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Ask HN: How do you read technical books?

2 points by quaiks ↗ HN
I was wondering how do you read technical books. Do you prefer paper book or eBook? Highlight text or underline? Do you use any special app? Any special summarizing technique?

I like to use Goodreader in my iPad. It let's me create a generated "mini-book" containing all the notes and underlined text with references to the pages containing it.

12 comments

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ainiriand
From left to right.
dllthomas
Don't read many in Hebrew, then?
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
quaiks
Be careful! You have to start at the next line when you get to the vertical line dividing pages.
poseid
as someone who just has finished writing a book, I think skimming the TOC and index are an important part to get an idea of the book's content. If I decide I want to delve into the book, I actually still like paper, since you can easy back and forth, and especially diagrams and code often are much more clear in print.
bgoldste
I have a nook (needed a reader and couldn't wait for amazon shipping. Retail's not dead!). I'll load up pdfs/ebooks to it and read them when I'm commuting. It's pretty convenient but I do often wish I had a real textbook for really heavy stuff, though probably don't want to either lug that around or even read it on a commute.
rubiquity
Slowly.

I'm not that smart so I go through tech books slowly so I can hopefully retain more of it and maybe even apply the knowledge day to day as I acquire it. I've always been jealous of people who rip through a dense (knowledge dense, not pages dense) tech book in a weekend and say they got it all.

The books that are more code oriented, I read on the computer so that I can type and run the code as I work through the book.

The books that are more theory or higher level I read on an e-reader.

sheepmullet
Agreed! The key to digesting a good text book is to cover it slowly.

In my experience each chapter takes about 2 hours to read and digest. Then I need an hour to summarise and reflect. Followed by another 3-4 hours of practice. By this point I can honestly say I understand and can use the material.

So 6-7 hours per chapter. Most books I read have around 12 chapters and so take a good 72+ hours to read a book. Due to work and family commitments I can only read 3-4 tech books like this per year so I try and pick only the best works.

The value you can get out of this way of reading is phenomenal.

bgoldste
These are great suggestions. Also comforting to know that I'm not the only one who needs to go through these slowly.

Since you've been so selective with books, what do you recommend?