Chapter 19 learn to skim

Looking through the above, I found myself more than once suggesting that you skip something while reading.But maybe this reminder is not necessary.I guess only a scholar would abandon the useful technique of skimming and peruse the profusion of Latin aphorisms in Montaigne's prose (as was the fashion at the time).It would be an industriousness for any reader to read the last chapters of The Brothers Karamazov verbatim.It is enough for me to skim over Dostoevsky's long list of exhortations at his trial.As times change, so do our tastes, and so even great books have something to grow long and tedious.We no longer like the moral discourses that prevailed in the eighteenth century, or the lengthy descriptions of landscapes that the writers of the nineteenth century favored.When fiction moved toward realism, writers fell in love with describing for the sake of describing, only to discover much later that only the relevant details are truly gripping.

Knowing how to skim is knowing how to make reading rewarding and enjoyable.But I can't tell you exactly how to skim because I can't do it myself.I was always worried that I would miss something useful to me when I was skimming, so I had to read page after page of text that bored me.But once I started skimming, I couldn't stop, and finally closed the book feeling unsatisfied because I knew I didn't treat it well.At this time, I always thought that it would be better not to read.