Reading Triumphant, or Not So Triumphant Depending On Your Goal

I finally finished reading Chesterton's Orthodoxy this morning. You may remember that I had difficulty getting through the last two chapters. The reason for this had nothing to do with the quality of those two chapters.

I read the greater part of the book over the course of two months, and then I got distracted. I had started too many other things. There was too much fiction that I wanted to read. As a matter of fact I have read a lot of fiction since moving to this house. It's like a compulsion. And so I had left the non-fiction mindset. Now that I've finished the book, I realize that I've forgotten so much that was alive to me while I read. I can say that I've read the book, but that reading is less useful than it ought to be because I cannot reproduce it's content in my own mind. I wrote all over the book while I was reading it, and while that is a form of note taking, it may not be the most effective kind.

Michael says that I need to learn to read all over again; that there are habits of reading that will require effort to dispell. I argue that I never have learned effective note taking, that I need someone to teach me. I've read Adler's How to Read a Book.

You want to know how I finally made it through that last chapter? I took the book outside and read aloud to Parker. Reading it aloud helped me to read every word, paying attention to the emphasis implied by Chesterton's sentence structure.

Now that I "have read" the book, I fear that it is time to start it all over again.