How to Read a Book Summary
Reading can be done for three reasons, for:
Entertainment – to relax, hear a story or “just because”;
Information – to acquire facts (to see more of the world); and
Understanding – to develop insight (to see the world differently).
Of the three, reading for understanding is hardest – and the focus of this guide.
Why? Because cognitive leaps are hard work. They begin with books that are beyond us, they lead us to new and occasionally uncomfortable truths and they force us to adopt new perspectives.
To close your understanding-gap with an author, you must answer four questions:
What is their book about as a whole?
What is being said in detail, and how?
Is their book true, in whole or in part? and
What of it?
How do we answer those questions? We tend to think of reading as passive. But the secret is to realise it’s a two-way exchange. The author’s job is to throw, yours is to catch – a book’s success depends on both of you playing your part.
The more active your reading, the better your reading. The better your reading, the better your answers to the questions above. And the better your answers, the more likely you are to start seeing the world in new ways.
The 4 Levels of Reading
But how? Reading actively means mastering four levels of reading:
Elementary reading – Turning symbols into information;
Inspectional reading – Getting the most from a book in a given time;
Analytical reading – Thorough and complete reading for understanding; and
Synoptic reading – Exploring a subject through wide reading.
Let’s discuss three general active-reading tips and then examine each level in turn.
General Reading Tips
The first general active-reading tip is so important, we’ve mentioned it already and will come back to it at the end. Always approach reading as a conversation with the author. Approach every book with an open mind and remember that books are the imperfect creations of imperfect creatures.
Don’t treat everything you read as inflexible statements of fact. Do question and challenge. But do also make sure you understand what you’ve read before criticising. Active-reading is like active-listening. If you can’t restate the author’s position better than they can, you don’t know it well enough to help fix it.
The second active-reading tip is this – make every book you read your own.
To do so, use:
Highlighting – underline, circle, star, asterisk and fold pages;
Linking – number arguments on the page, reference other pages or sections; and
Synthesising – write in the margins, top and bottoms of pages and front and endpapers.
Making a book your own as you read improves concentration, encourages thinking (through words) and forces active engagement.
The final active-reading tip is to set your reading environment up for success. Make sure your reading-space is well lit, tidy and allows you to focus. Treat every session with the same respect as a life-changing meeting of minds.
So, with those thoughts in mind, it’s time to get started with…
Step 1: Elementary Reading
Elementary reading is the skill of turning symbols into information. If you can get from the first to the last page of a book (or if you’re reading this) you’re already there. But one major improvement we can all make is to read with appropriate speed.
The majority of speed reading courses focus on two tricks:
Reducing fixations – The number of jumps your eye makes; and
Reducing regressions – The time you spend rereading.
The solution to both is as simple as running a pencil down the page as you read at a slightly faster rate than feels comfortable. With practice, this will help you reduce bad habits like sub-vocalising and increase your reading speed by hundreds of percent.
But the key word in the sentence above isn’t speed, it’s appropriate.
“Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension,” Adler and van Doren tell us.
Not all books are created equal. When reading for understanding, one 300-page book may deserve just an hour of skimming, another may deserve days or even weeks of your time. Grasping this marks the difference between those who are widely-read (lots of reading, little understanding) and those who are well-read (less reading, more understanding). It’s a vital distinction to make.
Learning to spot and adjust your reading approach at each end of the spectrum is critical.
The secret? It all hinges on…
Step 2: Inspectional Reading
Inspectional reading is the art of getting the most from a book in a given time.
You should inspect every book you are thinking of reading before reading it.
Why? Doing so helps in two ways:
It primes you with an overall framework of the book; and
It tells you if and how you should read it.
The first will greatly speed up your reading if you decide to dig deeper. The second will save you many hours reading books better skipped. Both lead to more insights from more books that most deserve your time and attention.
So how does it work? Inspectional reading has two parts:
PART I: Systematic skimming; and
PART II: Superficial reading.
Let’s look at each one in turn…
PART I: SYSTEMATIC SKIMMING
Takes: Ten minutes to an hour.
Answers: What kind of book is it? What’s it about? How is it structured? Is it worth reading?
To begin your systematic skimming, first study the:
Title – Take a moment to read it aloud. What does it tell you to expect?
Contents – How has the author structured their work? How does it flow? What are the pivotal chapters?
Index – What terms are most frequently referenced? Do any surprise you?
Publisher’s blurb – What does the publisher think is important? How have they synthesised the work? and
Author’s preface – What does the author want you to take away? How do they want you to read?
At this stage, try to avoid other people’s syntheses, commentaries and reviews as these will bias your ability to come to your own conclusions.
The next step is turning the pages, as you do so:
Read titles, sub-titles, figures and tables;
Read a paragraph or two, sometimes several pages – Never more;
Skim pivotal chapters in full – Especially opening and summary statements); and
Read the last two or three pages in the main part of the book.
