Fractal Reading by Michael Simmons

This short video talks of fractal reading that I have been practicing without giving a name to this type of reading. Librarians read many books, some for their own consumption but many for the sake of their readers / customers / patrons of the library. I call them 'about' readers:  reading about the book rather than the book itself. Librarians' purpose is just to know enough to place them properly in the scheme of book classification they employ or to inform the readers something interesting or teasing enough to goad them to read the book. The technique essentially lies in reading meta data - abstracts, summaries, reviews, TOC, 'about the author' etc If you practice fractal reading you can increase the speed of reading and also cover greater number of books.

In Simmons video I learnt WHY fractal reading is important - my propose is different - and about Blinkist as a source for summaries; but Blinkist is a priced resource, I can not afford in retired life.. Also I like his HA Hack comprising of Highlighting and Asking. We may highlight an important point while reading as also ask ourselves as how to use that info / idea. If you use an idea / word / tip it sticks to you. My father was an English Language teacher. During school days he used to introduce new words in the lesson, explain its meaning, pronunciation etc and insist that we use the new word learnt in sentences of our own. That practice continues with me in other areas also.

Of course, after quick reading, if the title is worthy of reading in full then apply deep reading - read slowly, take notes, read it again or make summaries. Deep reading may be needed only in small percentage of books.l 

Now on to Fractal Learning in Simmons own voice - watch the video