On Reading

We may have been trained, or have trained ourselves, perhaps, to read critically.

We can almost always say that this in not what we would have written.

Certainly there will be things the author does not say.

Maybe he gets X, Y and Z wrong.

Arguably the whole thing is fatally flawed.

But try, first, to read as sympathetically as you can. What is he trying to say and why?

Even if his solutions are wrong, is he perhaps asking a good question?

What is there to learn here, or to admire?

Is there anything in this?

Then, by all means, lay into it.