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Do you ever finish a book and wonder if you really understood it? Do you give five stars to pretty much every book you ever read? Do you watch or read book reviews and find yourself surprised by how many things they picked up on that you did not notice? If any of this sounds familiar and you want to change, this video is for you. Hi, I'm Elizabeth and if you're new here, I make a living
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reading and reviewing books. It is my full-time job. And more and more over the past year or so, I've been getting requests to make a video talking about how you can learn to read critically or read more critically. Let's start with the basics. What is critical reading? I'm so glad you asked. Let me define it for you. Critical reading is the practice of actively analyzing, questioning, and reflecting on what you read rather than just passively consuming it. You don't just ask what
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the text says. You ask how and why it says it and whether it's achieving its goals. Critical reading involves evaluating a text's arguments, structure, and language while considering its purpose, context, and potential biases. It's about asking thoughtful questions as you read, considering what's included and what's omitted, and considering the implications of the text's ideas, tone, and framing. It means engaging with a text as a participant in a conversation rather
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than just receiving information. And this is something I've talked about before. If you've watched any of my annotation content, you've probably heard me say that I see reading as a conversation between a reader and an author. Your engagement, your imagination, your interpretation helps create a one-of-a-kind personalized story that is built by you and an author in collaboration. And it's not about being negative. I promise this is such a common misconception
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and I cannot tell you how much it saddens me. Critical reading is not about being negative or hating or bullying authors or fellow readers. Reading critically is about being thoughtful and engaged. And it's vital for so many reasons. Let me just list a few of them for you. Critical reading helps build analytical and communication skills, helping to train you to break down complex ideas and express your thoughts clearly. Critical reading also encourages independent thought which
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is just trust me here very important. It helps you to form your own interpretations and perspective instead of just accepting things at face value. Critical reading helps you question the source which is vital for media literacy. Questions like who wrote this? Why did they write it? Who paid for it? What is the author's agenda or bias? What evidence are they using and what evidence are they
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ignoring? What are they emphasizing and what are they hiding? Whether it's an emotionally charged headline, a misleading statistic, or ragebait, critical reading equips you to identify things like loaded language, logical fallacies, potentially manipulative framing techniques, selective presentation of facts. Building your ability to read critically, improving your media literacy can allow you to become more skeptical in a really healthy way. Reading critically is not
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just about the more cerebral side of it. It can also make you a more empathetic reader. Reading critically pushes you to ask questions like, "What's the bigger picture? What's the societal, political, historical context here? Who is being centered and how are they being portrayed? And who is being ignored?" Reading critically can prompt you to reflect on your own values and help you to
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realize just how powerful the stories we consume can be in shaping our understanding of the world around us, both on an individual level and on a societal level. Reading critically while also reading more widely or diversely can really expand your horizons as a person and make you more aware of the world and more empathetic. Whether you want to spot misinformation or manipulative framing, or
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you want to dive deeper, uncover hidden meanings in a text, or maybe you just want to be more able to express what you do and don't like in the books you read and identify that for yourself. Reading critically can do it all. Truly, now that I've given myself ample time to wax poetic about how awesome reading critically is and why you should do it, let's get into more of the nitty-gritty practical steps. There are things you can do before you even start the first page that can
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prime you to read a book more critically. A great way for beginners to develop a mindset of reading more thoughtfully or critically is to expand your horizons both by reading more diversely, but also just diversifying your hobbies in general. I can't tell you how many brand new ideas or connections I make while my body is preoccupied in a difficult yoga pose or meticulously pulling weeds out in the
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garden while I watch the bees and the butterflies enjoying the flowers. But whether I'm learning new choreography, doing some sun salutations, or working out in the garden under the hot noon sun, I can get sweaty and smelly fast. It is one of the drawbacks to doing hobbies that don't just involve sitting in a cozy chair for hours on end. And that is where the sponsor of this video, Lumi, comes in. Lumi was invented by OBGYn Shannon Clingman and is clinically proven to block odors
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all day and continues controlling BO for 72 hours. Lumi deodorant is a whole body deodorant for pits, privates, and beyond. Working in the hot sun, in the front yard, pulling weeds, I'm covered. Trying to prevent smelly feet in my 20 plus year old tap shoes because they are totally fine and I do not want to have to pay to replace them because tap shoes are expensive if you didn't know. No problem. Lumi doesn't stain your clothes, so you can use it anywhere you need it. The wipes
