What is the best way to absorb the material from a book?

Learn by doing! Get your hands dirty. If the books show an example, put it into practice! It's the best advice I can give - that's how I learn the best.

I found that reading good books helps a ton. Dry, purely technical books are no good to me: I put them down at most halfway through, because I forgot how it all started.

A good book will keep me amazed from the first page to the last, even if it's a programming book (FYI, Learn You a Haskell for Great Good is such a book - wish all of them were of the same quality), and I won't find it hard to remember what I read a day before. When the author makes the book interesting, I found that it sticks to me much more easily.

So, find good books, that are a joy to read, and you'll have a much easier time absorbing their content ;)

osmosis

Get the physical copy of a book that you think you will dig into, instead of the eBook or borrowing it from the library or colleague. Then you’re free to abuse it by making dogears, highlighting important passages, writing your own observations in the margins, etc. and really making the book—and the subject—yours. Yes you can do it with a Kindle, but this is about adding your flavour to the material and it’s a pain in the ass to make your own notes on an eBook reader.

Don’t try to read a lot of different books at once (I prefer to read one non-fiction and one or two fiction books at once). I find it very difficult to grasp the material if I’m reading several technical books at once and I’m still a student. If you find yourself switching between several books, you might have picked the wrong resources to learn from. A good book, even a technical one, should pull you in and never let go. If you stop midway you’ll most likely forget much of what you have read when you return.

Theres actually a book titled "How to read a book?" And its actually got some good ideas but is a little long winded. Essentially it says that you need to question the content from different angles - from the authors point of view, for different types of readers point of view etc.

Get into a good mood, read it in a good environment, sleep, and repeat. If you want to read it and type in bits, then read it through entirely away from the computer, then on another day read it through stopping to type bits in to compile.

In general I'm not sure but for programming specifically it should help to do the book example and then code your own similar example. Save it in a folder where you can easily look stuff up if you forget it.

Most IDE's also have a clips feature or something similar that may work well for code storage.

As you read:

1. Write notes in a separate, clean notebook.

2. Ask questions. Write down the questions.

3. Read fewer books, but read them well.

For me, writing and asking questions significantly enhance reading comprehension.

Don't just highlight. Take notes for all the concepts, but instead of writing the passage down verbatim, paraphrase it and include a page number for reference later.

Bring up the more interesting concepts in discussions and gather your friends' thoughts on them.

Take a look at www.efaqt.com.