Reading a Book.

Books Here's some pretty common sense but nevertheless useful to be reminded help on how to read books from Clio and the Contemporary, an old fashioned group blog written by historians.

It's supposed to be the university students and only partially makes sense for non-fiction, but a couple of items stood out to me:

"Create a reward system that motivates you. I place a post-it at the end of each chapter so I know approximately how many pages I have left to read. I use these post-its as benchmarks – as mini-motivators to get through my reading. Sometimes I add other motivators, such as a timer to challenge myself to read more expediently—I rarely get the work done within the time limit I set but just having the timer forces me to read more quickly. And, finally, I almost always plan a reward for myself for when I get to a post-it (a small victory!). For example, I’ll tell myself: “when I finish this chapter, I’ll go get a cup of tea” or “when I get through this section, I can eat a cookie” or “when I finish the book, I will take a walk with my dog.”"

Being such a slow reader, I tend to keep to a chapter at a time regime, which is fine for TARGET novelisations, less so for the more esoteric history books.