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are especially convenient to take with you as you go. Whether you're on a long flight, at a concert, or at a hot yoga class, Lumi is not only vegan and cruelty-free, a must for me, but skin safe, baking soda free, paraben-free, and pH optimized to be used anywhere on your body. On top of that, Lumi has many aluminum free product options. Lumi stops odor before it starts by addressing
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the bacteria on our skin that creates the odor in the first place and comes in eight amazing scents. I really like all four of the scents that I've tried from Lumi. Lavender Sage, Clean Tangerine, Cool Cucumber, and Vanilla Bliss, which is my personal favorite. I know some people think vanilla is boring, but I can never agree with that kind of vanilla slander. Vanilla is classic, and Lumi's Vanilla Bliss scent is perfectly cozy and warm, and I love it. My second favorite is
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cool cucumber. I have the wipes in that scent. And the scent just adds to how refreshing they feel to use on a hot, sunny day. I've always noticed that I smell significantly worse when I'm stressed or anxious. And with the challenging year I've had, I've been noticing that very distinct scent more and more often. And then I become self-conscious and I get more stressed. And it's a vicious cycle.
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Lumi helps so much with my confidence while I'm out and about in the summer knowing that I'll be odor-free for 72 hours no matter how stressed I get. So try Lumi today and feel confident in your body as you move through life wherever it may take you. Lumi starter pack bundle is a great deal for new customers. It comes with a full-size stick deodorant, a cream deodorant tube or spray deodorant, two free products like the wipes or mini body wash, free US shipping, and just for my
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followers, Lumi is offering an extra $5 off when you click the link in my description box and use code plantb at checkout. That's a deal of over 40% off. Thank you again to Lumi for sponsoring this video. How do we actually read critically? What are the steps we can take? How can we prepare ourselves to read critically? Let's talk about it. Starting with prep work, which is maybe not the
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most fun part of the process, but can make all the difference. Starting with a little bit of research is never a bad idea. learning a little bit more about an author and especially if you're not reading contemporary works, understanding a little bit more context for the time an author lived and what their experience would have been like based on their race, gender, sexuality, class, wealth,
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religion, marital status, etc., etc., can really help you again contextualize the work that they have written and why they may have focused on the things they did and written things from a particular perspective. Doing a quick Google of the publication date and the setting of the story to get a little context for the socopolitical climate of the time can really help you out, especially if you're reading about a time and place in history that you don't already have
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an encyclopedic knowledge of. And last but not least, I think setting expectations before you start a book based on the book's genre and subg genres can be vital because literary fiction is not trying to do the same thing as romance, which is not trying to do the same thing as pulp horror, which is not trying to do the same thing as cozy sci-fi, which is definitely not trying to do the same thing as non-fiction self-help. You get the idea. Knowing the primary and sub genres for a
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book you're about to read can really help prepare you for what you can expect and it helps you recognize when those conventions of a genre are being subverted for a particular effect. Another thing that is really helpful before you start reading is clarifying your purpose. Why are you reading this particular book? Are you reading it for school and you know you have to write a five paragraph essay at the end and you already know the three topics you have to choose between so you
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know what you're going to focus on as you read the book or are you reading this book just for fun or are you reading this book because your grandmother really wanted you to and wants to be able to talk about it over Christmas dinner are you reading it so that you can review it are you reading it so you can discuss it with a book club knowing what you're hoping to get out of a book and what the end goal is can help you to prioritize the right things while you're reading. You also
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want to have all of your necessary tools on hand. Now, to clarify, you don't need any tools to read critically. You just need your brain. That's it. You don't need any fancy equipment. You don't need a bunch of tools. You don't need aesthetic tools. Your brain is enough. But if you're a little bit like me and your brain is a civ and your memory is not so great, you might want to write down
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your ideas as you go. Whether you're writing them in the book directly via annotations, marginelia, whether you're writing them in a reading journal, either physical or digital, on a variety of random scraps of paper, I'm not sure I would recommend that technique, but if it works for you, it works for you. Whatever tools are going to help you to read critically and encourage you to read
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critically, I encourage you to have them on hand before you start reading. I have my favorite tools for annotation, which is my go-to way of recording my thoughts as I go along to encourage myself to read more critically and be more engaged. And I have several videos on annotation already. So, I will link all of them in the description box for you to check out and watch if you're interested.
