Reading as a Conversation

Some months back I offered some hints to identify whether a book was worth reading 

-       check the Introduction – or Preface. This is the author’s chance to show (s)he understands how overwhelmed we are by the choices; to offer us a convincing argument about why (s)he has to inflict yet another book on us. And the best way to do that is to give a brief summary of what others have written and identify the missing elements which make a book necessary. Books which fail even to attempt that prove that the author is living in a bubble... 

-       Look for a summary of each chapter…..I have always liked the old habit of prefacing a book chapter with an explanation of what that chapter will deal with. When I got hold recently of George Bernard Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism; (1928) it was to discover that his Table of Contents has no fewer than 33-pages..

-       Look, at the end, for a (short) list of recommended reading, ideally with notes explaining the choice. Most books have a long “bibliography” which, I’ve taken to calling a “virility test” - demonstrating nothing more than (a barely compressed sense of) superiority. I want instead to see a shorter (and annotated) list for several reasons - partly to smoke out the author’s prejudices; partly to see how honest (s)he is; and partly to see how well (s)he writes    

-       Make sure that the writing is clear – with suitable use of graphics and tables which are needed both to break up and to illustrate the text…. 

But I also need to be persuaded that the book in question has three other features --

- respects the basic facts about an issue;

- has a coherent “narrative structure” (here’s a good example of a book which lacked this)

- refers to the various sides of the key arguments on the issue  

And this can be done only by checking the reviews. 

These, of course, are just my views. Different sorts of people have different methods  of productive or active reading.

Those who want to know more about how to extract most benefit from a book should have a look at the classic How to Read a Book (1965) by Mortimer Adler whose first edition  was actually written in 1940. Part I is best skimmed – the meat of the book is from chapter 7

Adler divides what he calls “inspectional reading” into two categories. The first is skimming; the second is superficial reading. 

Skimming is the most effective tool for discovering those truly great books you want to read.

If upon skimming a book, you realize it doesn’t hold your interest or have new information, that’s a success. It means you’ve made your way through a title in just a few minutes instead of spending a couple hours to arrive at that conclusion. If you realize you are interested in the text, you’ve guaranteed you’ll enjoy reading the entire book.

For any non-fiction book we read, we should be able to answer a few questions after spending just a few minutes with the book. First, what kind of book is it? Is it explanatory or expounding? Is the purpose of the book to explain how something works, or to convince the reader to take a certain action? Broadly, what is the author trying to say? The purpose of skimming is to learn these answers quickly – at a bird’s perspective – and have a feel for the style of the author. 

This is actually an excerpt from a post with the great title of How to never read another boring book by Elizabeth Peterson in which she shares her approach to active reading. 

Chapter names and summaries
Inspect the table of contents for chapter titles and descriptions. The chapter titles will reveal how the information is organized. Older books often include descriptions or outlines about the organization of individual chapters. This is also useful for when you want to read about a specific idea or piece of research. 

Index
Look through the index to see the individuals, concepts, studies, etc., the author references in the book. This is will give you an idea of what ideas or research, if any, the book presents, and a blueprint of their arguments. You’ll also be able to see quickly whether the book covers any ideas or ground that is new to you. Additionally, you might choose to go straight to a certain chapter to see the research on a given topic. 

Publisher’s Blurb and Preface
The publisher’s blurb often includes a summary of the author’s arguments and conclusion, making it a great resource for answering basic questions about the book. You may be inclined to dismiss the publisher’s blurb as empty praise to convince you to read or buy the book or simple adulation for the author – and you may be right in some instances. However, you should definitely read the blurb to find out.
Likewise, in their prefaces or “notes to the reader”, authors often include interesting observations or references which didn’t make it into the final version of the book. The preface also usually includes the author’s hopes for the books stated clearly. 

Introduction
If the book has an introduction, read it. There is often so much good information added here that the author thought was important, but for whatever reason, couldn’t include in the body of the book. Often, a chapter or passage got cut from the final version of the book, so the author included those resources or ideas for the reader in an introduction. With older books, the introduction often explains the cultural setting and ideas the author was addressing at the time. Contemporary titles often include references to similar or related work, for you to read next. The editor may also have notes explaining why the book is structured in a particular way. 

Final chapter
Finally, look through the end of the final chapter. As Adler advises, “Few authors are able to resist the temptation to sum up what they think is new and important about their work in these pages. You do not want to miss this, even though, as sometimes happens, the author himself may be wrong in his judgment.” 

Having read all or most of these key passages, we can now explain the conversation the book is joining, the major arguments the author includes, and their conclusion. Instead of sinking a couple hours into a book we may or may not finish, we now know the major points and whether we want to read the entire book. This brief skimming may very well be all the time you need to spend with a book. 

And here’s another fascinating read – which introduces me to the benefits of a book’s Index! 

