I SKIMMING

Intelligently Skimming

The first type of inspectional reading is systematic skimming, which you can easily put into practice today. Here’s how you start:

Read the cover and preface. Start with a quick read of the cover, publishers blurb, and the preface to get a feel for the scope of the work. 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.

Read the table of contents, which will give you a feel for the map of the book. 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). With non-fiction books you often can’t sell them without having a detailed table of contents.

Understand the language of the book. This means skimming the index. 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.

Identify the pivotal points. At this point, you have an overview of the jargon and the journey the author is taking you on. It should be relatively easy to identify the pivotal chapter to the argument. Dive into these reading bits and pieces. 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.

Read the end. Authors generally do a good job summarizing their work in the last few pages. This where they sum up what they think is most important about their work.

Listen to an interview. 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. Authors do so much promotion now that its relatively easy to find interviews. And of course, they use the best examples from the book in these interviews.