How to read a book

Why I'm reading this

I think I can still improve in the way I organize my site. A book I'm working through "How To Read A Book" focuses on how people build understanding based off of what they're reading. So, the better I understand "understanding", the better I can link pages together in ways that make sense.

This page numbers the steps that "How to Read a Book" talks about. There's a lot of steps, so at the moment, this page is unfinished. I'll work on it bit by bit when I can.

Step 1

Inspectional Reading:

1. Read the title
2. Read the Preface. Why the preface? It usually contains information on the author's intent.
3. Mentally categorize what type of book this is.
4. Look at the index to see what kinds of sources the author has referenced. If something looks critical, (due to the number of references) test read some of those passages.
5. Read the publisher's blurb on the books dust jacket, it sometimes has an excellent summary. If it seems like fluff, uh oh, the book may also be fluff.
6. At this point, you should know if you want to read this book or not. If so, continue.
7. Look at the table of contents for chapters that are critical to the book's argument. Found one? Now what? Well, chapters sometimes have their own summaries at their beginning or end. So go see if there's one that you could carefully read!
8. Skim through the whole book. Sometimes just reading the first and last sentences of paragraphs, some times skipping them. Try to follow the main conceptual thread. Take no more than an hour, because you will be doing more passes anyway later. "Think of yourself as a detective looking for clues to a book's general theme or idea, alert for anything that will make it clearer." (pp. 35-36)
9. After finishing this pass, ask yourself, do you want to read deeper? Were you accurate in the way you initially categorized this book?
10. Read the book. Dont skip anything, dont reread anything

Step 2

Analytical Reading:

1. Prepare yourself to write down questions.
2. Prepare yourself to write down notes.
3. State the unity of the book in a single sentence, or a short paragraph if needed.
4. Define the book's main parts.
5. What did the author intend to accomplish when they wrote this book?
6. What are the important terms and what do they mean?
7. Mark the most important sentences in a book, and discover the propositions they contain.