how to study endgames?

In most of chess books,for example Capablanca's and Seirawan's which are good ones so do not tell me to ignore them,there is a diagram of starting position then 15-20 moves without diagram just explaining move by move how it goes.It is not easy for a beginner player to memorize the line,somewhere you are lost.The only way I could find is reading with a chessboard near you but it is very unconfortable to read and go back to chessboard and turn back to book and vice versa.So give me a suggestion on how to study endgames.

thanks andrew.

You're not supposed to memorise endgame lines. It makes no sense whatsoever to do so.

What you should be doing is remembering the method, or steps used to convert the win/hold the draw. The horrible long lines are there to illustrate the ideas, and you should use a board to see it. That's how most chess books are meant to be read.

Read the book  :  " das 1 x 1 des endspiels " , although in German, they give fine examples, easy to understand ( and remember... ), see the site www.schaakboek.nl 

A good way to learn endgames is to practice against a computer. Chesstempo.con has a great tactics trainer and a great endgame trainer so using both of them should boost your rating. 

you don't learn chess by just reading. of course you need to set up a board and play through the variations....

Instead of using a physical board while reading and analyzing the examples given in the book, you can use a chess program like Fritz. The convenience in using a chess program, when you analyze a variation or sub-variation, returning to the position where you left is easy with just a click of the mouse. Using a physical board, you need to rearrange the pieces.

I'd argue that the physical board has the benefit of forcing you to rearrange the pieces. That trains board memory. Or if you replay the moves from the start to arrive at the start of a variation, it's helping you drill the method again.