Topical Reading: How to Read Through a Subject’s Canon

And Why it Beats Long Reading Lists and Random Reading

Amor Towles has been gradually working his way through the literary canon for about twenty years now.

In an interview, the best-selling Novelist revealed how he goes about this mission.

Here’s what he doesn’t do:

• Read through a list of “the 100 best classic novels.”

• Read whatever he feels like in the moment.

Instead, he breaks the canon down into what he calls projects—collections of classic novels organized around a specific region, time period, theme, or author—and tackles them one by one.

“Normally I read with three friends who have been reading together for almost 20 years. And we meet on a monthly basis to discuss a novel, and we read projects, so we will take an author and read 5,6,7 of their novels chronologically. Or we’ll take a region or a time period or a theme and we’ll do multiple books from that place that time that theme whatever it is, generally working chronologically over half a year, and then we’ll shift gears and do something new… For instance, we did a period where we took a year and read Nobel prize winners who had not written in English and [whose work] we were not familiar with.” — Amor Towles

I was happy to learn that one of my favorite writers reads this way. It validates an approach to self-education I’ve been experimenting with for some time.

I call it topical reading.

It works for any subject, whether it’s history, literature, science, or something unique, like autodidactism.

Today, I’d like to tell you about it and why I find it more effective at promoting depth of understanding, reading retention, and study motivation than other ways of reading through a subject’s canon.

Before I get into it, I need to discuss and critique two popular methods for reading through a canon, both of which I’ve used:

The 2 Main Approaches to Reading Through a Canon

There are countless ways to read through a subject’s canon.

However, there are two approaches I see used most often—highly structured and highly unstructured.

A highly structured approach usually means creating—or finding—a massive reading list, like The Great Books of the Western World series, and working through them with the diligence of a snail trying to cross the Andes.

At its extreme, this approach involves reading the books in a specific order. For example, in The Well Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer recommends reading each of her lists in chronological order to see how each field developed. Not a bad tactic, but one that’s incredibly hard to stick with.

Then you have the unstructured approach, where you randomly read through a discipline’s major works, choosing books that fit this week’s current interests.

At its extreme, you follow no rules but your heart. For example, let’s say you wanted to become well-read in US history. If you were using this approach, you might read a history of the American Revolution one week and a biography of Woodrow Wilson the next.

In my experience, while both approaches have their merits, neither is the best way to go about becoming well-read in a subject.

The problem with too much and too little structure in reading plans

The structured reading approach is too restrictive.

After a few books, the reading plan inevitably starts to feel more like a cage than a roadmap to wisdom. As a result, motivation falls off a cliff, and before you know it, you’ve given up entirely on the project. Worst of all, you feel like a total failure.

I tried using a structured, chronological approach when reading the greatest history books ever written—using Susan Bauer’s Classical Education List—and by the time I reached Thucydides’ masterpiece, I was already annoyed at having to read it. I wanted to skip ahead, but felt obligated to follow the chronological assignment. So what did I do? I gave up on the project entirely, because naive me felt that if I wasn’t going to do it perfectly, then I might as well not do it at all.

I’ve found that even when I create my reading plans with strict rules about reading order, this tends to happen. It turns out that I hate being told what to do, even when it’s past Sam doing the telling.

The curiosity-based approach, on the other hand, is suboptimal for the opposite reason.

It’s too free, too chaotic, too haphazard—especially for those of us who like some order in our studies.

Reading randomly across a canon tends to induce feelings of spinning your wheels because you’re neither following a trustworthy plan nor going deep into any specific topics, authors, or themes to really feel any sense of expertise. One book often isn’t enough time spent immersing yourself in a certain topic to deeply understand it. And this dilettantism is revealed when you try to speak on or write on the topic. Such revelations of ignorance are incredibly demotivating. You can easily start to think, “why the hell am I reading at all?”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love random reading. In my reading life, I still devote 33% of my time to the pleasures of random reading. After all, there’s nothing more thrilling than a random book haul based on momentary inspiration.

Despite my love for random reading, I’ve stopped using it as the method as my go-to strategy for self-studying a specified area of knowledge. It just doesn’t provide the depth I’m after. After so many years of feeling like my understanding is superficial, I’m working to fix that.

So, what’s my favorite approach for reading through a canon?

It’s called topical reading.

It’s a middle path between both extremes.

I find it gives me the perfect balance of depth and breadth in my self-directed studies, as well as the perfect mix of structure and curiosity-based flexibility.

I’ve also noticed that, because this approach has you reading several books on the same subject, topical reading naturally activates compounding knowledge and spaced repetition, two learning techniques that help you more deeply understand and retain the books you read.

So, then, what the heck is it?

Below you’ll learn:

• The 5 benefits of topical reading

• 4 example topical reading plans

• The 4-step process for using topical reading to become well read in a subject.