While some people say that we should read selectively and other say that we should read intensively, I try to read in both fashions, depending on my interests. At different times in my life, I have read very intensively, for example, when I was in university, I read very deeply in American literature. Once for a whole year, I studied and thus read almost all of Shakespeare's histories, comedies, and tragedies. One semester. I read only Russian literature. At the same time, this reading was also selective, as I was specifically choosing one national literature over another at that particular time in my life. One summer, I was renting the home of a Jewish family with a very large library, and I read a number of the books on Jewish history or literature. I had to read selectively, however, as some books were in the Jewish language, and thus, I had to read only those books which interested me in English.
My view on this matter is that we should always be reading as much and as widely as possible. By doing this, we improve our range of knowledge, as well as our vocabulary. For a number of years, I tried to read two books a month, which were not connected with my academic areas of expertise. This meant that I had at least expanded my knowledge by twenty-four books annually. More often, in the US when I lived in the Washington Post delivery area, or later when I lived in the New York Times distribution area, I would either read the paper on a daily or at least on a Sunday basis, when the paper might reach 300 pages. If I spent 3-4 hours reading the Sunday paper, I would read both selectively and intensively as my interests at the time developed. In this way, I was almost reading the equivalent of a large amount of a book on a weekly basis. I also read Newsweek, Time, and more recently The Washington Post weekly regularly. I was regularly reading various other magazines. I figured that the broader my knowledge development by reading, by watching useful TV programs, and by searching the Internet, the better I could give intelligent lectures to my students and become more well rounded too.