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benrutter 2 days ago

I love this advice! Maybe with a caveat that reading is also a good way of discovering what's worth re-reading. If the ideas/evidence from the first read really capture you, then go back again and read more deeply.

I think even more so than non-fiction, this is really true of literature that gets labelled "difficult". I find a lot of people bounce of more dense/experimental texts, especially poetry, because they want to understand every aspect of the text. That's especially true when there's external pressures as well, like with school-children reading Shakespeare.

In my experience, being more loose about the need to understand every part of a text deeply frees people up to actually enjoy things a lot more.