This is fascinating: After finishing Death and Life this weekend, I’m at a loss as to what to read next. So I picked up Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe and thought I’d just read the beginning and ending paragraphs of each subchapter to get a grasp of how it’s structured and what it talks about.
The fascinating thing is that it seems as if this form of disengaged reading is far more effective than “normal,” focused reading. I have quickly gotten about eighty pages into the book, and aside from the expected sense of the book’s structure, I feel that I have registered too much of what Greene says in the book, given the little time and effort spent on it.
I suspected that this was the case, but it’s still fascinating to experience it. Perhaps one should always read the book once in this way before reading it in full.