Reading just about kills some people. Obviously, I don’t mean a physical death. What I mean is that it overwhelms them. It isn’t the casual reader that feels this tension. It is all of us that have an insatiable appetite to learn.
A friend walked in my office this past week, dejected, and let me know he might need to drop out of seminary. His reason – he couldn’t keep up with all the reading. I knew what he needed, so I arranged a lunch meeting for the following day.
Over the past few years, it has become quite obvious to me that I have been stuck in an old rut of reading. All of us took reading courses in elementary school and junior high, but then the courses stopped. In senior high and college, you no longer talk about how to read. Because of this, our vocabulary might increase, or maybe even our speed of reading, but how we read remains the same.
At lunch the following day, we met up with another friend of mine, Stan Ward. He’s a sharp, professor type. While working on his doctorate, he’s had to learn what consuming many books quickly looks like. And from a distance, I’d say he’s doing it quite well. Over a few burgers, he imparted the following wisdom.
Think about how you read a book. Once you know it’s the book that you want to read, what do you do? Most pick up the book, glance at the cover, and get right at it, beginning on page one. Some books you find more interesting than others, and so they draw you in quickly. Others are slower at first, and as your friends have told you, “You just have to give it a few chapters.” Yeah, not gonna do that.
This type of reading is like driving a car at night, with no destination in mind. You have your headlights on, and you can see about 50 feet in front of your car. You are following where the road leads, unsure of what’ behind each curve. It might be a fun ride, but the point is that you are just enjoying being carried along, blindly. Novels are great for this type of reading.
3. Read the Table of Contents. This is where you begin to see the route the author is taking. You can kind of get a feel for how the argument will unfold.
4. Read the Index. What books, or people are getting quoted often in the book? Once you find that out, you need to keep your eyes open for their names as you go through the book. Not all books have indexes. If they don’t, just skip this step.
5. Read the Introduction, thoroughly. Many authors will state their overall plan for the book in the introduction. If not, they will state why they are making the claim they are making. Either way, you can glean much from the book by reading this.
6. Read the conclusion, thoroughly. This is where you will discover the “destination” for the book. This is where the author plans to bring you. Armed with this knowledge, you make an educated guess about the route the author will take. This route might change as you read, and that is ok. At least you have a feel for where you plan to end up.
7. Touch each page of the book. Notice I didn’t add the word, “thoroughly” here. This is where you walk through the book, paying special attention to chapter headings, bold print, quotes, italicized words, boxes, graphs, the authors you noted from the index, and any other pertinent info.
What do you think? Could this help your learning?
Kevin, these post could not come at a better time. This semester of school has been chalk full of reading, and I’m planning on starting seminary in January, so I know I will be doing more reading than I ever have.
Thanks so much! Keep it up!
Glad it helped, Raychel. Believe me; it never seems to slow down. Wether it be seminary, grad school, or just a desire to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible, this is a skill that will help tremendously.
Kevin – this is great information – I can not wait to digest it even further. I really enjoy reading, but feel like the list of books that are recommended to me gets longer faster than I can even pick them up – marriage, kids, work, my daily walk, etc. just seem to take up my reading time – all of which include books I want to read. I have often thought “how could x person have time to read and be a husband, father, employee, believer, etc.” Once again, you are providing great information – thanks!
this is just disturbing. here’s a possible alternative- Curb your ADD.
You might like “How To Read A Book” by Mort Adler.
Greg, my previous post covered a section of that book. I found Adler’s book very helpful.
What does it mean if I skimmed this and didn’t read every word???
If you got the main points, it means you are familiar with inspectional reading!
Hi Kevin! So I’ve been in a British Lit class this semester and have never been a self proclaimed reader. Does this same information transfer over to fictional literature or is this strictly for non-ficiton?
thank you for this article