How to Read Books Without Falling Asleep

This blog, “Books You Will Probably Never Read,” consists of books I have read over a life time that were of particular interest to me. The reviews are in three parts: 1. “Why read it?” 2. Sample ideas from the book, either paraphrased or quoted; and 3. final, thought-provoking quotes.

Why read books? John Kennedy, a prolific reader, said that he never saw his father read a serious book. My father, a lawyer, said that once he finished law school he would never read another book, and he didn’t. He read magazines, especially news magazines, and the daily newspaper, from cover to cover, but he never read books. Why? Did he perceive books as a chore required in school with no worthwhile purpose? Was he overwhelmed by 300- and 400- and 500-page books? A close friend of mine, an engineer, said to me once, “I don’t know why I read books.” Any number of people have said to me that they read books strictly for entertainment.

Borrowing from Abraham Lincoln, I read books because what I want to know is in books. In other words, I read for ideas. How do I read for ideas? I read the first and last paragraphs of each chapter to raise questions and find the parts that I want to read completely to gain answers.

I am a big fan of Francis Bacon’s “Some books are to be tasted,” meaning that not every book needs to be read completely from cover to cover. I grew up never knowing that I did not have to read every book from page one to the last page. I started so many books, was soon drowsy and quit in the face of three and four hundred pages before me.

Nonfiction
I learned to read selectively. In nonfiction, 1. I have found that the foreword summarizes succinctly the purpose and main ideas of the book. 2. In teaching writing I helped students learn to introduce and state the main idea in the first several paragraphs and summarize in the last paragraph, and I learned that professional writers do the same, leading me to find quickly the most interesting ideas in the book. 3. If I finish this “overview” of the book, and still have many questions, I return to each chapter and read the first sentence of each paragraph. 4. If I am caught, I read completely until I am “uncaught” and begin again to read the first sentence of each chapter.

The key is raising questions and using the first and last paragraphs of each chapter and the first sentence of each paragraph in each chapter to answer them. That’s known as efficient reading.

Fiction
I used to read short stories in The New Yorker from first word to last. Short stories and novels do not have forewords that explicitly state the main ideas of the story or novel. In the case of The New Yorker, very often I finished the story wondering why I had read it. A waste of time. I tried an experiment. I tried reading just a paragraph a page. Sure enough, in a relatively short time, when I completed a paragraph a page, I knew whether the story was worth reading because reading a paragraph a page raised questions that I wanted to answer or raised no questions, in which case I knew that no further reading was necessary.

With the novel about which I know almost nothing concerning the plot, 1. I begin with the first and last paragraphs of each chapter. 2. If I am caught at any point, I continue reading everything. 3. When I am “uncaught,” I return to reading the first and last paragraphs of each chapter. 4. If I finish the first and last paragraphs and have questions, I return to the first chapter and read a paragraph a page. 5. If I am caught, I keep reading. If I am “uncaught,” I return to a paragraph a page. I do that with every chapter in the novel. Very often I am “caught,” by either the first and last paragraphs or by the paragraph a page in the chapters and continue to read everything.

Essentially I am reading to discover why I should continue to read the novel.

People have asked me about my method for reading novels, “If your reading the first and last paragraphs tells you the plot, why would you go back to read a paragraph a page?” Because reading the first and last paragraphs will most often raise questions and you read a paragraph a page in each chapter to answer questions and to become “caught” so that you want to read continuously.

Conclusions:
Reading selectively, I no longer drowse over books. Books no longer control and dominate me. I use books, find their essential ideas and then record and try to apply them.

Therefore, what you find in my blog are reviews of some of the thousands of books I have read over a life time and the ideas I found in them. I write these reviews in hopes that someone out there might discover an idea that is worth pursuing and read the book. I welcome your comments on my book reviews.

Starting tomorrow, I am beginning a review of the book reviews I recorded during the year 2007.

RayS.