It's generally a good idea to read up on papers related to your research topic as preparation for prelims, and a rule of thumb is to read about two papers a week. My advisor told me about two weeks ago that I could probably be more ambitious than that and read a paper a day.
He has a good point, since my undergrad career consisted of a wide smattering of classes with no particular emphasis on one subfield in bio. But a paper a day? I'm not sure I can absorb all that info at once; I have to read a paper at least twice to get the most out of it. The first time I read it, I skip the methods section and all the figures. Second time around I'll actually look at the pictures, and (maybe) come up with more questions.
Hopefully I get better at info absorption over the next month; once school starts, my schedule is gonna be insane.
