How to Get the Most Out of a Book.

How I read books has changed over the years, but one thing I wish I had known earlier in life was how to read analytically and get the most out of the books I read. We aren’t taught at school the magic of making literature work for us, of how much power the reader has in contorting the text to blend with how their brain works and get more out of the book than the author ever intended (huge shout-out to Roland Barthes for putting it far better than I ever could).

What Analytical Reading is (and is Not).

Most people dislike analytical reading because school teachers never explain the beauty of it properly. If I had a pound for every adult who made the joke, “Why were the curtains blue? Because it symbolised the author’s sadness. No, it didn’t; the curtains were just bloody blue!” I’d have a decent chunk of my doctorate paid off for me.

Analytical reading isn’t about reading things into the text that the author never intentionally put there for the sake of putting words into the author’s mouth or adding depth the author never intended there to be. Analytical reading is about transforming how the text can be read to add depth beyond what the author intended because that’s how literature changes the world and people’s lives; it’s about discovering how it could be read from different perspectives, philosophical…