The joy of reading books you don't understand

Value of Not Fully Understanding

• Many participants enjoy books that initially exceed their grasp (philosophy, dense SF, hard literary fiction, math, technical texts, scripture).
• Partial comprehension can still be emotionally powerful and plant “conceptual hooks” that pay off years later.
• Some describe a distinctive pleasure in immersion, even when plot, references, or arguments are only half-grasped.

Strategies: How People Read Hard Stuff

• Common pattern: first read for immersion with no notes or prerequisites, then later passes with background material or annotations.
• Others strongly prefer slow reading, backtracking, and filling in missing prerequisites, sometimes over years.
• Note-taking is debated:
  • Some avoid it on first pass, especially for fiction, to preserve flow.
  • Others rely on extensive notes, sticky tabs, or phone notes for dense non‑fiction and philosophy.
  • For textbooks, many argue that doing exercises is more important than rereading explanations.

When Difficulty Helps vs. When It’s Nonsense

• Several see confusion as productive: tolerating not knowing, then letting patterns emerge over time.
• Others caution that not every “difficult” work is deep; some older or theorist-heavy texts are viewed as overrated, obscurantist, or “balderdash.”
• There’s tension between treating all canonized works as profound versus recognizing that some may simply be mediocre but historically privileged.

Psychology, Identity, and Motivation

• Some suggest the need to understand everything may be tied to self-esteem, though others link it more to self-efficacy and curiosity.
• Readers vary between seeking “books that bite and sting” and preferring comfort, clarity, or entertainment; both modes are defended.
• Several admit to feeling like “posers” when they enjoyed but didn’t deeply retain difficult works, yet others stress it’s fine to enjoy without mastery.

Culture, Education, and Media Habits

• A theme: modern expectations that authors must make everything easy, versus older or “Eastern” attitudes where the burden is on the reader.
• University teaching is described by some as more about filtering than instruction, making hard, opaque courses perversely valuable for deep learning.
• People notice a broader trend of seeking “the correct take” from comments or summaries, rather than wrestling personally with challenging books, films, or games.