at a time, but don't try to finish it all at once. You can read it again later. Mao Zedong read a book "Selected Works of Zhaoming" at school, and read it several times in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. When time is short, or when reading some "difficult" books, you might as well adopt this method.

3. Comparative reading method

This method is to read several books at a time and read them in a comparative way. When others praised Chen Shou's History of the Three Kingdoms, Xiahou Kun, a historian who wrote Shu Wei, was unconvinced. He didn't know that the reflection was better than his own Shu Wei, and immediately burned the manuscript. You can benefit a lot from this method when doing research or writing papers.

4. Vertical reading method

Reading from top to bottom is like going down stairs. Because some books contain too little gold, you just need to browse. A faster method, also called "skip reading", is to grasp the outline of the article, cut off the background, supplement the narrative, etc., and skip without reading. Vertical reading can effectively improve reading efficiency, which is good for reading ordinary novels or browsing materials quickly.

5. Choose your words carefully

This method pays attention to reading word by word, and reads it carefully. A good work contains a lot of information and gold content, and high-speed reading will inevitably lead to indigestion, so you must think while reading. Qin Mu, an essayist, first read "swallowed the whale" roughly, and then "chewed the cow", studying the taste carefully like a cow ruminating. Reading with your eyes is just a matter of seeing and reading with your heart. Careful choice of words is especially suitable for reading classics.