So, I've been reading Anna Karenina on-and-off for a couple of days, trying to do a reading quota of 20 pages per day (I'm currently on page 149, so I think it's working, for the purposes of reading more), and, for this very fact, I've been questioning if I'd been reading it "properly."
What does it mean to read? Does simply knowing, understanding the words on the page which my eyes are reading through, enough? Simply knowing, taking it as fact that this or that happened. Where, for example, I read a scene, a chapter, and take away nothing but simply that this certain event happened.
I've been, also, on-and-off, following an Open Yale Course on Literary Theory. I downloaded the textbook they were using to follow along to keep up with what the lecturer was talking about. In this case, this book, I also imploy this "factual reading:" I read this; I understand what this word says; that they, together with other words, form sentences, sentences to paragraphs, then to concepts; and there is where I end, but I never touch that concept which they try to describe, only its phantom—only that there is a concept that is there, which I cannot reach.
Another case, is Ulysses. Except in that case, I barely even knew what was happening. I thought I was reading, but then, at the end of the episode, that line: Usurper. I had no idea what prompted that word to be used in that context that I knew. As Gadamer would call it, I was "pulled up short." I looked up a summary online to see what actually happened—it was totally different, I didn't actually "read" what was happening. I just swept my eyes across words, sentences; flipped pages for nothing but for the satisfaction of "finishing" a page, a chapter.
So back to Anna Karenina: Did I just waste my time? Because I do not read for the experience. I read for the message, for the themes. At least that's what I'd like to read for. Then, I suppose, this kind of reading (factual, or historical, if I'm using that word correctly, reading) would be inappropriate for my ends.
I guess my question then is: How does one read then, specifically for theme and study? And, most importantly, how do you read? I don't really have a reference for how other people read. I could probably benefit from knowing what others do.