for any incoming grad students that follow me but who (like me) may not know coming into their programs: you're not expected to read books front to back in a slow methodic way for your seminars. you won't have time. you're being trained in 'gutting' books and skim reading.

do not panic like I did because you read like 50-100 pages a day of a dense book and you're supposed to read 3 books a week.

you're supposed to learn to read intro, conclusions, index, sources, a key chapter or two, then skim read the rest

what you're being tasked with isn't retaining all the info in the book. you're being tasked with learning how to devour a book in as short a time as possible, figure out what its arguments are, where it fits into the historiography, what kinds of sources it uses, etc.

(I actually hate gutting books. would really prefer to read articles in-depth instead. but this is what grad school expects of you. you won't have time to do anything else.)

100% this

also, the NewBooksin podcast series, which you can also find on twitter, is grad students interviewing scholars on their latest books, which you can listen to while doing other things, which should help https://twitter.com/ziadachkar/status/1300514686379663360

I also used audiobooks quite a bit last year, but that's more hit or miss because recent academic audiobooks written for niche academic audiences don't usually get audiobook versions.