The hardest aspect for me was definitely dealing with Hobbes in general. The way I’ve always processed dense readings is to thoroughly read them once, think on it for a bit, skim the reading a second time, and think about it some more. After I’ve done all of that I read it again thoroughly and I’m able to perfectly comprehend and apply whatever the reading is talking about on this third read-through. Throughout high school whenever I did this whole process with history and english assignments I aced every one of them. It made it abundantly clear to my teachers the difference between a BS’d assignment and a fully completed one from me. The problem with this technique is that it’s really painful if I don’t enjoy the reading, and it’s also really time consuming, especially if the reading is long. As you can probably guess, I hated Hobbes and Leviathan is long enough that going through my whole usual process is completely impractical and time consuming. I was stuck struggling to stay awake through Hobbes’ old fashioned language and inability to explain anything quickly. I only managed to read about a third of it thoroughly and skimmed through the rest. That’s not at all how I’m used to reading. Shakespeare is the only other author who writes in antiquated English that I’ve read extensively, and the way I process plays is completely different from how I process books. Reading Hobbes was a miserable experience for me and I hope I don’t have to do anything like it any time soon.
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