My dear listeners,

Today’s topic is “reading technique for pleasure”.

I thought this topic might be interesting to people whose Sacred Book came with the command “read”.
Perhaps you know, there are various types of reading. In student life, there is reading for forced memorization, in youth there is acquiring encyclopedic knowledge for gaining power or showing off, then there is reading for understanding, and in retirement, there is reading for pleasure, reading for not understanding.

There are lessons, professors, and books about reading methods, so I won’t attempt such an ambitious task. But today I want to tell you about my own method, that is, the one for pleasure, reading for not understanding, and share some of my personal experience with you.
Let’s start with book selection first. Some people buy books as decorative items or for show. This is a very good thing. Perhaps the children or relatives of the buyer might become interested one day. Encourage these show-offs. Thus, these people also contribute to our printing industry.
Another group is those who read a little, but read unsystematically. They buy books of all kinds. Yet another group is specialist readers. They focus on books that will answer their specific questions. You can add to these typologies as you wish.
Now let’s say we’ve picked up our book at the bookstore, first we get our coffee if the bookstore sells coffee. While sipping our coffee, we glance at the back cover and any text on the dust jacket if there is any. Then we should look at the table of contents, then the preface, and then browse through the pages.
When we get home, the most important thing is sitting position and lighting. The body and eyes should be as comfortable as possible. It is particularly beneficial for light to come from the back left. If possible, install a “dimmer” on your lamp that can increase and decrease light. Long-necked adjustable lamps are also useful in allowing you to direct light from any angle you want.
Then for active readers, a reading pencil is needed. This should be a 0.5 thickness 2B soft-tipped mechanical pencil with top-click mechanism. The book should be marked with pencil, without pressing hard. Ink should never be used for marking. This is disrespectful to the book. Besides, when reading in bed, a ballpoint pen can’t mark upward, its ink runs out. Personally, I use those cute little 10-centimeter long top-click mechanical pencils sold for primary school children. These pencils can also serve as bookmarks when left between pages.
Well, My Dear Listeners,
After this introduction, shall we begin with our reading technique?
But let’s repeat, what I’ll describe is the technique of reading for pleasure, reading for enjoyment.
That is, not for students and researchers, let me say this from the start. There’s already separate science and schooling for them.
Yes.
Reading for pleasure is an art, just like being a gourmet, understanding delicious food, having a refined palate.
Not everyone can do it, this faculty is gained over time. In fact, while gaining this faculty, even the mental discipline needed for life might be lost, it might even be harmful, perhaps listeners other than retirees and artists shouldn’t heed what I’m about to say, let’s not lead them astray. Because here we will explain the technique of not understanding.
Whereas active people have information they need to memorize and hold firmly in their memory for life. These will frequently be demanded of them at school and workplace.
Especially in underdeveloped countries, supervisors, teachers, etc., not being sufficiently equipped themselves, demand information rather than ideas from their staff and students. They don’t like those who offer ideas, considering them know-it-alls. The safest thing for an employee is to memorize information and quickly recite it to supervisors. Whether this information remains in the memory of either the giver or receiver two minutes later… But after a glittering presentation of memorized information, supervisors say “This colleague masters their subject,” this memorized knowledge can even earn several promotions at that moment..
Because underdeveloped societies value memorized knowledge, people tend toward memorizing encyclopedic information. They want to list this information in society to show how “cultured” they are. However, culture is not memorized knowledge, it is the sum of information that has been dissolved in the brain and forgotten.
In any case.. In underdeveloped societies, loading data into the brain to compete with computers is still a valid method for both gaining social acceptance and advancing in work life; if you want to be successful in life, don’t join our pleasure club yet.
Yes, My Dear Friends,
After this introduction, let’s now set sail together into the realm of pleasure with friends who are still with us.
First of all, buy books in the field you love most in life. Buy books in areas you’re curious about. The curious learn and take pleasure.
Secondly, the book is sacred, hold it without hurting it. Don’t push pages back and break the binding. Don’t wet your fingers with saliva and push the page from the middle. Gently separate from the top with your index finger, the page will come. Even if you’re not used to it, you can acquire this habit in a short time.
Read the book with your eyes, not your mouth. Be an active reader. Active reading happens through marking. That is, as I said earlier, have your tiny, soft-tipped, 0.5 pencil ready. Except for underlining extremely important words, never underline the text. This turns your book into a scribble pad. It’s disrespectful to the book. Instead, lightly put important parts in parentheses. Now.. If you’re reading about an interesting topic you’re encountering for the first time, you’ll tend to put everything in parentheses. If you’re reading a book about a subject you master, original ideas worthy of parentheses decrease.
There are also some authors who never use filler material, there isn’t a single unnecessary sentence, even word in their writings. You’re forced to adorn almost all pages with parentheses and stars. The author bombards you with dense ideas, you need to stop and contemplate each sentence in such writings, you get tired. It’s beneficial to be an advanced level reader for such books. Otherwise, you might grow cold towards reading.
European and Eastern authors use more filler material and literature. Americans lock onto ideas directly, presenting their ideas in the most dense and clear way. The US education system also doesn’t allow for unnecessary extras. Especially their scientific books don’t contain much literature.
Returning to our topic, you can put a check mark at the end of important lines, a star if more important, you can go up to three stars for very important ideas. For amazement and attention an exclamation mark, question mark for what’s not understood and/or what you don’t believe, T for description, B for Biography, I for statistics. These are my personal marks developed over years.
Ah, do I go back and look at those lines again after putting these marks? I almost never looked at books I read a second time. But putting these marks helps ideas settle in my head. It’s an indicator of my full attention concentration without my knowledge, this search for and finding beautiful ideas in every line. Marking them, starring them is also an indicator of my excitement in finding beautiful ideas. Expression of my joy, my amazement. That is, this reading technique is an absolute concentration technique. A technique of sipping ideas drop by drop..
The marks I put become indicators of my active reaction, that I perceive ideas very well. Maybe they’re forgotten after 3 minutes but they unknowingly take their place in the back of the mind, within the culture dough. Even if completely forgotten, years later when reading or hearing another idea, the subconscious at least sends a doubt signal about the correctness of that idea or information. That is, you become absolutely skeptical, even against the correctness of your own knowledge. In fact, this feeling goes so far that when someone says you’re mistaken about a subject you know well, you can’t give a definitive answer, but you’re eager to go home and read about that subject once more. For arguing with others? Never.. Our world is far from that world. Only to eliminate our self-doubt..

