naznsan

How do you guys read books that you don't feel like reading?

I consider myself a decent reader. If I'm very interested in a book, I'm able to stay up all night, reading it as much as I can until I feel like if I read anymore I'll get fired for sleeping on the job. I love to read fantasy books, but usually most interesting fiction books are able to keep my attention.

The trouble I've got is with non-fiction books. Books that are talked about as "must reads". Books like Sapiens, The Selfish Gene, Pale Blue Dot, or any textbook/technical documentation. I've tried again and again to read non-fiction books. Breaking it up into smaller chunks, listening to them as audiobooks, or just slogging through it page by page. But nothing seems to stick in my head if I grind through them.

Now, before you go "Hey naznsan, just don't! Life is too short to read books you don't want to read!", the thing is, I want to read these books. Some of them explain things I'm decently interested in. Some of them I have to read for work/education. I just seem to have trouble either focusing, staying motivated, or retaining any information in such books.

So does anyone have any tips or suggestions on how I could read such non-fiction books like I read my fiction? Or am I doomed to just slog through page by page, relying on my notes to do all the remembering?

Context

I've been a long time user of the Amazon Kindle, starting with the first ever one with the physical side buttons, all the way to the Paperwhite 8th gen. While I had been very happy with it, a few things happened recently that pushed me towards getting this:

• The whole issue with Reddit kind of made me realize that I didn't want to trust a company with all my books, no matter how big or trustworthy the company seemed. All my eBooks so far have been bought from the Amazon store, and read on my Kindles.
• I bought a Note Air 2 Plus a few months ago, and it was a really good device for my needs
• Onyx released the Page

Initial thoughts on Onyx Page

• It's very light, and very thin. It doesn't feel cheap or anything, but it feels lighter than my Paperwhite despite this having a slightly larger screen
• The page turning buttons are really nice, and having a side bezel I can hold on to while reading is also very comfortable
• The back is a bit glossier than I would've liked. It's just smooth, and a big fingerprint magnet
• The graphical art they have on the back is not indented or whatever the opposite of indentation is. It feels more like something they've etched onto the surface

Closing thoughts?

I've spent the last few hours trying this and that, downloaded the Kindle app to read (probably) my last Amazon store bought Kindle book. I will be spending the next few hours porting my Kindle books into Calibre, removing the DRM and storing them in my personal cloud :)

I don't think there have been any reviews out there yet, so feel free to ask me anything regarding this, and I'll try my best to answer them.