The culinary business must be fun to you or you wouldn't be in it. It's a challenging adventure. Read it in a creative way as though you're actually doing it. Have a conception about what the recipe is about. Don't just go sentence by sentence.
Cooking is a collection or group of techniques.
Once you have peeled, seeded and juiced a tomato, you will always know how to do it. Once you have saut ed meat, it becomes second nature. Once you've executed a certain technique, you never have to read those instructions again. It just becomes part of you. Definitely sharp knives and a sharpening steel and know how to use it.