My Dear Friends,
Now let’s come to what happens in our brain while reading. First, we start thinking while reading. We try to understand the author’s real message with the best, friendly intention. We don’t fight with them in our head. Otherwise, we would have read and skipped the following sentences without understanding. We put a question mark next to controversial ideas and move on. But if the book is in Turkish and the author is hung up on the Pure Turkish-Ottoman Turkish fight, you’re in trouble. It ruins that beautiful feast of ideas.
Anyway.. In a moment of real philosophy, we close the book and start thinking. Then we continue again. But we never memorize ideas. Concepts become scattered in our brain. Then our brain kneads these shattered concepts with its own identity, dissolves them within its personality, makes them compatible with itself. That is, new ideas become like sugar dissolving in water in our brain. And new ideas become ours in harmony with our personality.
Let me explain the difference between memorized knowledge and ideas like this. You know there are very great literary figures. If you suddenly ask them what an adverb, preposition is, they might have even forgotten. Why? Because these words and concepts were once necessary tools for disciplining minds. They fulfilled their duties, rules and systematics put brains in order, and these were forgotten. That’s what culture is like. Knowledge is useful data for the beginning. But in the long term, only by dissolving within identity and turning into one’s own personality.
If you get stuck in memorization, you become double, even multiple-identitied. Side by side, unrelated, incompatible, fragmented, like patches, conflicting, different groups of knowledge and ideas form in your brain. Memorization is very harmful for this reason, it prevents one from forming an identity at peace with oneself.
For delicious reading, we must absolutely banish memorization from our mind. Delicious reading is reading freely, irresponsibly. It is reading for having read. Reading for its pleasure, its taste. Reading carelessly. Reading not for giving account to anyone, showing knowledge, demonstrating power or getting praise. It is being fascinated by finding the answer when curious, or by a creator’s sentences or even single word, taking pleasure like an orgasm.
In delicious reading, the brain isn’t forced to memorize. You read and move on. In delicious reading, Speed Reading Technique isn’t necessary either. Like eating, there’s no hurry in delicious reading. You go along with pleasure, digesting, marking, and this sends the necessary signals to your brain. Your brain never gets tired. Ah, over time some ideas and words start appearing before you with increasing frequency, they catch your attention. That’s when your curiosity awakens, you start dwelling more on these words and ideas, and over time they become your property, your conscious ideas, even your identity reaching ideological rigidity. But not memorization, because they developed through kneading over time, they’re no longer in their original form but ideas belonging to you kneaded with your personality, these ideas are now the chemistry of your intellectual personality.

Yes, My Dear Friends,
I tried to briefly convey my own experience to you. Every human is a treasure within themselves, a cosmos within themselves. Who knows what experiences, what ideas you have. We are forbidden to take these experiences to the grave without sharing them with people. Oral societies try to do this verbally. But mind is free, no takers. However, we should be a society that writes and reads. How to begin? We can start with reading for Pleasure, Irresponsibly. Let’s annotate while reading our book, jot down idea sparks that come to our mind on the side.. This moment is the crawling start to contemplation, to authorship.
And when the book is finished, with its marginal exclamation marks, stars, question marks and annotations, it has become not only the author’s but also your work as a partner.
Don’t lend this book to anyone. Because it’s a single copy and your work. You are now a tiny writer, a tiny thinker.
Perhaps you’ve nudged a giant creator, a genius waiting to awaken in your soul?
Stay healthy.