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And I share all my favorite tools, but having all your tools ready to go before you start reading will help remind you of your intention to read more critically. Now that we know all the basics, what critical reading is, why we want to do it, how we can prepare ourselves to read critically, it's time to actually crack open a book. So, let's do that. How can you encourage yourself to be more
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critical and thoughtful and engaged while you're reading? For me, and for most of us, this is going to involve writing down your thoughts and impressions and questions somewhere. Unless you have a mind like a steel trap, couldn't be me. Then, you're going to want to write down your impressions as you go. Whether that means you're annotating, writing in the margins, for example, which is my personal favorite, or if you have a reading journal, whatever works for you, you're
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going to want to have a place and a consistent place if possible to record your thoughts, impressions, things you notice, questions you have, etc. as you read so that you can keep referring back to them and building on your own impressions and diving deeper. I promise it will help so much. And don't get me wrong here, you don't have to write a five paragraph essay every time you notice a metaphor. You can just write metaphor next to it or you can say this author
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really seems to like trees or you could say this symbolism is really interesting. I wonder what the author is trying to say with this and mark it somehow so you remember to come back later because maybe something that happens later in the book will reveal to you what the author might have been foreshadowing or why this particular symbolism was relevant. Not every note you write down has to be profound. Which is why I made a recent video taking you through literally every single
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page of my annotated copy of North and South by Elizabeth Gascal. I wanted to show that while some pages are incredibly heavily annotated and I'm getting much more technical and analytical, there are also pages with no annotations at all and pages where I just say lol in the corner. And that's okay. So don't hold yourself to some impossible standard. Don't be too hard on yourself. Just start writing down the things you notice, the things you like, the things you don't.
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Just drawing attention to these various aspects of a story by writing a little note or highlighting or adding a tab is going to train your brain to be more aware of them and more likely to notice them in future. So again, if you want to try annotation as your method of encouraging critical thinking and tracking your thoughts and impressions as you go, check out my annotation videos. I'll have them linked down below. If you're more of a digital person, I think using something like
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notion can be so useful because not only can you have a space to just write notes as you go along, you can also create properties for different aspects of a story that you want to be more aware of. And just the process of going down the list and trying to fill in the blanks is going to get you thinking more about these different aspects of a story. So, check out my video where I give you a
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detailed tour of my notion reading tracker because that's also going to give you lots of ideas for the types of things that you might want to pay attention to to become a more critical analytical reader. Having those things set up as fields that you can fill in for every single book will help you again to just think about them more often, be more aware, have them more front of mind as you're
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reading. And that awareness is going to make you a more critical reader all on its own. Whether you're annotating or using some sort of a reading journal or a reading tracker, there are a number of things that you might want to pay attention to as you're reading to help you be more analytical, more critical. Things like themes, tone, tropes, representation, content or trigger warnings, tense, perspective, writing style, quotes, contradictions, repeated ideas or imagery,
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symbols, metaphors, recurring phrases, structure and framing, characters, their personalities, how they are described, how they are portrayed, how they change and grow over the course of a novel, cultural references, illusions to other literature that you notice. And for each and every one of these, you can go one step further by recognizing them and either highlighting them, tabbing them,
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writing them down somewhere, but taking it that step further and reflecting on whether you like it or don't and asking yourself why. If a quote stands out to you and you highlight it and tab it, did it stand out for you in a good way or a bad way. If it stood out in a good way, what was it about it that you liked? If it stood out in a bad way, ditto. Taking it that step further, asking yourself why something is standing out to you and how you feel about it is again going to