-       The index is everything

-       Use the Table Of Contents as the skeleton

-       Preview with the preface 

The Index is Everything

You can take any path you want, but for me, the index is my first stop after the title. Armed with a guess of the book's point of view from the title, I use the index to understand what topics we’re going to cover and hopefully how we’re going to approach them. 

If you want to play along, open that non-fiction book you haven’t read yet — or just see the example below. Look through the index, notice what topics are covered, and more importantly, at what depth. If an author is spending a good deal of pages on something, make a note of that topic.

Remember, what we’re trying to do with this process is answer two questions: what is this book about, and, am I interested in reading it? I’ll take a look at a random book from my bookshelf and look through the index, right now. Turns out this book is Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. 

Ok, first index page...boom! What do I see? What stands out? What topics get a lot of coverage? What seems interesting or out of place? 

What is this book trying to get across?

For Homo Deus, it looks like this author is trying to set up a new paradigm called Dataism. It might be related to scaling human cooperation, and he seems to be supporting his thesis with some tenets from techno-humanism, pre-existing religions, and probably some AI for extra spice.

Am I interested? Eh, kinda. Enough to delve deeper for sure.  

The Table Of Contents is the Skeleton of a Book

Once I’m armed with a handy-dandy list of topics culled from the index, I compare my index map with the good old TOC (table of contents). The TOC is the skeleton of the book, and the terms from the indexes you grabbed earlier are like the fleshed-out limbs. 

The TOC shows the way the author wants you to understand the progression of the book. (Like the title, authors also think about what the TOC looks like.) It gives you the big picture of the approach. Then the index helps you fill in the types and level of details. 

You could start your process at the TOC if you want to, but I have found that starting with the index and overlaying that research on top of TOC is most helpful. 

It looks like Harari takes a historical view of humanity as he leads us to what is coming next—if I can assume as much, because it’s the final chapter of his book: “The Data Religion.” And when I look at the index and account for the way page numbers and chapters align, I can see the stuff about “Dataism” is overlaid against a chapter titled “The Data Religion.”

My best guess right now is that this book is about how we will organize ourselves using data in the future instead of religion.

Do this for a few minutes. Build a rough map in your mind of the book. It’s sort of like connecting the dots between the chapter titles in the TOC and the topics and page numbers listed in the index. All of the above takes 5-15 minutes and is really a simplified version of “inspectional reading,” popularized by Adler and van Doren, which is just a more methodological skimming or “pre-reading” process. Once we’ve answered the question of what the book is about, the remaining question—and indeed the main question—remains. 

Do you care?

If not, throw the notecard in the front pages somewhere (for future reference) and toss the book back on the shelf. Maybe, if you are interested in knowing more, spend an hour or two reading some of the sections that interest you. For instance, with Homo Deus, I’m likely to read a few index points and the final chapter on Dataism. 

But, before I do any of that, I always skim the preface.  

Preview with the Preface 

In the preface, good authors will tell you right away what the book is about and where it is going. In that way, the preface is like the trailer to a movie. Maybe you see Ben Affleck and Pee Wee Herman are co-starring and lose interest. Maybe the author makes a point you never thought of, and you become more interested. Follow that instinct. 

I’ll get through a preface in about 5 minutes. Skimming is my friend—I don’t need to memorize or meditate too deeply on it. It’s mostly just to make sure my mental map is on the money. 

The preface and the index are indispensable to understanding what the book is about. So far, all we are trying to understand is: what is this book trying to get across? 

How to Extract the Knowledge Nuggets

So how do I get those useful knowledge nuggets? I use the index map (page numbers) and again, I follow my interests or problem-solving needs. I start by reading the pages corresponding to the seemingly useful parts from the index. Yeah, right in the middle of the book. Feel free to just start reading on page 212. Seriously.

For instance, from the index map above, do I really want to understand what the “biological poverty line” is? Or did some other topic seem more interesting? This is where I break free of the author's structure, and delve into the book to find the pieces I need or that I want to know. 

I suggest following a topic over multiple chapters, so if the author starts talking about something on page 2, picks it up again on pages 25-29, and then again at 101-105, read those pages in sequence. Other interesting topics might be mentioned along the way. If so, add those to your map and find their places in the index. Let curiosity and interest take the lead.  

Interact with the Book

Writing in the margins and taking notes is also a huge part of this process for me; underlining words and marking up pages. I like to draft points to myself—notes, ideas, thoughts. If it’s a hard copy of a book I’ll use a pencil. If it’s digital, I’ll use the built-in notes app.

One thing I appreciate about notations in a book is that it allows you to track your thinking about the book over time. If you do end up coming back later, these little notes can serve the same purpose that commenting your code does.  

It’s been a long read – so here’s a video from Ryan Holiday – one of at least three people who have made a profession out of helping us find our way through this pro- and con- fusion of books, the others being Tom Butler-Bowden who has produced a very useful series of book summaries; and Robert Greene who produces superbly-designed books covering such central topics as War, Strategy, Seduction, Mastery and Human Nature and whose working methods are nicely described here.

The picture is "Conversation" by Rene Magritte