How to Read a Book

Inspectional Reading I: Systematic Skimming or Pre-reading

But in order to forget them as separate acts, you have to learn them first as separate acts.

What you understand by reading the book through to the end—even if it is only fifty percent or less—will help you when you make the additional effort later to go back to the places you passed by on your first reading.

This is the first rule for the second stage of analytical reading, the aim of which is not the outlining of a book’s structure but the interpretation of its contents or message.

When we speak of a man as skilled in any way, we do not mean that he knows the rules of making or doing something, but that he possesses the habit of making or doing it.

1. WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT AS A WHOLE?

From Many Rules to One Habit

4. WHAT OF IT?

Thinking is only one part of the activity of learning.