How To Read And Absorb Difficult Books Emily Rudow

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Oct 31, 2025, 2:35 AM

how to read and absorb difficult books emily rudow

I’m a self-proclaimed avid reader (and audiobook listener), which has been a core part of my life over the last few years. However, I find myself gravitating towards the same literary genres, or books that I would describe as falling within my comfort zone: self-development, business, fitness/nutrition, and my guilty pleasure, psychological thrillers. My love of reading started off as a hobby, but has now turned into a big part of my workday. What started as one hour in the morning with my coffee quickly turned into 2 hours, and eventually became 3-4 hours per day. Over the last 6 months or so, I really started expanding my horizons—diving into new genres, disciplines and tackling more difficult reads. While this takes significantly more self-discipline, patience, and an active reading habit, the payoff of getting through these challenging books has made it all worth it.

Last summer, I attempted to read Ulysses by James Joyce without any sort of primer—I just read the back of the book and the introduction (which included a short history of the text). I thought I had prepared myself for this literary beast by reading some classic literature prior, including authors like Oscar Wilde, Slyvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. I was feeling confident, and obviously niave. After struggling hard through the first two chapters, I abandoned Ulysses entirely—feeling perplexed, discouraged, and slightly cross-eyed. While Farewell to Arms took me a bit to warm up to in terms of style, understanding the narrative, and getting to know the characters, with Joyce, I was completely lost and had no... If you’ve read—or attempted to read Ulysses, then you know what I’m talking about.

I decided to try my luck again this year by picking it up again for the second time, but approached it in a completely different context. I just finished Ulysses last week; my hardest read to-date which provided the inspiration for this article. For those that aren’t familiar with Joyce or his work, Ulysses is a modernist novel that was published in 1920 and is considered “the marathon of literature.” Joyce is known for mixing different narrative... He pushed barriers in language, and was prolific for his lack of censorship, and for incorporating controversial views or “taboo” topics into his work (ie. his sacrilegious views on the Roman Catholic Church). For example, in episode 14 (Oxen of the Sun), Joyce showcases the gestation of the English language by combining prose that spanned Latinate alliterative Anglo-Saxon, medieval, Elizabethan, early seventeenth-century, and Gothic prose…among others.

Trust me when I say that this was by far the hardest chapter. Reading has arguably been the most important habit I’ve picked up over the years. Books have been a source of wisdom — a friend I turn to when I encounter a roadblock. Whenever I’m faced with a new problem or issue, I seek out wisdom from others. What I’ve found is that life’s problems aren’t just unique to me; there’s a shared human experience; a sense of solidarity, which others have not only dealt with, but have imparted to others through... Reading not only produces that blanket of comfort, but also provides a roadmap to help you tackle whatever you’re facing.

Challenge, accomplishment, ongoing learning and personal growth are key values to me. I’ve carved out time in my day to ensure that I’m spending time on the activities that bring me real joy and fulfillment — things like reading, writing, and training. Reading is an evolving habit where I’m not just looking to inhale as many books as possible, but rather, I’m always in search of new ways to get the most out of the books... I aim for quality > quantity which means being patient, re-reading passages where my mind wandered elsewhere, and engaging with the book by means of highlighting, making notes, and Googling unfamiliar terms, concepts and... When I first started reading non-fiction, I would only read books on self-help. I read obsessively, applied everything I could, and saw significant improvements in my life.

But by the tenth self-help book, I hit a massive reading slump. Everything sounded the same—just repackaged ideas with different authors, titles, and covers. Consequently, I no longer felt motivated or excited to read, and I convinced myself I had learned everything I could possibly know. One day, desperate to feel inspired again, I went to the bookstore. I browsed the self-help section first, but nothing stood out. So I kept wandering through the different sections: first psychology, then business, neuroscience, and economics.

As I weaved my way through various genres, wanting to read almost every book I encountered, it hit me: I had exhausted one subject but still knew nothing about countless others. Suddenly, the slump disappeared. I wasn’t bored or uninspired anymore. Instead, I was now overwhelmed by how much I didn’t know and all the subjects I wanted to explore. Despite wanting to take nearly every book home with me, I decided to be a responsible shopper and buy just one. I chose Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, a nearly 500-page book on behavioral economics.

