I agree that one of these books could be read in roughly four months. But that project would have to be a fairly major commitment. I mean, Marx and Smith aren’t the densest things in the world, but they’re still fairly high-viscosity. Reading all three? It’s a pretty big ask. In my opinion, unrealistic.
I’ve read big works like that at a pretty good clip, but those books were all things in my narrow specialization, and I was passionate, informed, single, childless, more or less jobless, and high as hell on cigarettes, coffee, and weed. (At least I wasn’t blowing out my renal system with speed like a lot of my colleagues.)
Yeah, this only works for a class, and for non-fiction books. Because step 0 of this list is deciding you are fully committing yourself to this book, and reading it at least twice. Sometimes I get a ways in and decide this isn’t even worth the effort and abandon it.
And step 2 is a bit ridiculous - I don’t really want to become a person who Marx, Smith, or Keynes’s books directly speak to. I appreciate the rigor in reading it as a booster and then as a skeptic, but you don’t need to do that to get 90% of the book, which is plenty if this isn’t your field of study or if you don’t absolutely love the book.
Here’s more practical advice:
- The single most important thing when reading a dense book is uninterrupted focus and getting in the zone.
- Therefore, MAKE UNINTERRUPTED TIME to read it, at least an hour at a shot, possibly two. Get your drink, get your comfy chair, get your blanket, whatever you need. This is where books fail most people now, because you can’t get into the groove when you’re constantly checking your phone, just like an open office is death for productivity for workers who need to think. But you can even do this on the bus as long as you focus.
- If you can’t do this then just give up here, it’s just not for you.
- Don’t do it lying down. Even with the best of intentions, zzzzzz, then bonk
- If you find yourself confused, go back a bit and re-read the last page or two given the current context. Perhaps you read something and didn’t realize it would be foundational to the next section. If it’s still confusing, then make a mental bookmark and go on. Often it’s just the author being disorganized and s/he just dropped some assertion in unsupported, or later supported.
- Be receptive and skeptical at the same time. It’s good mental exercise. Note that this step is optional - you can choose to take it all at face value.
- Sometimes reading the footnotes is useful, but often it really breaks up the flow and takes you out of it, especially when there are a lot and they are at the back of the book.
- Don’t be afraid to abandon it if it fails to live up. This is a major time commitment and some books just aren’t worth reading. Generally I skip to another section and see if it’s any better. If not, two strikes and you’re out. For example Marx is not a good writer, maybe just read a summary - but you should at least try once, maybe it’ll catch you.
- Take notes if that’s your style - I usually like to note things I want to research on the internet when my reading time is done. Don’t try that it now, you’re lost to ADHD.
None of that’s too hard and with that I can regularly clear 700+ page non-fiction.
It is probably new to Econ 105 students, who are probably in their first semester of college. And helpful in introducing that there is more than one way to read a book.
Yep. I don’t read nearly as many books as I used to. The scattered chatter on my phone, especially, calls for my attention in a way that’s so often so hard to resist. I’m sure phones are also a big impediment to student reading now.
Read an entire book? WHY? I’ll just read a summary or two, then come to class to learn ABOUT the book.
I think for a lot of students (college or otherwise), novels and other books are becoming things to learn ABOUT, as much as things to read and experience on their own terms.
Actually, one piece of advice I heard a professor give his class was, “before class, read the chapter. Make no attempt to understand it, or even any of the words on the page. Then come to lecture. Then read it again.” The structure gets in the way of a lot of people understanding, so it helps to prime yourself. Then the lecture sketches out the concept. Then actually reading it elaborates on and solidifies it all.
The thing that got me bogged down with Smith is that he gets into ideas that, today, we would analyze with differential equations or time series analysis. Slogging through the ideas without having the math written down cleanly was really slow and painful. 
How I read Atlas Shrugged:
- Audiobook just so I could do something else at the same time.
- Suppress the desire to jam pencils in my ears after 5 hours.
- Suppress urge to punch every character in balls.
- Suppress urge to punch Ayn Rand halfway though the speech.
- Wonder if an editor could have salvaged this mess by cutting at least half.
- Suppress urge to punch fans of the book when finished.
(Oh wait, you mean difficult as in technical books or just bloody irritating?)
To really appreciate Atlas Shrugged you have to read only the Cliff Notes and be a smug college student.
I do realize now that my problem is I didn’t read it when I was a teenager or a sociopath so it had the wrong effect on me.
go see “Knives Out” 
this is much much better than the OP, or at least more appropriate for the title.
What I accidentally figured out at the time was that getting some good, single malt Irish whiskey, a couple of friends and reading it out loud helped a bunch. Ulysses taught me the sounds were as imporant as what was on the page. Still, we gave up after 100 or so pages (then again, few can say they’ve made it that far).
I was young and ambitious when I read GR (more than once). It took a while. Then Blood Meridian took a full year. Infinite Jest took at least five. What I’ve discovered is that certain books just stick with you. You can put them down, for a fair length of time, and go back to where you were. Mysteries and the like I can often reread because I don’t remember anything. Almost new. The granddaddy of writing memorably has to be Tolstoy. War and Peace is easy once you accommodate to the style (not unlike reading Dickens). Ok, those last hundred pages are a bit of a slog. But you remember the oddest things. Had a Russian lit course and one of only two books we read was Anna Karenina. I’m pretty sure the Prof studied under Nabokov and Nabokov was feared and famous for asking insane questions on, like, finals. My Prof asked, “Twice in Anna Karenina, she says, ‘I am very, very happy.’ State when these occurred and the meaning.” I looked at that for all of 10 seconds with my jaw on the floor and suddenly realized that I knew the fucking answer and began writing furiously. Mind you, I didn’t major in English. It was math.
- A “sympathetic but not credulous” approach on the first and only reading.
- Note key points and interesting facts/quotes.
- Verify notes.
- Forget everything.
Same with Marx. There are some infuriatingly repetitive sections where he walks through every stage of a feedback loop… then does it again starting at a different point… then again starting at a third point. I was tearing my hair out until I realized that, oh right, feedback loops were not a commonly understood idea in the mid-18th century! It’s easy to forget how many really powerful intellectual tools even a moderately educated person has at their disposal now.
- Never room with an Economics student
I was actually kind of hoping for real advice that would help me read.
Much of what I own is large technical books on esoteric subjects which I used to read voraciously and spontaneously to the point of memorization.
Then I was given some medications for depression and ever since then my natural hyper-focus and urge to read has evaporated. Something about them changed my natural disposition to read and I am still trying to figure out how to get it back.
I have been told Ritalin creates hyper-focus among many students cramming for finals. That, of course, assumes one has licit access to it.
- Orient yourself by becoming the kind of reader the book is directed at—the kind of person with whom the arguments would resonate.
This is why I never got through Atlas Shrugged.
I am assuming the whiskey ran out.