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really get those gears turning and getting you into that more analytical state of mind. Being aware of your emotional reactions in general is going to be really helpful in this process. Like I said, I know a lot of reading critically seems to be very cerebral, but it is also so much about emotion because books really are about in large part evoking emotion. So much of what makes art resonate with us as human beings is the way that it can make us feel. And being aware of
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what you're feeling and how intensely and why you might be feeling that way as you read through a book is again going to make you so much more aware of what the book is doing and perhaps why. Are you feeling sad because you're genuinely invested in these characters and they're going through sad things and you're feeling empathy for them. Are you feeling sad because the situation is sad, but it's more of a dispassionate thing that you're noticing, not something that you're
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feeling in a visceral way? Or are you feeling sad because the author is using a variety of manipulative tricks in their writing to try to force you to feel that way rather than getting you to feel it organically by creating characters or situations that genuinely connect with you on an emotional level. And these are things you might not notice when you're first trying to get into reading critically. But the more you take note of your emotional reactions and when
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you feel certain things, again, how intensely, why you think you might be feeling those things, you're going to become more and more self-aware, but also more aware of how different aspects of a book can impact you emotionally, and what that maybe reveals about the intentions of the author. What are they trying to do with this book? What do they want you to feel? And are they achieving their goals? One of my favorite ways to be more engaged and thoughtful as I'm reading is to just
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ask myself loads of questions as I read. And I think this is a really great way to start if you're new to critical reading, if you're unsure, if you're struggling to just notice things organically as you're reading. Having some questions that you can ask yourself that you can reflect on is really going to help you. And this is why book clubs are so popular and enduring. book clubs encourage you to read a book and then get everyone together and ask some interesting
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questions and have you reflect on them and share and that allows you to dive so much deeper into a book than you would just by reading it without asking yourself any questions at all. So, I'm going to list some questions here that might be helpful for you while you're reading. But, I am also going to create a blog post on my website with a downloadable document with way more questions separated into different categories so that you can use that as a reference. And maybe
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for you that means printing it out and folding it up and keeping it in your book so you can take it out and just read some of the questions and answer them for yourself. Maybe it means that you convert some of those questions into properties in a notion reading tracker and you fill them out for each book you read or fill out the ones you're interested in for different books. Whatever works
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for you. Now, for those of you who are a little bit like me, type a perfectionists, you do not have to answer every single one of these questions for every book you read or every chapter of every book you read. Okay? Don't go overboard. You don't have to answer any of the questions if you don't want to to be a critical reader or an analytical reader. Just pick and choose. You can randomly pick and choose or you can go to a specific subset of questions that are relevant to
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either your interests and preferences as a reader or maybe an area you feel you need to work on or maybe just a subset of the questions that feel relevant to the book you're reading and what the author is trying to do. Please don't treat this as a checklist and feel that you have to go through every single question for every book you read. that's going to get exhausting fast. Just use it as a bunch of options to use for reference. When you're feeling lost and you're feeling like
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you're not really picking things up in the book or you feel like you're reading on autopilot, maybe just close your eyes, pick a random question, and see what comes up when you try to answer it. Okay, but here are a few questions to start with. What is the author trying to say? What themes are emerging? What are the characters motivations? What surprised me? What is this book really about?
