More times then I can count I've managed to bore myself into a stupor trying to learn from books. Many of the subjects I'm currently interested in are 'a couple of rungs up the intellectual ladder' - to understand them you need to understand some starting information. The logical way to approach learning them is to learn the basics and then progress to the next step. Unfortunately there's often little joy in learning definitions. It's a struggle not to give up after the first chapter. However, I've had some success with a new method.

1) Decide on a subject of interest and find where those books are in the library.

2) Having roughly figured out which books are on the topic, pick out the one with the most appealing title.

3) Look through the table of contents. If some part of it sounds interesting turn to that section (or the introduction of that chapter ideally). If the table of contents looks dull return the book to the shelf head back to step 2.

4) Skim a page or two of the interesting section - don't worry about not understanding bits. If the authors tone sends me to sleep get a new book and repeat from step 2. Otherwise get the book out.

~~ At home ~~

5) Find the most interesting section and start reading that. As soon as I find a term I don't understand I look it up in the index and figure out what it means. Nothing particularly in depth - just enough that I can keep reading the interesting bit.

6) Upon completing the interesting bit look through the table of contents to see if anything else looks promising. If so go to step 5. If not, return it.

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Forseeable advantages:
* Gives you a decent start - you aren't stuck slogging through a book that just sucks.

* Slogging is reduced to a minimum - by definition you're focusing on stuff that interests you.

* More time efficient - only reading the bits of the book which are useful. I tend to find I forget stuff I wasn't interested in anyway so don't waste time reading it in the first place.

* No 'dictionary learning' burn out - the only definitions you need to learn are the ones you need to learn.

* Easier to remember (?) - sub topics are all linked to interesting (more memorable) topic rather then just floating isolated. Go go association.

* When trying to learn the whole book you have a couple of major 'trees' of background knowledge already growing through it you can link new stuff to.


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For the record: sometimes just going to random sections of the library and even just reading through the titles there has been profitable. For instance, the entire *shelf* of books dedicated to processing coal. I had no idea there was that much too it.