Alex & Books 📚

The CIA released a "Reading Improvement Course" that had been hidden from the public since 1955. I read all 117 pages so you don't have to. Here are the 10 most interesting quotes from it: 1) "Good reading is not necessarily rapid reading. The rate must be adjusted to comprehension requirements." 2) "To read well you must concentrate. No activity except perhaps writing or thinking makes more rigorous demands upon the whole mind than reading." 3) "Suggestions to develop your ability to concentrate: Be interested. There is no spur to concentration like honest interest." 4) "Some readers have found certain devices useful in keeping their minds on the subject. One device is to jot down key thoughts as one reads. These words act as a fence to confine our wandering thoughts. The practice of underlining key ideas and making notes at the end of each section serves the same purpose. 5) "Concentration is a habit and must be formed. Habits require, at first, a conscious effort of the will. Force yourself to let nothing come between your mind and the matter on the page before you." 6) "When our attention wanders, words slip by us and leave no trace of meaning. Under such conditions we cannot expect a harvest of logical thought. We go through the motions of study or reading, but do not get results. We waste time that could be used far more pleasantly and profitably." 7) "Drawing conclusions is the final step of the reading process and should be based on sound judgment of the author's qualifications, facts presented, methods of presentation, validity of arguments, or style of presentation." 8) There are 3 types of reading: Intensive reading: when the purpose is to master new subject material, the skills required are translation, integration, analysis and evaluation. The best procedure is (a) rapid preliminary survey of the material, (b) formulation of questions prior to the reading, (c) careful reading, and (d) review and recitation of important points. Extensive reading: with the purpose of acquiring a broader frame of reference and widening the range of knowledge. The skills required are integration, analysis, and evaluation. The best procedure is rapid and thorough reading of the material. The extensive reading rate should be as fast as the thinking process permits. Scanning: for (a) the main idea, (b) specific information and (c) a preview of the material. To read effectively the reader must first review the material and the specific purpose for the reading. 9) The SQAR3 Reading Strategy: "Scan: Quickly scan the introductory paragraph, subtitles, key sentences, key words, summary. Decide on the author's plan. Question: Turn the title or key sentences into questions. Anticipate: Before reading, try to answer these questions mentally. Read: Read the entire selection and look for the author's ideas to answer your questions. Recite: Close the book or magazine. Tell yourself in your own words what you have learned. Write notes on material that must be remembered. Review: Later, to make your knowledge stick, review the gist of the article or chapter, again in your own words." 10) How to read with purpose: -"Have definite questions which you wish answered through reading a given selection. -While reading, make a mental note of the main points in the paragraph or article. -From time to time stop to think over the material just read in preceding section. -Notice the illustrations and examples that are used. -Develop the habit of criticizing what you read." My favorite quote from the report: "Reading is a pleasure, a source of information, and the basis for most decisions that are made today. It deserves the liveliest interest and the best techniques we can master."

🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world." My Take This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email. ISBNdb's website literally says "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation." I've covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate. "We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline. Hedgie🤗