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What's standing out to me right now and why? What is this book making me feel? Can you identify why it's making you feel that way? What's the central conflict driving this story? How is tension being built or released? How is the tone or structure of the story supporting what the author is trying to say? And is it effective or not? Does it feel like these characters are representing something
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larger than themselves? Are they an archetype? Do they represent an idea or an ideology? Who's telling this story? What is the perspective, the point of view? Are they trustworthy? What information is being emphasized and what is being left out? How would this story change if it was told from a different perspective? What ideas or questions keep coming up? Is this book trying to make a moral or political argument? Is it subtle? Is it overt? Do you think it's doing a
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good job expressing its opinion? What kind of world or setting is this? Is the setting well described? Does it feel immersive? Is the world that the author built internally consistent? Are there any symbols or ideas or themes that I keep noticing? What kinds of metaphors and simileies are being used? Do I find them effective? Is the author doing something interesting, unique, unusual with the writing style or the structure? What tone is the author using? Is it serious? Is
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it playful? Is it dry? Do you feel that the tone the author chose is helping or hindering their story? Does this book remind me of anything else I've read or seen? How does it compare? How does this book reflect on the time and place it was written? Is there anything unresolved or ambiguous in the story? Do you think that's intentional? Is the author using both showing and telling, or are they heavily focused on one or the other? Are marginalized characters written with depth,
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agency, and nuance, or are they tokens or plot devices? Is the representation sensitive and thoughtful, or is it clichéed and leaning into stereotypes and potentially harmful? Is the novel moving at a pace that serves the story? Are there any sections of this book that feel rushed or that feel like they're dragging? Can you identify what is making it feel that way for you? Would you recommend this book to someone else? And if so, what kind of reader? What
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might appeal to someone about this book and what might turn them off? That's just a sampling of the kinds of questions you can ask yourself. Again, check out the blog post for many, many, many, many more options. But asking yourself questions and answering them about whatever book you read is really foundational to developing this skill. The more that you practice asking yourself specific
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questions and answering them, the more that you will become aware of these various aspects of a story as you're reading without having to stop and ask yourself the question and answer it. You'll just think about these things as you go because you will have made those connections in your brain. And once you make those connections, they start to become automatic. And you don't have to write down your answers to these questions. You can just ask yourself questions like this as you
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read and answer them in your own mind and leave it at that. that will in and of itself deepen your understanding of the book and count as reading critically. But again, if you're anything like me, you're not going to remember what you thought 15 chapters ago, let alone 15 books ago. If you're anything like me, the practice, the act of writing something down or typing it helps to engage my
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brain in a different way than just thinking it, and can give me more ideas as I go and also help to solidify my memory. Ironically, writing it down means that I don't have to remember it because I can go back and read it. But I remember it better anyway because I wrote it down. On top of note-taking and or annotating and asking yourself questions as you read, something that is very useful is research. If you are reading and you come across something that you don't understand,
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look it up. It doesn't have to feel like work or homework. You can just be learning stuff. And learning is cool. Maybe you didn't research the setting of the novel before you started and it turns out that you know absolutely nothing about 1940s Barcelona. Maybe a quick Google search will help you understand the social political situation a little bit better and help you understand what the characters are talking about and the themes that are being explored. Maybe you come across a
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word you've never heard of before. Look it up and learn a new word. Amazing. Maybe you've noticed the same trope come up in a couple different books and you're starting to wonder where that trope even comes from. Look it up. Find out where that trope originated, what that trope has meant historically if it's been around for a long time. Maybe you're feeling really stuck or confused by a certain passage of text. Maybe you have no idea what happened in the last chapter or you've
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reread the same sentence 15 times and you still do not understand what it's trying to say. Don't hesitate to ask for help. Search online. Search Reddit. See if people have asked this question before and what other people think. See if there are any online book clubs that have discussed the book. A lot of online book clubs do summaries of each section of the book they're discussing. So, you might be able to find someone else's interpretation of a particular chapter that
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you struggle to understand. Use the internet as a resource. The internet can be many things, but it is a huge resource of information and other people's experiences. And that's something that we didn't have those of us who were old who used to read back in the days of Dialup and the early internet. There's just so much potential. There's so much community online. There are so many resources from universities online that you can access for free. Research is your friend. I also
