A three-hundred page book takes the average person ten hours to read. Is there a way to spend less time on boring books and more time on those that hold your interest?
No, I will not be encouraging speed reading or any similar “hacks.” Yes – you can quit books. Don’t feel obligated to finish reading a book you don’t like or that isn’t providing the information you’re looking for. There are simply too many great books out there to waste time slogging through a decent book. I aim to spend my time only on books I know I will enjoy. How can I possibly know beforehand whether I will like or enjoy a book? I inspect the book. Today I’ll explain the system I use to guarantee the hours I invest in a book are well-spent. We will look at methods of selecting a book, break down exactly what to look for while inspecting the book, and address some common objections to this method.
Choosing a book
Before you can read a book, you must choose a book. The majority of titles I read come from one of the following three places:
Find foundational or primary sources.
Foundational texts on your topics of interest are a great place to begin because you get to approach the topic through the author’s fresh eyes of a new discovery. Think about the books everyone references, but very few people have actually read, like Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, or Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Older texts tend to cover a lot of intellectual ground, weaving philosophy, psychology, biology, social criticism, and political theories in with economics, science, literature, or any number of additional areas. This allows you to discover connections and intersections between fields of study you wouldn’t otherwise make. Older books have also stood the test of time, meaning that while some aspects may be outdated, the overall ideas or line of thinking has influenced so many others it is important to learn the ideas straight from the source.
Ask for (and follow!) recommendations.
Hoard recommendation lists and sift through them to find the less mentioned gold nugget titles. Recommendations are like signs on the highway, telling you which way to go to reach your destination. Ask people you admire which titles they love. Ask your mentors which book changed their lives. Ask them what books they think you should read. Then, actually read them. There are millions more books in print than any one person could possibly read. Save yourself some time and effort by reading the same authors or books as the people you admire or aspire to work with.
Use your current book to find your next one.
Every book is a combination of and inspired by dozens of other books. Look through the index of your current book for related references and authors. From there, you can take recommendations from the bibliography of the book you currently read. For instance, I am looking at how information travels through a population, and currently reading journalist Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion treatise. Throughout the book, Lippmann recommends and references related works from other authors on related topics like the press and politics. When I finish Opinion, I will already have a list of related works to explore on the same topic. As I work through these recommendations, I’ll explore the titles referenced in them to find my next read, and so on.
Not all books are meant to be read in the same way from cover to cover. Often, I see recommendations to give a book ten or twenty percent to make an impression. For a three-hundred page book, this would be thirty or sixty pages, respectively. This advice is mistaken because most of the beginning of the book will be introduction, reviewing what has already been covered on the topic, rather than introducing new arguments or substance into farther into the book. Instead of working through established material and expecting that to inform my decision, I employ Mortimer Adler’s “inspectional reading” for books I am considering reading.
The Two Kinds of Inspectional Reading
In How to Read a Book, author Mortimer Adler divides what he calls “inspectional reading” into two categories. The first is skimming; the second is superficial reading. Skimming is the most effective tool for discovering those truly great books you want to read. If upon skimming a book, you realize it doesn’t hold your interest or have new information, that is a success. It means you’ve made your way through a title in just a few minutes instead of spending a couple hours to arrive at that conclusion. If you realize you are interested in the text, you’ve guaranteed you’ll enjoy reading the entire book.
For any non-fiction book we read, we should be able to answer a few questions after spending just a few minutes with the book. First, what kind of book is it? Is it explanatory or expounding? Is the purpose of the book to explain how something works, or to convince the reader to take a certain action? Broadly, what is the author trying to say? The purpose of skimming is to learn these answers quickly – at a bird’s perspective – and have a feel for the style of the author.
Here are the key sections of the book we should focus on reading to answer those basic questions:
Chapter names and summaries
Inspect the table of contents for chapter titles and descriptions. The chapter titles will reveal how the information is organized. Older books often include descriptions or outlines about the organization of individual chapters. This is also useful for when you want to read about a specific idea or piece of research.
Index
Look through the index to see the individuals, concepts, studies, etc., the author references in the book. This is will give you an idea of what ideas or research, if any, the book presents, and a blueprint of their arguments. You’ll also be able to see quickly whether the book covers any ideas or ground that is new to you. Additionally, you might choose to go straight to a certain chapter to see the research on a given topic.
Publisher’s Blurb and Preface
The publisher’s blurb often includes a summary of the author’s arguments and conclusion, making it a great resource for answering basic questions about the book. You may be inclined to dismiss the publisher’s blurb as empty praise to convince you to read or buy the book or simple adulation for the author – and you may be right in some instances. However, you should definitely read the blurb to find out.
Likewise, in their prefaces or “notes to the reader”, authors often include interesting observations or references which didn’t make it into the final version of the book. These can help round out the author’s perspective on the topic, provide additional book recommendations, or include additional references to explore for more information on related topics. The preface also usually includes the author’s hopes for the books stated clearly.
Introduction
If the book has an introduction, read it. There is often so much good information added here that the author thought was important, but for whatever reason, couldn’t include in the body of the book. Often, a chapter or passage got cut from the final version of the book, so the author included those resources or ideas for the reader in an introduction. With older books, the introduction often explains the cultural setting and ideas the author was addressing at the time. Contemporary titles often include references to similar or related work, for you to read next. The editor may also have notes explaining why the book is structured in a particular way.
Final chapter
Finally, look through the end of the final chapter. As Adler advises, “Few authors are able to resist the temptation to sum up what they think is new and important about their work in these pages. You do not want to miss this, even though, as sometimes happens, the author himself may be wrong in his judgment.”
