How To Read Like Montaigne 8 Deep Reading Techniques

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Oct 30, 2025, 11:16 PM

how to read like montaigne 8 deep reading techniques

Many extol the virtues of reading, but few teach you how to read effectively. Reading challenges abound online where quantity is the measure of success. Read-a-book-a-week challenges. Read a hundred books a year! But where are the calls for the most rewarding style of reading of all – deep reading? This is because they fall prey to thinking quantity the best measure of one’s erudition.

NPR's Life Kit team offers tips for how to read deeply in an age when we are constantly distracted. Ever sit down to read a book, get half a page in, and realize nothing has sunk in? Or maybe you even finished a book and later thought, I don't really remember anything about it. Under the best of circumstances, deep reading is hard, even harder with a device in your pocket that's constantly just clamoring for attention. But if you want to get better at it, our Life Kit team put together this guide on reading deeper. Here's NPR's Andrew Limbong.

ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Maryanne Wolf has written a number of books about the science of reading. Her latest is "Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain In A Digital World." And she's a big advocate of deep reading, which means what exactly? MARYANNE WOLF: At the heart of it is the point where we, the reader, go beyond the wisdom of the author to discover our own. LIMBONG: Wolf says it is something that we've all done to a certain extent - you know, get completely immersed in a text, bring our own thoughts and opinions to it. But it's hard to do, particularly if you do most of your reading on a screen. While it is a well-known fact that different reading strategies yield different results and serve different purposes, few are as complex and rewarding as deep reading.

By choosing the right strategy for each reading session and knowing when to use deep reading and how to approach it properly, you can gain a completely different insight into reading as an activity. Even though deep reading is considered a somewhat complex technique, the results you will be able to enjoy definitely outweigh any of the possible drawbacks. Here at Basmo, we are committed to helping you explore reading in all of its possible shapes and forms so that you can always choose the right techniques and strategies that best serve your... Why is deep reading important and how to do it properly? Keep reading and all your questions will be answered. The deep reading definition varies significantly depending on who you ask.

Some see it as a form of critical reading, meaning that they expect deep reading to mean focusing on every single word on the page, analyzing the meaning and the way the text is... Understanding the deeper meaning of everything, exploring the techniques used by the writer, and dissecting the way each sentence is formed. Others define deep reading as focusing more on the experience. For them, the importance of deep reading lies in the way the reader lives through the story he reads. Deep reading can be a form of meditation through which the reader becomes one with the story and the characters and basically experiences the entire reading material in the mind’s eye, exploring how it... Reading is an essential skill that serves as the foundation for learning, critical thinking, and effective communication.

However, reading is not merely about deciphering words on a page; it’s about understanding and internalizing the ideas, themes, and messages being conveyed. In today’s fast-paced world filled with information overload, developing effective reading strategies for deep comprehension is more crucial than ever. This article delves into practical strategies designed to enhance your reading skills and foster a deeper understanding of the material. Before diving into strategies, it’s important to clarify what we mean by “deep comprehension.” Deep comprehension refers to the ability to not only grasp the surface meaning of a text but also to interpret... This level of understanding allows readers to draw connections, make inferences, and apply what they’ve learned in various contexts. Before you begin reading, it’s essential to establish a clear purpose.

Ask yourself what you hope to achieve from the text. Are you reading for pleasure, information, or critical analysis? Setting a purpose will guide your focus and help you engage more actively with the material. Take a few minutes to skim the text before diving in. Look at headings, subheadings, images, charts, and summaries. This previewing process gives you an overview of the content and structure, making it easier to absorb information when you read it in-depth later.

Connect what you already know about the topic with the new material you are about to read. Activating prior knowledge can provide a framework for understanding and make it easier to relate new information to existing concepts. The most productive reading techniques are SQ3R, skimming, scanning, active reading, detailed reading, speed reading, and Structure-Proposition-Evaluation reading. Reading techniques are approaches to reading that you can employ to become a better and more accomplished reader. The techniques will help you read faster, understand what you read better, and remember what you read better. This post will look at the different reading techniques, including actionable steps to implement the techniques.