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highly encourage you to try to figure it out for yourself first. Try to reason it out. For example, earlier today, I started listening to an audiobook and as many books do, it started with a quote, an epigraph, and I listened to that quote, and I thought to myself, "That makes no sense. I don't understand what that means." So, I hit rewind by 15 seconds. I listened to it again, and then I paused, and I thought through it, and I tried to figure out what it was actually
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trying to say. Because on first glance, it didn't mean anything to me. It felt like word salad. But as I thought about it more, as I listened to it a few times, as I broke it down and tried to reason out what it could possibly be trying to say, all of a sudden it made sense to me. And not only did it make sense, but it was interesting and it made me excited for the book that was to come because it gave me an inkling of what themes or ideas the author might want to
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explore in the upcoming story. So use it as an exercise. Challenge yourself. Try it out. Your interpretation doesn't have to be the right one. There is no one right interpretation depending on your perspective. We can talk about death of the author another time, but it can be very valuable to challenge yourself to try to work it out and figure it out and reason it out before going to
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the internet to see other people's thoughts. It is an amazing resource, but you can become a little overreiant on it and a little underreliant on your own reasoning skills. So, give it a try and see if you can figure it out on your own. And this might feel a little too much like school work to you depending on you and your personality and what you like or don't like. I personally loved doing that
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kind of work in school. So I have no problem with it feeling like school work or homework. But if it does feel like homework for you, it's possible it feels like homework because it's hard because it's something that you haven't been practicing. As you practice more, as it becomes second nature, it's not going to feel like work anymore because it'll be easy. It'll come naturally. you might find yourself really enjoying the challenge of teasing apart the deeper meaning
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to try to understand what the author is trying to say to try to find all of those different layers to try to make those connections and notice those patterns. Of course, different people are different and maybe even with practice as it gets easier, it's still not going to be fun for you and that's fine. But I do sometimes feel that people give up too soon. They give up in those early stages when it is still hard and it does still feel like work. But if you push a little farther,
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you might find that it is actually fun once it gets easy, once it becomes second nature. So don't sell yourself short and give up too soon. Because I could probably talk about this all day, I'm going to force myself to stop and move on to the next stage. What you can do after you finish a book, whether this is in your head or if you're writing this down in a physical or digital reading journal, reflecting on the read as a whole, once you're finished and have the full picture, is a
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vital piece of the puzzle for critically analyzing a book because it's one thing to analyze it when you're a third of the way through or halfway through and don't have all the information. It's another thing to analyze the entire piece of art as a whole with full perspective. So, some of the things that I like to do when I finish a book and that you might want to try are summarizing the
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book. It doesn't have to be a really long in-depth summary, but just writing out a couple sentences of the major things that happened can be useful to reinforce that for yourself. Reflect on the core elements of the story and whether you felt they were well or poorly done. Characters, plot, setting, tone, themes, structure, and more. Whether you use the questions I provided or just think through some of those major elements to yourself. Taking the time to think about how
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each of those aspects of the story were executed and whether they worked for you or not can really deepen your understanding of the book, but also help you to really solidify your feelings about the book, whether you liked it or not and why. Character arcs. How did the characters grow and change if they did? Did you feel it was well done? Did you feel it made sense? Did the author do anything interesting stylistically? Was there a twist? Was there experimentation with form or
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style? Did the author incorporate aspects that you didn't expect? Did the author subvert any of your expectations based on the genre and subgenre? After finishing the book is also a great time to analyze the themes that were explored, not only to write them out if you haven't already, but also to reflect on why the author may have chosen these particular themes and how they explored them through the text. Say there's a lot of grief in a story. Do you think the author set
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out specifically to write a story about grief? How did you feel about how grief was portrayed? Did it feel real to you? Did it resonate with you? Did it tie into other themes or events in the story? Did it make you feel anything? It's also a great time to evaluate the book as a whole, what worked for you and what didn't and why. Again, this is really helpful in learning for yourself taste, what you
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like and what you don't like, which also helps in the future if you hear someone like me recommend a book and review it for you. You'll be more likely to recognize things that you know you like and dislike in the books you read and make decisions about what you want to read accordingly. You can also compare the book you just read to other works you've read. Either similar books in the