I had no background in the subject, but I gave it a shot anyway. It wasn’t exactly beginner-friendly — dense with research and terminology that felt complex to me at the time — but I pushed through. It seems obvious why textbooks are hard to read. The material is dense; there’s a lot of information packed into relatively few words. Authors often feel obligated to give you a broad, complete understanding of a topic rather than to weave an interesting story from selected details. Teachers are ready to assign a textbook, even if it’s boring; it’s seen as a regrettable but unavoidable problem.

But there’s a more subtle reason that it’s hard to stay engaged when you read a textbook. To find out why, read this paragraph, one you might find in a typical high school textbook. The Manhattan Project was the United States’ effort to produce a nuclear weapon, and it was the largest construction enterprise in the history of science. Because of its sensitive nature, a massive effort was made to keep the project secret. Famous scientists traveled under aliases; Enrico Fermi was known as Henry Farmer, for instance. And all telephone conversations at the test sites were monitored.

Despite those efforts, historians agree that it probably would have been impossible to keep the secret if not for the fact that the project was of relatively small size. Did you notice that the last sentence contradicted the first? Embedding a mistake or contradiction into a text and seeing whether readers notice it is a common research technique to measure comprehension. Readers are asked to judge each text on how well it’s written and explain their rating. Readers are very likely to notice a word they don’t know. They are also very likely to notice if the grammar of a sentence is wrong.

But they are much less likely to notice when two sentences contradict each other. Forty percent of high school students missed the contradiction in the paragraph above. To put it another way, if readers simply understand each sentence on its own, they figure they are doing what they’re supposed to do. Katie Azevedo July 31, 2023good habits, reading comprehension, study skills If you’re a student of any age, you’re going to read hard books for school. This is a fact of life.

But whether you consider yourself a good reader or not, reading hard books will always take more effort and sometimes different approaches than reading other types of books. In this post, I teach you how to read hard books with 7 strategies. The strategies below will help you get through difficult novels, including non-fiction, fiction, and biographies. Priming is a strategy that involves getting a brief overview of the topic you’ll be reading about before you read it, so that what you read has a place to “stick” in your mind. Why is this important? Because the more you know about a subject, the better you’ll be able to process and understand new information about that subject.

Think of it this way: If you’ve eaten an orange before, you’ll have an easier time describing the flavor of a grapefruit the first time you eat a grapefruit. Understanding the orange’s flavor (sweet, tart, citrus-y) helps you categorize and experience the flavor of a grapefruit. I’m a self-proclaimed avid reader (and audiobook listener), which has been a core part of my life over the last few years. However, I find myself gravitating towards the same literary genres — or books that I would describe as falling within my comfort zone: self-development, business, fitness/nutrition, and my guilty pleasure, psychological thrillers. My love of reading started off as a hobby but has now turned into a big part of my workday. What started as one hour in the morning with my coffee quickly turned into two hours, and eventually became 3–4 hours per day.

Over the last six months or so, I really started expanding my horizons — diving into new genres, disciplines, and tackling more difficult reads. While this takes significantly more self-discipline, patience, and an active reading habit, the payoff of getting through these challenging books has made it all worth it. Last summer, I attempted to read Ulysses by James Joyce without any sort of primer — I just read the back of the book and the introduction (which included a short history of the... I thought I had prepared myself for this literary beast by… The purpose of reading is not just raw knowledge. It’s that it is part of the human experience.

It helps you find meaning, understand yourself, and make your life better. – Ryan Holiday Whenever I confront an issue in my life or enter new, unfamiliar ground, there’s always a friend I can count on. That same friend can provide comfort when I’m at my worst, help me explore new depths of myself, and help me develop valuable and important skills in my life. This friend can teach me strategies to help propel me forward and is the catalyst behind ongoing, lifelong growth. This friend (or friends) I should say, are books.

I never used to be a voracious reader growing up—I actually despised the discipline. It seemed like a waste of time to me. Why bury myself in a book when I can just watch a movie instead? It’s certainly faster, more entertaining and a shorter time commitment. Books seem slow and inefficient—two words that have never lived in my vocabulary. My mindset towards reading only changed while I was at University and randomly stumbled upon an audiobook on self-development.

It was only then that I fully understood the transformative powers that books can hold. I was in my second year at University doing my BBA. My first year was tough on me—my grades weren’t great. My second year’s studies were chocked full of math, finance, accounting ,and statistics courses. Learning about statistical modelling and regression analysis isn’t what I had in mind when I applied to study business. In fact, I wanted to go into marketing.

How To Read And Absorb Difficult Books Emily Rudow

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