How people actually read essay collections wrong
A book of short essays looks like something you can read anywhere, in any order, in five minute bursts. That assumption is usually what ruins it.
The mistake
A collection of short, self contained essays, the kind sold as bite sized wisdom for busy people, invites a particular habit: read one while waiting for coffee, another on a train platform, a third half asleep before bed. The format seems built for interruption. Each piece has its own beginning and end, so nothing is technically lost if you stop.
But something is lost anyway. Essays like these tend to work by accumulation. A single piece on, say, the difference between self control and self respect will read as a tidy, slightly greeting card observation on its own. Read alongside four or five others on nearby ideas, in the order the author placed them, the observation starts to sharpen. The book is quietly building an argument across its length, even though no single essay announces it. Read at random, in fragments, that argument never assembles.
What to do instead
Set aside twenty or thirty minutes, not five. Read three or four essays in sequence rather than one in isolation. Notice which ideas repeat under different names, since repetition across essays is usually the author telling you what actually matters, as opposed to what merely fit into eight hundred words.
It also helps to read with something to write on nearby, not to take notes on every sentence but to mark the two or three lines per sitting that actually stopped you. A collection like this produces far more agreeable sentences than useful ones. The agreeable ones nod along with what you already believe. The useful ones are the smaller number that made you reconsider something, and those are easy to lose track of if nothing is written down.
Where it fits
A short essay collection suits the kitchen shelf better than the nightstand, precisely because it asks to be picked up during unhurried, ordinary stretches of a day rather than the last five minutes before sleep, when concentration is already gone.