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genre. Did it feel too similar to something you've read before? Did it feel like it examined similar themes to another book you've read, but it did it better or worse? One of the characters remind you of another character that you've read. Did you feel they were more well-developed or less? Were there some interesting literary references? In hindsight, what do you think the author was trying
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to say? Or what direction was the author trying to turn your attention by alluding to these past works? Are there shared themes between the works they referred to and the work they wrote? Consider the representation. If there are marginalized identities being represented in these characters, how are they talked about? How are they represented? Did it feel like good representation to you? Did it feel stereotypical? Did it feel nuanced and realistic? Etc., etc. And this is just
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a jumping off point. Again, there are literally infinite questions that you could ask yourself and ways that you could reflect on the books you read. There are also so many different aspects of storytelling, of literature that you could examine and focus on. I think that specifically when you're starting out, focusing on the things that matter most to you as a reader is a great way to
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make it more manageable, but also to make it more interesting to you. I'm a character-driven reader, so I spend a lot of time thinking about the characters, how they're written, their arcs, what they make me feel, if I like them or not, and if I feel that was intentional, how they develop over the course of a story, their relationships, what the representation is like, etc., etc. I also love thinking about the books I read on a thematic level. So, looking at what
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themes are being explored and what the author is trying to say about those themes and how they intersect with the other themes in the novel and whether I think it was well done or not and whether it's something that interests me or not. Those are the aspects that I tend to focus on more in the books that I read. Whatever interests you most is a really great entry point and again can make it a little bit more manageable as you're starting out. If you're a beginner and you
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get to the end of a book and you're just feeling stuck, you're trying to summarize your thoughts, you're trying to review everything that happened and reflect on it and you're just coming up empty. Again, the internet is your friend. Try it first by yourself, but if you're struggling, if you're coming up with nothing, watch reviews here on YouTube. Read them on a platform like Goodreads. Find an online book club that discussed the book that you read and see what other people
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are saying. Ask yourself if you agree with their review or disagree and why. Use other people's reviews or other discussions online as a jumping off point to examine your own thoughts and feelings about the book that you read. Did they notice things that went over your head? Maybe that's something you want to add as a property in your notion or jot down in your notebook so that you remember to try to pay attention to that next time you read a book so that you can be more aware
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of whatever aspect of the story it was. This is also a great time to talk to other people who have read the book, whether in person or online. If you have a friend or family member who read the book, try to take that discussion deeper than just surface level what happened in the book and whether you would give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Why did you like it? Why did you dislike it? How did you feel about the character arcs, the themes, the structure, the writing style? If you
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don't have someone in person to talk to about the book, go online. Again, it's an amazing resource. There are billions of people, many of them reading books every single day. you can find someone who read the book that you read and who wants to talk about it with you. Another great way to kind of wrap it up for yourself and to really practice the ability not only to think about all of these things, but to communicate them clearly is to practice writing a review. You don't have to
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post it publicly if that's not something you want to do. But even just writing a review for yourself and trying to examine all these different aspects and practice expressing not only what you noticed, but how you felt about what you noticed again is really going to help reinforce these skills that you're building and just help you develop your communication skills, which again very helpful
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and relevant in life in general. Now that I've been talking for ages and the sun has set and it's getting late, I'm going to wrap this up with some final tips. My first tip that has helped me so much with reading critically is joining a book club. In my case, I started a book club, which is a little bit more pressure because I also write the discussion questions and lead the discussions. But regardless, joining a book club, whether in person or online, is so helpful
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for learning to read more critically and analyzing books on a deeper level. You can join my book club if you want on Patreon. You can join many, many free book clubs on the internet. You can find book clubs at your local library. Support your local libraries. Book clubs are incredible and they are so so wonderful for helping you get into the swing of reading more critically and doing it with other
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people and using them as a resource and to make it more social and fun. Not only is the actual discussion valuable, but I always find when I'm reading a book, knowing I'm going to discuss it in a book club later, I read that thing so much closer. I just know that some tiny aspect of the story is going to come up in discussion and I want to remember it and have a thought about it and be able to talk about it. So, I read more closely when I know I'm going to discuss it later.
