Reading 1

[rabi24]

Hi all,

Just a quick question, when you guys read a book to enhance your knowledge, do you read the whole book from start to finish or pick and choose what you wanna read? Or any techniques you guys use to get the most out of your reading?

Cheers

 

[IRstuff]

Personally, I pick and choose. Books, in general, tend to have a longer lag from "new" to publication. Moreover, most books generally do not have the detail that might be found in a particular article. You can see this in books that are detailed with respect to their citations. So, they typically summarize the findings of a particular article with a couple of graphs, figures, or tables, and some paragraphs, while the article cited might have had 15 pages of text. Typically, some specific subject is usually attached to article citations, so finding the article shortcuts digging through a bunch of books, doing interminable word searches, and then finding out that the books only covered the subject superficially.

I've never tried to look for structural engineering related articles in Google Scholar, but I'd imagine it's similar to what I might find for, say, compressive sensing, which had about 200k hits in Google Scholar, but admittedly, most of the hits will probably require paying, or are not quite related to the specific thing I'm looking for.

Finally, books are rarely available for free, but there are plenty of articles available through Google Scholar, or through individual authors' personal websites. I've got a membership with IEEE, though, which covers thousands of articles and gets me some level of access to articles that require payment.

I do, however, have quite a few textbooks, some of which are holdovers from when I owned a big chunk of physical books, but I now tend to look for electronic books, if for nothing else, a quantum reduction in volume consumed. Costco sells a 2 TB notebook portable drive, which can hold millions of books, if need be.

There's some sort of "comfort food" feel to have physical books, though, the smell, the feel, etc. But, that's just probably because I grew up with physical books.

TTFN
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Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

 

[zdas04]

I have 12 new books (I just counted) written by people I know that I promised myself I'd read cover to cover. One of them has been in the stack for 8 years (and my friend says that version 2 will be out next year) and I've used the index to get specific information, and looked at the table of contents for specific sections that I have a driving interest in, but there is no way I will ever get through any of them cover to cover. When I try I usually crash before I'm out of the Introduction. Engineers and scientists have a really hard time writing readable prose (I wrote a chapter in one of the books in the stack that is no more readable than the rest). Don't feel bad if you just go to your references for specific factoids. Treat them like the Dictionary, Encyclopedia, or phone book.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. —Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[Comcokid]

When using a technical book on the job I find I am trying to gain insight to a particular technical issue, so I pick and choose. Very very few technical books are made to be read through in anything other than a classroom setting.

I find I have physical books. The books I refer to most have post-it note tabs, and penciled-in comments, and sometimes corrections, in the margins.

A few books have proven to have an author with wit and a sense of humor that make them readable, like Hot Air Rises and Heat Sinks - Everything you know about cooling electronics is wrong by Tony Kordyban which is a technical book structured like a workplace biography. This book has proven so popular that it has a sequel and is available in paperback and electronically.

 

[SomptingGuy]

I have read whole chapters end-to-end from "Numerical Recipes in C". The actual code gets in the way a bit, but the explanations of the algorithms makes it very readable. I also read "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" in a similar way. Most other books are browsers. None of these browsers were recommended by my university. I aalso have retained a few on VERY long loan from my employer's library.

I bought these books in my days of bookshop browsing, where you went to a shop with money and a desire to spend it and left with a book.

- Steve

 

[rabi24]

Thanks for all the responses guys. Its good to know that I am not alone!

I find myself wanting to read books from cover to cover in case I miss something however I never get to finish them as I get sick of them, some earlier than others. Will start looking through and browsing for chapters which seem most insightful.

 

[GameJudge]

I typically cover-to-cover (C2C) technical books. To keep my attention high and get the most out of my reading, I typically read them in 10-page increments and have a spreadsheet open to take notes in.

 

[ctopher]

What's a book?


Chris, CSWA
SolidWorks 14
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[racookpe1978]

If I'm reading them "for fun" - Like B&W's "Steam" manual, or a history-type book about building the Hoover Dam or the Eiffel Tower or cutting through the Panama or Suez Canals or building the US railroads, I read it cover to cover (with an adult beverage in hand refilled as required.)

If it is a technical "thing" I'm trying to look up, AND I know I have in some specific technical reference that I have on the shelf, then I use the index and only read that specific page or table. If I'm not sure I have the specific info, or I'm not at home (which is half the time anyway), then I look the topic up on-line and use a specific credible web page. Flexitallic gasket torque values for example: I'd use only the Flexitallic web page itself. Never somebody else.

General sizes or spec's for a 16 inch flange? Any flange company will have that.

 

[MartinLe]

I think most of the answers assume that you read for entertainment or allready have a good idea what you are looking for. I think if you want to learn about a subject with many unknowns or unknowns unkowns it will be more cover-to-cover (with the risk of a bore out inbetween).

 

[kristindewitt]

I just prefer to read whatever topic seems important. I am preparing SAT but for SAT prep, I have to read the entire book.