Truth Unites - How to Read More Books

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Reading advice! Yahoo. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

How do we read more books? There's no real shortcuts to this. It's hard work. There's nothing that's going to take away the hard work. But there are some things that we can do to be more strategic in it. This would be a fun video based upon getting asked this question a lot. I'm going to give five suggestions of things I've found useful, no particular order, though the last one is most important. Read selectively, read sporadically, read strategically, read systematically, read spontaneously. The preacher in me comes out with the alliteration here. First, read selectively. focus on quality, whether it's a book, an article, blog post, whatever. I think to be a good reader actually means tuning out a lot.

There's so much we don't have time to read. I actually think it's not the worst thing to do to just focus on like a series of classic texts and read as the main thing you read. I know people who do that. That's not the worst way to go. I don't think that's whatever all of us should mainly do, but there's worse ways to go. Focus on text you really know will be high quality. And then even within one book read selectively, you don't have to finish every book you read.

It totally depends. Many books we won't finish. C.S. Lewis said this. I think he's right on the money in mere Christianity. He says it's a very silly idea that in reading a book you must never skip. All sensible people skip freely when they come to a chapter which they find is going to be of no use to them. I find this is especially true in academic research skipping around is really important because a lot of what may be coming in any given resource will not be relevant to you. your research and your interests, and also the different parts of a book are not equally valuable.

So, for example, if you read chapter one of 10 books, generally speaking, I think you'll get a lot more benefit than if you read all of one 10 chapter book. Hopefully that makes sense. In other words, even if it's the same amount of total pages, if you read just portions of 10 different books, you probably get a lot more information. A lot of times I'll find with academic books especially. If you just read the introduction, the conclusion, and chapter one, you get a lot of a sense of what else you should read. There's going to be a lot else in that book that isn't as valuable as those sections. But from just that alone, you can get a lot. Now, so skipping around a lot, pulling here and there. There are exceptions to this, of course. There is a particular benefit from

reading certain books, cover to cover, and then rereading certain books. There's some books that I, like that hideous strength by C.S. Lewis, I never see. stop reading. It's just on my iPhone, and I'm always listening to the audio version all the time. And I go back to my favorite passages over and over. But the point is, so some books you really should read cover to cover, I think. But the point for this point is never feel pressure to that. Feel freedom to get what you want out of it by reading selectively. Second of all, read sporadically. So I find this really helps to go when you go to the dentist or when you're watching your kids soccer games or whatever you may be doing, lunch break, whatever, bring a book with you and

just what you never know when you'll have a free 15 minutes, you know. Now, little 15 minute installments may not cover a large quantity of pages. Maybe you're just read seven pages or something like that, but you're more likely to remember what you read in that 15 minutes. Lots of short bursts of reading can cause you to have more memory of the book in at the end of it. So studies have shown, for example, if you're studying and you're studying for three hours, taking little breaks can help you remember more. So studies have talked about this. If you, you know, a good rubric is if you study for three hours, study for 50 minutes and then take a 10-minute break, and then 50 minutes and 10-minute break like that. Because your brain tends to remember the most

right before and after you took a break. So similarly, if you punctuate your daily schedule with these little reading installments, it's amazing how that will have a cumulative better learning experience than if you just try to cram it all into like six hours on a Saturday or something like that. And that relates to a theme that I want to emphasize throughout this video. And that's, it's much more about quality of reading than quantity. You know, I find people often think about how many books have you read? How many books can I read? How many books do you read every year? How many books do you read a book a day? You know, people bragging about it, they're reading a book a day and so forth. I've never been able to understand that.

To me, it's all about the quality of the reading experience and which books you're reading and then how much you're really absorbing. I would encourage people to say, think less about how many books you can get through and more upon the quality of that experience and what it is doing to you and how it's shaping you. Are you truly absorbing new ideas and new distinctions and new ways of thinking? Is your mental map getting extended outwards? Are you having light bulb moments, are you gaining new understanding and so forth? Is your imagination growing through the process? So that's my advice there. Third, read strategically. Now, for me, this works best early in the morning. I have this experience. I'm probably not the only one. I really don't think I'm the only one,

where my brain kind of resets while I'm sleeping at night. Sleep is amazing for your brain. Your brain is basically sort of repairing itself in various ways while you sleep. So when you first wake up, there's a freshness and an ability to concentrate that you cannot replicate at 3 p.m. by just jamming something in the middle of the day there. So what I try to do is on a reading day, before I get to the internet, wake up early and drink a lot of coffee. The internet tends to clutter our brain, just constant cluttering. And this reduces our ability for sustained critical reflection, which is the key discipline with reading. The good news is you can recover that discipline by what.

