![]() offer knowledge of the book’s blueprint and contents so you know where to find stuff if you need it in the future.save you a lot of time because most books are not worth reading.Unless you’re reading for entertainment, if you can’t answer that question, you can toss the book. Skimming helps you reach a decision point: Does this book deserve more of my time and attention? Why? Once you get some practice, it should take at most, an hour. That’s how you intelligently skim a book. And of course, they use the best examples from the book in these interviews. Authors do so much promotion now that its relatively easy to find interviews. While this has nothing to do with the actual book, interviews can be a great way to get the gist of a book in 30m or so. This where they sum up what they think is most important about their work. Authors generally do a good job summarizing their work in the last few pages. How are they structured? How connected is it to the rest of the book? Is this a place you want to end up? Turn the pages and dive in here and there with a few paragraphs or even pages. It should be relatively easy to identify the pivotal chapter to the argument. At this point, you have an overview of the jargon and the journey the author is taking you on. Not only will this give you an idea for the range of topics covered but it will also tell you the other people the book connects to and the jargon used in the book. With non-fiction books you often can’t sell them without having a detailed table of contents. Where is the book taking you? How are you getting There? It’s amazing how many people just dive in reading without even glancing at the table of contents and yet, the author spends considerable time coming up with the table of contents (as that’s the spine of the book). Read the table of contents, which will give you a feel for the map of the book. This will not only prime your brain for what you might read in its entirety, but it will help you mentally place the book in a category. Start with a quick read of the cover, publishers blurb, and the preface to get a feel for the scope of the work. The first type of inspectional reading is systematic skimming, which you can easily put into practice today. ![]() There are two types of inspectional reading: systematic skimming, also known as pre-reading or intelligent skimming, and superficial reading. The second level of reading concerns inspectional reading, a concept from The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer Adler. This article is part of our series on how to read a book. ![]() “Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension” - Mortimer Adler ![]()
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