How to Read a Difficult Book Without Getting Frustrated or Defeated

It has happened to me multiple times before.

The experience of struggling fruitlessly with a difficult book that started with high hopes of enlightenment.

You know what I am talking about.

Your eyes keep regressing back to the paragraph before. Your brain struggling to make sense. Each page is a colossal effort. And you are making less progress then a lizard on the wall.

Why does reading this book, which held such promise while buying it, feel like a very big mistake now?

I mean, wasn’t this supposed to be brilliant reading experience with a lot of Aha! moments?

If you are with me till now and nodding your head vigorously, then I empathize with you.

And I am also here to tell you that

“It’s not them, it’s us.”

You have a mind. And then there is this book that you want to read.

The author has written this book with the goal of communicating something to you.

It follows that our success in reading this book will be determined by how well we are able to receive every idea that the writer had intended to communicate.

Now, this is of course, is too simple a representation.

Let’s take it a step forward.

There are two possibilities here. Either you understand everything the author has to say perfectly well or you do not.

In the first case, everything that the author has to say is completely intelligible to you from start to end.

Everything makes sense. The book is a breeze and you will finish it in days, sooner rather than later.

However, all it means is that you might have increased your store of information but you could not have increased your understanding.

Think about it.

Since this book is already making sense to you, it means that the symbols on the page are merely expressing the common understanding you already had with the author.

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