how to read non-fiction books quickly (Oxford ruined my video)
How to read a non-fiction book?
One of the most effective reading technique is predictive reading. What is predictive reading?
Just by looking at the title of a book you can predict and narrow down the content of the book.
It helps you understand the book quickly. So let's a look at a random example. “Political Thinkers:
from Socrates to the Present”. Obviously it's a book about political thinkers from around the
world. Before I open the book I try to think of any political thinkers I know. The best
way is try to come up with one or two thinkers from each continent or regions of the world.
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle from Greece, Sun Tsu, Confucius and Mao from China, Gandhi from
India, Nietzsche and Marx from Germany, Lenin from Russia, Nelson Mandela from South Africa,
Avicenna from Iran, Jean-Jacque Rousseau from France, Machiavelli from Italy. And so on.
Now let's have a look at the table of continent. We should find most of those names we have
predicted. Yes we have the Greeks. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. We have some Italians.
We have quite a lot of British actually, Thomas Hobbes, John Lock, David Hume, Stuart Mill,
Jeremy Bentham. Some French. Quite a few Germans. Let's move away from Europe a bit and find some
Chinese or Indians or Africans or South Americans. Perhaps a some from the middle east. Here we go.
You gotta be kidding me. Index? What the heck is index? It seems there is nobody from Asia,
Africa, South America or the Middle East. None? Zero? Zilch? Nothing? Stupid Oxford University.
This should be called “European Political Thinkers: mostly British”.
Maybe this reading technique, I mean predictive reading, doesn't work with books by Oxford
University Press. But with other books, maybe by Cambridge University, it should work. Or maybe,
political thinking only happens in Europe? Perhaps the rest of the world just do politics without
thinking about it? Is that why there is a lot of conflict outside Europe? I think I need to
read more non-fiction. Stupid Oxford University Press ruined my video. Really sorry about that.
