I've started reading in two-month seasons, organized around a single anchor book.

The anchor is the book I want to actually understand — not just consume. Around it, I gather 4–6 supporting essays and shorter books that pull at the same idea from different angles. Everything I read for two months is in conversation with that anchor.

This is roughly the model in Note-taking is not knowledge: the goal isn't intake, it's the slow building of a small set of ideas you can use.

It's working better than my old "next book" habit. Books I've read this way (Christopher Alexander, Yi-Fu Tuan, Berger) sit much heavier in my head than the breezier reading they replaced. See also A year of reading less, writing more.

Open question: how long is too long for an anchor? Two months feels right; three feels indulgent. Probably depends on the book.

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