working at it. It's like anything in life. It's like a garden. You can cultivate it and grow it and so forth. If you give a garden, lots of tending and water and sunlight, it grows. And same with your imagination and your critical thinking. You can tend this and cultivate this. If it feels overwhelming or unrealistic for people to do this frequently, just think about taking one day a week where you don't open any screens or anytime early on. You get up early, lots of coffee. If you're a coffee drinker like me, and then you're just going straight into it and your mind has a calmness in those early hours of the morning. Maybe that's not true for everybody. That's my experience. I'm not even a morning person, but just the dynamics of sleep help. For me, the most productive kind of days, it's amazing

what you can do if you just, you kind of, you're almost sort of psychologically gearing up the night before realizing, okay, tomorrow's the day, I'm going to hit the books, and then you're up early, and then there's lots of coffee, and you just tune out everything else. And then if I'm going to sustain that into the afternoon, I'll punctuate it with exercise in the middle, like go for a swim or go for a bike ride or something, and that helps break up the day. It gives my mind freshness going into the afternoon. You kind of have to figure out what works for you, you know? Very few people, I think, can just read or think well and flourish by looking at a screen and doing that kind of work just nine to five. So I find planning out these bursts of focus where you tune out the internet. The worst thing to do

is just kind of, you know, be, failed to be proactive in cultivating these times and just say, well, it'll just happen on its own. It never happens on its own. The internet is constantly encroaching. We have to be disciplined to push back and cultivate that critical thinking time. So find what works for you. I hope none of this feels like a burden because the other theme of this video that I really want to emphasize is to try to enjoy it and don't overtax yourself and don't make it a burden, you know? That'll be the last point. Number four, read systematically. So I find it helps to have a note-taking system and to read with a pen. For me, I highlight during the reading process, and then I write down at the back of the book my takeaways. So I'll write, you know,

page one, and then I'll write what I learned. And especially for research reading, academic reading, that way I can come back to it and I immediately know what are my bullet point takeaways, as opposed to you read the whole book and then you're trying to remember what you learn from it and it's all kind of a blur, you know. So I think it helps to take a proactive, kind of aggressive approach to the book, not being a passive reader, but kind of tackling it, summarizing your takeaways at the key junctures, digesting it by, sometimes it helps to put it into your own words and to summarize what you're learning. Tell somebody, what's this book about in one sentence. You know, what is your main takeaway as succinctly as you can put it? In preaching,

there's a principle called the 3am test, which is if you wake up in the middle of the night, 3 a.m., can you immediately remember what the sermon is about? If not, it's not clear enough. Similar for reading, we want to be able to have as much clarity as possible to try to, and so while we're reading, I think it helps to sometimes pause and articulate or write down what is going on. How do we put it into our own words? For me, I'm reading this book right now by David Oderberg called Real Essentialism. It's from my video that's going to come out in a little bit called Can Math Prove God? It's the argument from Eternal Truths. So I'll write down stuff on the pages and then at the end I'll put kind of my takeaways and then on this side I'll

even put like just other random thoughts that are coming to me while I'm reading. The point is you kind of have to be aggressive to tackle it and organize your reaction to the book in some way that works for you. These are just suggestions. Of course, you do it totally different than I do. Last one, this is the most important. I'm going to call it to stick with the alliteration, read spontaneously. What I mean by this is it's less about having the right methodology or the right protocol or plan. People are always asking, you know, how do you do this or what's the right way to do it? And there is no right way. In a good reading experience, it's just about the curiosity. Your emotions should be engaged. It's about there should be passion involved. And this is why I say,

focus on what you enjoy. Read what interests you. When you get bored, move on. Now, I don't, there are times to kind of persevere. And even though you're struggling through a book, I've had this experience many times. It feels like you're tackling a wild animal and it takes determination to just finish this book. It's like, I will not be, I will finish this book. So there is time for that. But in general, to the extent that you can cultivate curiosity and then seek the curiosity, that is what makes the difference, honestly. It's amazing how productive you can be if it's fun and if you enjoy it because it doesn't feel like work. It's like a metaphor would be if somebody enjoys playing tennis. They're constantly playing tennis. It's just what they love to do. After dinner, they're back

out there again, after playing all day because they just enjoy it so much. Someone's going to come along and say, how do you practice your serves? And they're going to say, you know, it just, it comes in the context of this sort of existential commitment and love of playing the game. And I think to whatever extent we, again, I think discipline about the internet helps us. But to whatever extent we can cultivate curiosity really helps us with the whole reading enterprise. And I actually think this is biblical. Ecclesiastes has a lot to say about enjoying life. It says that enjoying life is good, and it says that with a full realism about the vanity and the suffering of life. And I love this little verse at the end of the book where this wise teacher,

who obviously is not denigrating learning and wisdom, says, of the making of many books, there is no end. And much study is a weariness of the flesh. And that's true. If you approach reading with this mentality of the more the better, that will be a crushing burden, and it's really not the best way to do it. Instead, I encourage people to focus on being curious and then just dive in for what you're interested in. And then the key thing, final thought, is use whatever knowledge you acquire to serve others. Don't write or speak or wield your knowledge to be impressive. Do so to meet needs. This is the example set for us by Christ. True greatness is in serving others. Great writers do that. Like C.S. Lewis is a great writer because he's not trying to be a great writer. He's trying to be

clear. And here's a great final reminder from these amazing words in 1st Corinthians 8. Knowledge is to the end of love. It's not about power. It's not about being impressive. It's to the end of loving and serving others, but then ultimately loving God. So those are my tips. What would you add? Let me know in the comments, short, fun video. If you like these kinds of videos, let me know too, and I'll do others. I was going to do one on four ways to be happy, giving advice to young men of just different things we tend to neglect that make life happier and richer. They'll be like talk about friendship, talk about hobbies, stuff like that. So let me know if you're interested in more of these kinds of videos. Thanks for watching everybody.