HOW TO READ A BOOK

Guidelines for Getting the Most
out of Non-Fiction Reading

Paul N. Edwards
School of Information
University of Michigan

Author's Note: I wrote this article in hopes that others would not only read it, but pass it along. Please feel free to download it, change it, and distribute it in any way you see fit.

I have no attachment to authorship of this essay, and it may prove more effective if distributed unsigned. Obviously, however, I would prefer that you not publish it or distribute it under your own name.



How can you get the most out of a book when you are reading for information, rather than for pleasure?

It's always very satisfying to start at the beginning and read straight through to the end. If you don't read a novel this way, it's not very satisfying, since a basic principle of fiction is to hold the reader in suspense. In fact, your whole purpose in reading fiction is to follow the writer's lead, allowing him or her to spin a story bit by bit.

But many of the books you'll read during your college career -- and possibly in the rest of your life -- probably won't be novels. Instead, they'll be non-fiction: textbooks, manuals, histories, academic studies, and so on. The purpose of reading books like these is to gain information. Here, finding out what happens -- as quickly and easily as possible -- is your main goal. So unless you're stuck in prison with nothing else to do, NEVER read a non-fiction book from beginning to end.

Instead, when you're reading for information, you should ALWAYS jump ahead, skip around, and use every available strategy to anticipate, and then to discover, what the writer has to say. This is how you'll get the most out of a book in the least amount of time.

Here are some guidelines to help you do this effectively.

1) READ THE WHOLE BOOK.

Your goal should always be to get all the way through the assignment. It's much more important to have a general grasp of the arguments, evidence, and conclusions than to understand every detail. You probably won't remember most of the details anyway, no matter how carefully you read.

2) DECIDE HOW MUCH TIME YOU WILL SPEND.

If you know in advance that you have only six hours to read, it'll be easier to pace yourself. Remember, you're going to read the whole book (or the whole assignment).

There's nothing wrong with setting a time limit for yourself. In fact, setting time limits and keeping to them (while accomplishing your goals) is one of the most important skills you can ever learn.

Using the methods described here, you should be able to read a 300-page book in six to eight hours. Of course, the more time you spend, the more you'll learn and the better you'll understand the book. But your time is limited. The more directly you deal with your limits, the better off you are.

3) HAVE A STRATEGY.

Before you begin, figure out why you are reading this particular book, and how you are going to read it. If you don't have reasons and strategies of your own -- not just those of your teacher -- you won't learn as much.

As soon as you start to read, begin trying to find out four things:

Once you've got a grip on these, start trying to determine:

Keep coming back to these questions as you read. By the time you finish, you should be able to answer them all.

Two good ways to think about this are:

a) Imagine that you're going to review the book for a magazine.
b) Imagine that you're having a conversation, or a formal debate, with the author.

4) READ ACTIVELY.

Don't wait for the author to hammer you over the head. Instead, from the very beginning, constantly generate hypotheses ("the main point of the book is that...") and questions ("How does the author know that...?") about the book.

Making notes about these can help. As you read, try to confirm your hypotheses and answer your questions. Once you finish, review these.

5) READ IT THREE TIMES.

You'll get the most out of the book if you read it at least three times -- each time for a different purpose and at a different level of detail.

a) Overview.

Here you read very quickly, following the principle (described below) of reading for high information content. For a 350-page book, this should take no more than an hour.

b) Detail.

Within your time constraints, read the book a second time. Try to answer any questions you generated during your overview reading. Focus especially on the beginnings and ends of chapters and major sections.

c) Notes.

On your third reading, make notes about the book's arguments, evidence, and conclusions. Include just enough detail to let you remember the most important things. 3-5 pages of notes per 100 pages of text is a good goal to shoot for -- more than that is usually too much. Use a system that lets you easily find places in the book (e.g., mark page numbers beside each note).

Remember: you'll get more out of three one-hour readings than you can get out of one three-hour reading.

6) READ THE PARTS WITH THE HIGHEST INFORMATION CONTENT FIRST.

Non-fiction books usually have an "hourglass" structure. More general information (summaries, conclusions, etc.) is presented at the beginnings and ends of:

More specific information (supporting evidence, details, etc.) is presented in the middle:

The "Hourglass" Information Structure

To make this structure work for you, read the book in the following order:

7) MARK THE BOOK.

Underlining and making notes in the margins is a very important part of active reading.

Do this from the very beginning -- even on your first, overview reading. When you come back to the book later, your marks reduce the amount you have to look at and help you see what's most significant.

Don't mark too much. This defeats the purpose of marking and forces you to re-read unimportant information. As a rule, you should average no more than one or two marks per page.

8) KNOW THE AUTHOR(S).

Knowing who wrote a book helps you judge about the book's quality.

Remember that authors are people. Like anyone else, their views are shaped by their educations, their jobs, and their other life experience. Also like anyone else, they have prejudices, blind spots, needs, failings, and desires -- as well as insights, brilliance, objectivity, and successes. Notice all of it.

Try to answer questions like these: What factors shaped the author's intellectual perspective? What is his or her profession? Is the author an academic, a journalist, a professional (doctor, lawyer, industrial scientist, etc.)? Expertise? Other books and articles? Intellectual network(s)? Gender? Race? Class? Political affiliation? Why did the author decide to write this book? When? For what audience(s)? Who paid for the research work (private foundations, government grant agencies, industrial sponsors, etc.)? Who wrote "jacket blurbs" in support of the book?

You can often (though not always) learn about much of this from the acknowledgments, the bibliography, and the author's biographical statement.

9) KNOW THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT.

Knowing the author also helps you understand the book's intellectual context. This includes the academic discipline(s) from which it draws, schools of thought within that discipline, and others who agree with or oppose the author's viewpoint.

You'll understand a book much better if you can figure out what, and who, it is answering -- since a book is almost always partly one writer's response to other writers. Pay special attention to points where the author tells you directly that s/he is disagreeing with other writers: "Conventional wisdom holds that x, but I argue instead that y." "Famous Joe Scholar says that x, but I believe that y."

Equally important are the people and writings the author cites in support of his/her arguments.

10) USE YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND.

An awful lot of thinking and processing goes on when you're not aware of it. Just as with writing or any other creative thought process, full understanding of a book takes time to develop. The mind, like the body, can also get tired, especially when doing just one thing for many hours. Your ability to comprehend and retain what you read drops off dramatically after a couple of hours.

Therefore, you should read a book in several short sessions of one to two hours apiece, rather than one long marathon. If you follow the method given here, you'll go through the entire book at each session. In between, your unconscious mind will process some of what you've read.

When you come back for the next session, start by asking yourself what you remember from your previous reading, what you think of it so far, and what you still need to learn.