Reading

Reading is the ability to anticipate where a disc will end up based on its flight shape and characteristics. It is a skill that is heavily emphasized during deep cuts where you need to chase down frisbees above you and may need to jostle for position with another player to reach the disc before they do. However, reading is helpful in any situation where you're catching a frisbee.

Johnny Malks provides a video explaining how to catch certain deep hucks along with examples:

Learning to read mostly comes down to experience and body control. There are a few basic cues that beginners should look out for: As the disc descends, whichever way the frisbee is tilted down towards is the direction that it will drift towards and the speed of its descent is dictated by how flat the disc is as it comes down–the more tilted it is, the less it will float. Unless thrown extremely inside-out (IO), discs thrown with enough spin & force tend to turn more outside-in (OI) over the course of its flight. That means discs thrown slightly IO tend to flatten out and flat throws will start to turn OI. If a disc loses momentum and hangs midair. It will maintain its current tilt and drift in that direction–sometimes this will be in the opposite direction of the disc’s initial flight path if the disc is tilted backwards. In general, it is much easier to read a disc that is curving towards you rather than away so if you know the way in which the disc is going to curl and you have enough time, position yourself wide in the direction that the disc is going to drift such that the frisbee floats toward you and any adjustments you make are toward the frisbee as it approaches you. 

Just like every other throw, catching away throws is easiest when you can clap-catch at chest height. However, with the exception of up-line cuts, most away-cuts will be the target of deep throws, which typically give defenders a better chance at blocking the disc for the reward of more yards gained in a single throw. As a result, receivers making away cuts will often be required to claw-catch in order to beat their defender.

Finally, players making away-cuts need to be able to read the disc without constant vision of the thrower and the frisbee after it is thrown. The ideal method for this task is to look over your shoulder at the thrower immediately after they release the disc, identifying the general path of the disc from a quick initial look and adjusting your cut according to its anticipated path until it either flies close enough such that you can track it without changing your cut or you reach an ideal position to turn and catch the disc.

Sometimes while running an away-cut, the trajectory of the disc will cause it to crossover from being behind you on one side to being behind you on the other side, making it impossible to maintain vision of the disc without spinning 360 degrees. The correct way to track the frisbee in this scenario is to keep looking at the disc while it is on one side until it leaves your field of view and then turning your head forwards to face the other side, picking up the disc in your vision from where it exited on the original side. Several clips in the deep cut compilation demonstrate this method, including the very first clip:

The more you practice these situations, the better you will become at all of the different parts of reading the disc. Your ability to anticipate the flight of the disc from the initial look will become more accurate and your judgment of what route to run to get to catch the disc as early as possible will become more refined.