SQ3R is named after its 5 steps – Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review. The reading technique is great for comprehension and memory. This first step in the SQ3R technique is preparing your mind to receive the material. Surveying involves getting a quick idea of the whole material. Level-up current events into dynamic learning! Deep reading and focus are competitive advantages—and we are losing both.

We recently wrote about digital dementia—how an overload of distractions and constant stimuli leads to internet brain and is ultimately making society dumber. Here, we want to narrow in on a specific skill—deep reading, a skill we think is perhaps most important of all—and offer a simple program for you to maintain (or reclaim) it in your... It seems that we are reaching a boiling point or threshold for what may unfold over the next two to five years. There will be those who push back and save their brains, and then everyone else. It’s not to say society is automatically screwed; we aren’t complete doomers. Rather, we think it’s more like the late 1950s and early 1960s when it became clear that tobacco was harmful.

Those who realized this early and quit (or didn’t smoke, to begin with) fared much better off. The decline of deep reading, deep thinking, and deep attention feels similar. First, some context: minutes spent reading per day have declined markedly since 2003 across all age groups. It’s not just that people are reading less; we are getting worse at reading too. Literacy scores started tanking in 2012. “Gallivant” is my word for the week.

It means “roaming about in search of pleasure, and that describes my general approach to self-education, but it’s moderated by my determination to read deeply. Deep reading is a habit worth fostering. It’s defined in Wikipedia as “the intentional reduction in the speed of reading, carried out to increase comprehension or pleasure.” Grammar.About.com says “The term ‘deep reading’ was coined by Sven Birkerts in ‘The Gutenberg... We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is “deep reading”: the slow and meditative possession of a book.’” Deep reading’s naturally appealing since I’ve always been a plodding reader. Years in front of library and office computer terminals made it increasingly difficult to really get into thought-provoking books without my mind skipping all around.

All that computer-gazing re-wired my mind to focus more on skimming and identifying than comprehending. Gradually I’d get back in the flow of reading critically and thoughtfully, while still enjoying where the author was taking my imagination, but it took persistence. This was alarming, and to counteract it I turned to the guy known as “the sanest man ever,” creator of “the best prose ever,” and who was described by hyper-cynical and critical Ambrose Bierce... Montaigne had a fascinating life, but many reference sources’ descriptions are way too dry. Better than most is the Gale Online Encyclopedia, available through your public library’s website: “The inventor of the essay form as a literary genre, Montaigne raised introspection to the level of art in his... “Don’t judge books by their covers” was never truer, as a glance at the table of contents reveals.

The first eleven essays include Montaigne’s thoughts on cannibals, war-horses, age, drunkenness, and thumbs.” Reading Sarah Bakewell’s excellent biography, , “How to Live, Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts... The other day I read essay number 39, “On the custom of wearing clothes,” translated by M.A. Screech. There are several good translations of Montaigne, but Screech’s modern interpretation makes him my favorite. In this instance Screech noted that Montaigne “makes a pun on the French taste for ‘bigarures,’ which means … both a medley of ‘sundry colours mingled together’ and a discourse ‘running oddly and fantastically,... Reading isn’t just a passive process of absorbing words; it’s a dynamic interplay of mental agility, interpretive skill, and intellectual curiosity.

Many view reading as a quiet activity, but it’s actually a vibrant mental workout, one we can actively enhance and refine. This article unveils the hidden mechanics of deep understanding, revealing the sophisticated strategies that distinguish casual readers from truly insightful ones. We’ll explore how skilled readers don’t merely consume text — they question, dissect, and rebuild meaning using a series of powerful mental techniques. Prepare to rethink everything you thought you knew about reading. From deciphering basic language elements to employing advanced perspective-taking, we’ll navigate the complex landscape of comprehension. By the end, you’ll have a revolutionary approach to tackling texts across different subjects and styles.

How To Read Like Montaigne 8 Deep Reading Techniques

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