What is Reading?

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Francis Bacon, "Of Studies" (1625)

What do you mean when you say you've read a book? Have you read every word?

During a class my first year of graduate school, my professor stated her view that for a master's degree, a history student should know 300 books. For the doctorate, she said, one thousand books was the expectation. Her statement was a little intimidating at first, for it meant reading one academic book every two to three days. Many of these books are densely written and run 400-500 pages.

For that class, we each bought the twelve required texts, and were each assigned one for our individual presentations, and two written assignments--an annotated bibliography and a 15-20 page paper. For my bibliography and paper, I "read" perhaps a dozen more books, and several journal articles. The assignment was to place the book in question in the context of other scholarship on the same topic.* Reading a book with this purpose meant spending as much as two hours identifying the central arguments and the nature of the supporting evidence of each book. An article should take fifteen minutes. With practice, and some familiarity with the subject matter, this level of reading can be achieved in about thirty minutes for most history books.

Reading a novel is another matter. It must be read in sequence and cover-to-cover. Some books may remain unfinished--there is a long list of popular classics that I started and did not finish because I did not like them. For other novels, reading only begins the second or third time through the book. This need for a second and third reading is a characteristic of the sort of dense fiction that I prefer. All reading is rereading, as some French theorist famously suggested.**

How do you read a chess book?

For some chess books, the practice of the historian--skimming, assessing, highlighting key points--might be all you need. A few weeks ago, I reviewed three chess books for beginners that were all terrible. Each was self-published and two seemed as if they were not written by chess players. The third read like a bad machine translation of a decent book in a language other than English. Perhaps two hours were required to read the combined 300 pages of these three books. I did not skip any pages, but did pass rapidly over the surface looking for points where the author said something of merit, or got something egregiously wrong.

There are many chess books on my shelves that I read for an hour or two on the day of purchase, often with the intent to go back and peruse with more attention to detail. Most chess books offer verbal discussion of key ideas, illustrative positions with diagrams, and detailed analysis of positions, sometimes with many branches of possible variations. Reading the text often does not take long, while pondering the variations can keep you tied up for years.

The day I bought Jeremy Silman's Complete Endgame Course (2007), I spent less than two hours racing through the first third of the book, pausing only to think through a few diagrams. Most of the content through what he calls "Endgames for Class C" consists of knowledge I assimilated before I bought the book. Even so, Silman's book transformed the curriculum I was using to teach elementary age chess players. He convinced me that checkmate with knight and bishop was an inefficient use of time, while the Lucena and Philidor rook endings deserved far more attention. Prior to buying his Endgame Course, some ideas presented in How to Reasssess Your Chess, 3rd ed. (1993) had worked their way into my teaching. I cannot say that I have read either of these books, except in part. But I have frequently reread a few parts of Reassess, both 3rd and 4th editions.

I read Excelling at Technical Chess (2004) by Jacob Aagaard more slowly and more deliberately, but still not wholly. It had a profound impact on my play that was vital as I rose from B Class to A within the USCF rating system. Where I was once eager to accept a draw in a seemingly equal position, I started refusing these offers after reading Aagaard. If there is an imbalance that allows me to create problems for my opponent to solve, I insist that we should play on at least a few more moves. I also began to see that some endings, while long and potentially difficult, were not at all equal. See "Excelling at Technical Chess" for an example of the fighting spirit Aagaard helped inspire.

Prereading

When reading some chess books, especially those that present whole games well-annotated, I often follow a longer process. First I locate the next game in the text in a database. I play through the game several times without reference to the book. The first few times, I use no aids, but seek the key moments in the game. Where did the player who lost begin to go wrong?

When I am comfortable with understanding some of the key tactical and positional points, I may use an opening database to research a bit. After I have worked to acquire a thorough understanding of the game, I read the annotations in the text.

Sometimes I will continue by looking at how other books present the same game. I have used this process for dozens of books on my shelves, but Logical Chess Move by Move (1998) by Irving Chernev is the only book for which I have taken this process all the way through every game. I went through the algebraic edition a few years ago, but also have vague memories of a more superficial reading of a library copy of the original descriptive edition in the late-1970s.

This process of "chewing and digesting" a chess book is one that I advocate. Perhaps, if I find the time, I will complete other books in this manner. I started this process a bit over a year ago with Paul Keres, World Championship 1948 (2016), which is a terrific book. Alas, work and other chess books got in the way.

*I discuss this specific book and that graduate class in more detail on Patriots and Peoples, "Pandemic History".
**Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay, trans. Richard Miller (1974).