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If you can't find a book club to join, try buddy readading with a friend in real life or online. Buddy reads are like a book club but just with fewer people. Another tip is to reread a book that you already know well. Whether it's a book you've read several times or just a book that you absolutely loved that has really stayed with you, try rereading it and try going deeper than you did
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the first time or the first many times. Maybe the first time you read it, you read it just for the plot. you didn't think much more about it. Now, as you go back into it, you already know it happens. So, you don't have to worry about that. You can think more about why it's happening and how it's happening. Why is the author choosing to tell it this way? Are you noticing some foreshadowing that
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you didn't notice the first time cuz you didn't know what was going to happen? How is the author framing the story? Do you still feel the same way about the story that you did the first time you read it? And if not, why? Rereading books can be such a valuable tool in learning to read more critically and diving deeper. And I have personally found that rereading repeatedly can be an even greater tool. Each time I read a book, I pick up more and more and I feel that I am diving
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even deeper into the psyche of the author and why they made the choices that they did. When you're not distracted by a plot twist, you can gain so many more insights into what is being said and why and how. And if you want to level up or you want to go even deeper, consider checking out critical theory. You can get a textbook for a college course on critical theory and read it and apply
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the things you learn to your own reading. Maybe this is strain too close to homework territory for some of you, but not for me personally. I I just bought a critical theory textbook and I'm excited to read it. Let me know if you want me to make a video in future diving into critical theory and different ways to approach reading critically on a more academic level because I'm studying. And
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with that, I just realized I've been talking for several hours. So, good luck to future me editing this into something coherent. But I hope that this video was interesting or helpful for you, whether you're an absolute beginner or you're trying to expand upon your critical reading skills. I really enjoyed writing out all my thoughts and making this video for you. So, I hope it was everything that you were looking for when you clicked on this video. Like this video if you liked it
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and subscribe if you haven't already. Check out the videos I mentioned in the description box. and that blog post with all of the many questions you can ask yourself while reading to really work those analytical muscles. Remember that reading critically is about being active in your reading, engaging in conversation, being thoughtful and aware and curious about what the author is trying to do and why. And let me know in the comments down below what made you interested in
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critical reading. Why did you click on this video? What does critical reading mean to you? Did you feel that you were sufficiently taught how to read critically in school? and or if you're interested, I would love this actually. Answer one of the many questions I gave as examples in this video for your most recent read in the comments down below and do a little critical reading practice.
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If you made it all the way to the end, leave some sort of bookish emoji in the comments so I know you're a real one. Thank you again to Lume for sponsoring this video. Don't forget to click the link in my description box and use code plantb for an extra $5 off your starter bundle. That's 40% savings and you get a full-size deodorant, a full-size cream or spray deodorant and two free products like their wipes or mini body wash, all with free US shipping. And thank you again to Lumi
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for sponsoring this video. But that's it from me. Thank you so much for watching. I really hope this video will encourage you to read just a little bit more critically. And with that, I'm going to get going. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you really soon in my next one. Bye, friends.
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