Having read all or most of these key passages, we can now explain the conversation the book is joining, the major arguments the author includes, and their conclusion. Instead of sinking a couple hours into a book we may or may not finish, we now know the major points and whether we want to read the entire book. This brief skimming may very well be all the time you need to spend with a book.
This can be done at the library, as well. You don’t necessarily need to buy every book, then decide whether to read it. Check out books at your library, skim them, and decide from there what you want to purchase for your shelves. I especially find e-book editions helpful for this, as the table of contents will often take you directly to the chapter or location you tap. You can skim through several books quickly, make a list of the titles you are interested in, and fill your shelves with new ideas.
Superficial Reading
At one time or another, we’ve all come across a difficult book, whether it’s a highly technical discourse, a detailed textbook, a ancient tome written in archaic language, or it simply deals with challenging concepts. This is where the second kind of inspectional reading, superficial reading, becomes most useful.
Recalling our goals of understanding the conversation taking place, as well as the author’s particular contribution to that conversation, we need to familiarize ourselves with this new information. The solution is to read through the entire text superficially, that is as quickly as possible. This will allow you to extract the major points of the author’s position and become familiar with the broader topic. Do not stop to look up terms or references. Superficial reading is not the time to take notes or argue with the text. Aim to get from start to finish as quickly as possible. If you stop to look up all the unfamiliar terms, you’ll have forgotten the beginning well before you reach the end.
Remind yourself of the major ideas and arguments presented. Later, read the book again more slowly stopping to look up definitions or terms. Start with the general, then begin to dig deeper into the more specific. During this later reading, we can get more specific and ask questions like, How does the author state their case? How does she defend her arguments? What evidence does he offer as support? What, if any, refutation does he offer against opposing perspectives?
I have used this method with both technical non-fiction and epic poetry. It is counter-intuitive for sure, but, once you know the major ideas and the progression of the story or argument, the details and ideas fit together more easily. Think of the superficial reading as the foundation upon which the walls and windows are built. Read the work first, then explore the nuance and detail. This is the reading method I employed with Schopenhauer last year. I had read excerpts, but not the complete work before. I simply made sure to get through the text, start to finish, then once I learned what the big picture ideas were, I went back into certain chapters to fill out my understanding of certain arguments.
This will feel like cheating. You may feel you’re not reading “correctly.” You might feel foolish or lost. Don’t let this deter you. Traditional English classes taught us to pay attention to the terms or ideas we don’t understand and take note of them and investigate. None of this applies to this particular method of reading. The purpose of a superficial reading is simply to get through the book as quickly as possible. Just make it through the text so you know the major points of the work and major ideas in the conversation. Then, when you sit down to learn from the book, you have a foundation on which to build. The technical aspects of the book will have a framework to hang on. Feeling lost is to be expected – you won’t understand every reference. However, when you approach a book understanding you are only looking for the big ideas, letting specific names and examples fall to the side becomes much easier, as does grasping those big ideas.
Addressing Objections
Just as there are different levels of books, there are also different levels of reading, and each accomplishes a different purpose. As Sir Francis Bacon wrote, “Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.” Different reading levels are like different lenses on a camera; they all will allow you to capture an image, but different focal lengths will include more or less in the frame. Reading more closely will reveal more about the author and his influences than; less closely will provide general information. Skimming and superficial reading are meant to prepare and add to the deeper levels of reading.
Finally, let’s address the few objections to the inspectional reading methods of skimming and superficial reading. The first is that,“Skimming isn’t reading.”
Let’s return to the camera lens metaphor. Depending on your prior knowledge and interest, you’ll want your focus to be wider or tighter. If you want to know whether you might be interested in a particular title, you need to pull back and use less focus. This is the purpose of skimming. It gives you a general perspective of the landscape of ideas. It’s not a substitute for in-depth reading, but it will introduce you to new concepts and keep you from sinking time into a title you won’t finish.
The other objection is the well-meaning, “Reading is supposed to be a challenge.”
Reading is certainly intended to challenge our beliefs and perspective. Ultimately, reading is meant to serve a purpose. It’s meant to be an adventure and an act of learning. Adventures and learning are often challenging and rigorous, and the reader should be prepared for the work required of the book they embark on. Skimming and superficial reading, used as outlined by Adler and here, will help readers navigate new material more easily and understand that material more clearly. Slogging through a book, long after the interest has faded, is not helpful, can actually prevent us from learning, and discourage our habit of reading.
For many years, I subscribed to the theory that one should always finish what they start, to include books. Then I realized that “finishing” a book isn’t always an objective point, and that completing a book means different things at different times. Books can be used for different purposes and read in different ways than merely sitting down and reading straight through. What actually matters is your purpose in reading the book and making sure you stick to your goals. If a book isn’t helping you to accomplish anything, don’t hesitate to move on to the next title. Books are tools for learning, not objects in themselves.
Again, the way you approach a book will depend on your goals for that book. You will read fiction differently than poetry, and a memoir differently than a technical treatise. Not only is that acceptable, it’s more efficient. Read in line with your goals and put aside the “rules” for reading that say there is only one way to use a book.
Approach books as the tools for learning they are. Save yourself time by skimming new non-fiction and superficially reading difficult books. This will let you pick up on more of the information presented, and will keep you from spending hours reading books you find yourself not interested in finishing. Using these methods, you will set yourself on a path of learning and spend less time on books that won’t hold your interest.
