Death to the Traditional Way of Reading Nonfiction Books

I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not enjoy reading. In fact, I used my allowance to buy books and magazines when I was in high school. At the time, I was living in Jamaica. Every Wednesday, after school, I would head to the supermarket to see what they had to offer in new reading materials. As a teenager, I read comic books and Barbara Cartland historical fiction.

Today I love to read, and I have conditioned myself to read from all genres. I read both fiction and nonfiction. My least favorite genre is science fiction, but I read and enjoyed the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. The way I read fiction is very different from the way I read nonfiction.

In addition, I now read nonfiction books very differently from the way I did previously — even five years ago. Instead of reading them sequentially, I read them strategically. The old way of reading a nonfiction book cover-to-cover is dead and gone.

So what happened?

It started back in 2013. As a way to work through grief, I decided to do something I loved, so I read the world. I read books written by authors across the globe. The journey was very therapeutic. However, I noticed that when I was reading nonfiction books, I often experienced déjà vu. “Have I not read this before?” It was a very frustrating…