Third, pencil some brief, structural notes (blank front pages are a great place to do this):
Classify the book – is it:
Non-fiction, narrative non-fiction, fiction?
Prose, verse, theatre, other or a mix?
History, science or philosophy?
Theoretical or practical?
Write a short synthesis of its contents – One to three sentences at most; and
Bullet its high-level structure.
By this point, you should have a good idea of what kind of book this is and what it’s about. That’s helpful because the final step in skim reading is to:
Decide whether to read the book or not.
If you only live for 700,000 hours (~80 years), do you really want to invest ~6 of them in this book? Is reading this book going to rock your world? Is it one of the ~1,000 good or ~100 truly great books that Adler and van Doren suggest might exist? If not, you may want to read something else.
Hopefully, you can see how a quick upfront skim and one simple question can save hundreds of hours of frustration and effort.
If you do decide to read the book, that’s great!
The next step in inspectional reading is…
PART II: SUPERFICIAL READING
Takes: Depends on the book, but at a faster rate than comfortable.
Answers: What does it say (big picture)?
Superficial reading is a simple as reading the whole book, all the way through without stopping.
DO take notes and make the book your own but…
DON’T look things up or puzzle out bits you don’t immediately understand.
Why? First, your questions may solve themselves as you keep reading.
Second, the important thing here is to get a view of the forest without getting lost in the trees. It’s a good tip because, as Adler and van Doren note, “even if you never go back, understanding half of a really tough book is much better than not understanding it at all.”
But as you finish, if you decide you do want to go back – if this book is really worth pulling apart – then it’s time to start…
Step 3: Analytical Reading
Analytical reading is the art of thorough and complete reading for understanding.
The goal of analytical reading is to close the gap in understanding between you and an author. By the end of the process, you should be able to explain what the author said, what they meant and why they said it. You should also be able to clearly state your position on their work with specific reasons for any criticisms.
There are three parts to the process:
PART I: What is the book about as a whole?
PART II: What is being said in detail and how?
PART III: Is the book true, in whole or in part?
You may feel like you do many of these steps mostly well. The goal here is to make them explicit; to deconstruct reading so you can see, practice and master its sub-skills.
Challenge yourself to practice each step below (especially where you’re most resistant) the next few times you really dive into a book.
Doing so will make you a better, faster and smarter reader.
Let’s double-click for more details…
PART I: WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT AS A WHOLE?
There are 4 sub-steps to clarifying what a book is about:
Classify the book;
Synthesise it briefly;
Identify, organise and outline the parts; and
Define the problems the author is trying to solve.
Now that you’ve read the whole book once through, the first step in analytical reading is to revise and extend your notes from inspectional reading.
First, check you still agree with your classification. This will help you calibrate the rest of your approach.
Second, review your synthesis. What is the main theme or point? What is the author trying to achieve? How do they get there? Make this as brief, accurate and comprehensive as possible (no more than a few sentences or a short paragraph).
Next, revisit and expand your high-level structure. Identify the main parts of the book. Break each bullet into sub-bullets. Split those sub-bullets further until you have a solid outline of the book’s contents and flow.
Finally, make a list of the questions you think the author is trying to answer. What are the main questions? What are their sub-questions? Which questions are primary and which secondary? Don’t just do this in your head. Write them down.
With this birds-eye view in hand, it’s time to move on to…
PART II: WHAT IS BEING SAID IN DETAIL AND HOW?
The next 4 sub-steps in analytical reading will help you clarify exactly what the author is saying and how they’re saying it:
Spot all the keywords and understand what the author means by them;
Distil the key propositions from the author’s most important sentences;
Find or build the author’s arguments from sequences of sentences; and
Decide which problems the author has, hasn’t and knew they couldn’t solve.
Where part I of analytical reading is top-down, part II tackles the task bottom-up.
Just as writing uses words to build sentences and paragraphs, so logic uses terms to build propositions and arguments. Your task is to find and relate these back to part I.
COMING TO TERMS
First, make a list of, then define all the unfamiliar or important keywords in the book – technical, antiquated and otherwise. Use the title, headings, figures, glossary and formatting to help spot them. Once listed, make sure you understand exactly how the author is using these words; be sure you understand what they mean.
Glossaries, dictionaries and reference books can help (especially for technical jargon). But the most important clue here is context. What do the words around the keywords say about how the author is using them? What about the rest of the book? The combination of keywords and the specific way an author uses them are the author’s terms.
IDENTIFYING PROPOSITIONS
Second, find, highlight and dissect the sentences whose meaning is either not immediately obvious or that are clear declarations of knowledge or opinion. These are the author’s propositions, the foundations that support their main arguments. A good way to spot these is to look for high concentrations of the terms that you gathered above.
Once you’ve found them, puzzle away at these propositions until you can re-state them clearly in your own words. Alternatively, challenge yourself to exemplify the general truth they imply with a specific personal example. Both exercises will challenge you to show true understanding.
Obligatory Monthly Promotion Thread
