[Standing in his home library / office space]
INTERVIEWER: Did you read these?
DERRIDA: No, I haven't read these. I haven't read all the books that are here.
INTERVIEWER: But you've read most of them?
DERRIDA: No, no. Three or four. But I read those four really, really well.
> Reading without reflecting has been compared to eating without digesting. ‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested’, Francis Bacon put it more accurately. One page or even one paragraph properly digested will be more fruitful than a whole volume hurriedly read. Or, as the film mogul, Sam Goldwyn, said to a hopeful author, ‘I have read part of your book all the way though.’ When you come across significant parts – the passages that speak to you – it is worth remem- bering the counsel of the Book of Common Prayer: ‘Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.’
I thought E-books and Audible would change the game and make it easier to consume books, but it still requires a lot of mental and physical bandwidth to consume a book. It's very active and requires a 'reading muscle' to get good at reading, or even listening to one (on Audible).
I've tried various tools like Kindle and speed-reading apps, but they fail horribly in that they still require that reading muscle. There is no way out of this; you have to put in the work of reading a book, and the time investment (alongside cashflow to bring in steady streams of curated books for consuming).