A lot of books on our reading lists are in the "short loan" section of the library, which means we can only check them out for 4 hours at a time so that everyone in the class has a chance to read them. Actually, only a handful of people in the class will get a chance to read them. I have a semi-daily ritual of going to the short loan section and looking through the shelves for the books I need, but more times than not a classmate has already checked them out. Since there's no way we can get all the books we need for the week, we have "reading groups". We tag-team so that together we've read all the books, and we get together and share notes about what we've read.
Even when I do get a book from the short loan section, I only have 4 hours to read it before returning it (there are stiff fines for turning it in late). I've never been a fast reader, and whenever I skim a book I remember nothing from it. I have to read it slowly and digest it. Once I've digested it, I'll remember it for years. For the past couple days I've gone to the library to get different books and read them quickly. Both books I found were about 150 pages long, which is really short compared to others. If I was to start reading those books immediately after checking them out, I would have to read a page every minute and a half in order to finish it before turning it in. I know some people can do that, but I simply can't, especially since some of the arguments and theories are complex and confusing. I also have to take longer on sections with which I strongly disagree so that I can better understand my position and why the author is wrong. On top of all of this, I'm making notes so that my reading group will understand what's going on. Naturally, I didn't finish the books but only read about half, which I consider an accomplishment. Ten minutes before I turned the books back in, I quickly chose a last chapter I want to read and make a copy of it so that I can finish it at home.
I'm not sure how well this whole system works. So many people in the class are reading different things, and there's no way for us to read everything. We get comfortable with only reading as much as we can, but the final exam may require us to have read something we missed along the way. I wonder if a better system would be if we were given a reasonable required reading list for each week, and these would include articles we can find online or important chapters to books. Everyone would be able to read everything from this list. A suggested list would supplement the required reading, and this list could include whole books.
Well, I should probably stop blogging and speculating about how academia works and get back to reading another book.
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