No Stupid Questions

It's okay to read things multiple times, get stuck, stop and think, take a long time, etc. The fact that you're not just blowing through the reading is a sign that you are critically engaging with the material.

Lately I've been reading more technical/mathematical books than socialist theory since I started engineering school, but here are some of the reading habits I've developed.

I very rarely ever read a book cover-to-cover in a linear fashion. For math books, I usually skim the contents, then read the preface. Then, the first pass of the book is just to learn the notation and conventions, and to get the most basic overview of what is going on. (For socialist books, this might mean how words look in the font the book uses, the structure of the book, words you've never seen before, definitions (especially if the author uses some words with a novel definition!), standing assumptions, and the conclusions the book makes.) Then, for the second reading, you gotta follow the proofs/arguments more carefully. And the third and subsequent readings are focused on specific sections that you figure out in previous readings that you want to take away from the book.

My preference is to read on a computer sitting at a desk, but I keep copies of basically all my books on my phone so if I'm too sad to get out of bed, or if I'm stuck waiting in line, I can read any time, anywhere, basically anything.

Personally, I prefer dark mode, to the point that I invert the color of my PDFs. (In Okular, I usually use the "invert lightness" option. The default "invert" option makes blues oranges, greens reds, etc., which is annoying for color diagrams.) I personally like to read while listening to tech metal in the coldest room I can find. (Music silences the "head voice", i.e. if you're reading this right now you are probably imagining how it sounds. This slows down your reading; you can read a little faster than you process speech. I pick tech metal because it's a subset of what I like, it's energetic which gives me the energy to keep reading, but it's proggy as fuck so it makes me feel smart 🤓. If you don't want to have your ears melted off, try some jazz. IMO make sure you have at least 24 hours of study music on hand. For some people, music makes it way way worse, so be careful 😆) I just picked up some noise cancelling headphones and even with no music, it's so fucking helpful to be able to actively cancel some of the outside noise. And I like to read away from my room/bed whenever possible.

IMO the key here is: make yourself comfortable when you read. And only you know what makes you comfortable 😄. Reading should be fun!

If I get stuck on an equation or passage in any reading, I will spend a finite amount of time racking my brain and the Internet trying to get through it under my own power. (First reading, up to about 5 minutes. Second reading, up to about 30 minutes. Subsequent readings, however much time I have left to read, since I probably decided to read the section to nail down the equation/passage I'm having trouble with.) IMO thinking through problems is a hugely important part of reading and just life, but the thing with books is that sometimes, your question gets answered later in the book. E.g., in pure math books, authors sometimes define objects before they tell you (or you figure out from context) why that definition matters or what it aims to encode.

Hope this helps.