My personal strategy, regardless of whether something is a short paper or a book or a difficult classic, is to sit down in a quiet, comfortable, brightly lit place with a large cup of tea, and read. But this may have to do with the fact that I like comfortable places and I like tea.

Much more interesting than my personal preferences is whether there ought to be different strategies for approaching different kinds of philosophical texts. I suspect the most important determining factor is not the kind of text, but rather the kind of purposes you, the reader, have in your reading. Are you just trying to get an overview of a position, trying to answer a particular question, engaging in sustained research on a narrowly prescribed problem, or something else? Published philosophy is a resource to be put to work, but there are lots of different kinds of work. Please also see the following question and answers: