In this article, I am going to break down and share:
(i) 5 steps to start reading a book
(ii) 3 reasons why starting from p.1 is a bad idea
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When you travel, would you talk to the first person you meet at the airport to know what’s the best places to go and the restaurants to try? Probably not. Rather, we would search online for travel bloggers’ recommendation, rating and comments on different restaurants, etc. and then go to those places directly.
Similarly for reading, start reading from page 1 maybe a common way to read and learn, but the best way to read a book starts with selection of books -
Step 1: Look for ratings and comments
In the information overflow era, there are multiple, if not hundreds of books, on the same subject matter.
Search for ratings and comments on Goodreads, Amazon, or blogs will give you a good idea of how good this book is, whether it is a book that is worth your time.
For books on the same subject matter, I would usually opt for the 1–3 with the highest ratings and generally positive comments.
Step 2: Table of content
Then we should look at the table of content of the book, which should be available even if you are looking at a book online (e.g. on Amazon).
The purpose of this is to have a sense of the structure and content of the book. If some of the chapter title is rather ambiguous, we can also quickly flip through to the relevant chapter to skim the sub-titles.
Within 2–3 minutes we should be able to tell from a high level perspective what this book is about and whether this book contains information that we need or want to acquire by looking at the table of content.
Step 3: Preface
A preface is an introductory passage written about a book by its author. It lays out why the book exists, its subject matter, and its goals. Prefaces are more commonly found in nonfiction books (and also in some fiction books too).
Basically preface is where the author tells us why he or she wrote this book and why this book exists, what is its value. In other words, preface tells you why you need to read this book and who this book is for.
Preface are important pages that most readers overlook — that is why the learning efficiency of most people is far from satisfactory.
Step 4: Foreward
A foreword is an introductory section of a book written by someone other than the author. The writer of the foreword is usually a prominent figure like an expert on the subject matter, a New York Times bestselling author, or a prominent critic of literary work.
In essence, it is a personal introduction to a book written directly to the readers by someone respected and considered an expert in the field of the relevant subject matter of the book.
Basically, it is an expert other than the author telling you why you need to read this book, what can you expect, who this book is for and what could you take away from reading this book.
Again, this provides important information for us to evaluate whether the book is worth our time to read but most readers would skip it.
Step 5: Author bio (optional)
An author bio is a brief passage, usually about a paragraph, that introduces an author and sums up their work, their authorly credentials, and anything else their readers might need to know about them.
This is optional because if you have read the preface, the author would usually include their most relevant authority for writing this book in the preface as one of the reasons why they have written this book and why you should read it.
Nonetheless, if we want a quick summary of who the author is and what his or her background is with regards to the subject matter of the book, the author bio would give us some insights. Of course, we could always google search to find out a lot more about the author these days in a few seconds.
Following the steps above may take you 10–15 minutes to have a quick overview of a book, it would be the best 10–15 minutes you could ever spent and is the best way to start reading a book, because such overview serves multiple purposes:
(1) saves you hours on reading a book that later on found out is not what you need
If we had started reading from page 1, it is not alike marrying someone we have met on day 1 — we know little about that person and what he or she contains, but we just closed our eyes and committed. A few hours of our lives may not sound too overwhelming, but if you add up every time you read a book from page 1, you could be wasting hundreds if not thousands of hours reading the wrong books throughout your life. If there is a score to reading and learning efficiency, reading from p.1 would probably get a “F” (fail). We date before we get married, we should share that cautious approach to reading and learning. After all, reading and learning could have a devastated effect on our life’s success.
(2) forms a high level framework and structure of the book
If one read without any framework and structure of the book and start from page 1, it is alike to a blinded man trying to know what an elephant looks like with the mere touch of his hands, or a blinded man trying to get across a river without any help. Can you imagine what the is the likely result? Most likely, a lot of details would be missed and we won’t know have any idea what we are up to.
(3) allows you to estimate and allocate the resources needed
If we decide that this is a book with information and knowledge we need or want, a quick overview will not only provides us with a high level framework and structure to start with, but we would also be able to estimate the time and effort resources needed.
Sometimes only part of the book meets our needs, this would not be revealed if we have not done the 10–15 minutes quick overview. In effect, we can allocate less resources to learning from this book and eliminate reading the parts that we do not need.
A good strategy helps us win half of the learning game.
To reap:
- we can look to ratings and comments on Goodreads, Amazon, table of content, preface, foreword, author bio to get an idea of what the book is about, how the information is structured, what is the value of the book and whether (or which part) we want to read it in details.
- this 10–15 minutes quick overview will not only saves us much time, but also substantially increase our reading and learning efficiency.
That’s the end of my sharing this time, hope you benefit from it. See you in the next article!
Connie is an Active Reader, Creator to 1 framework “Sustainable Simplified Soulful”, 3 programs “Rich Brain Installation, Knowledge to Cash, Easy Passive Investing”, Author to 1 book “Design your Day: How to Achieve More in a Day than Most Do in a Year”, Host at “Simplified Business Show” podcast. She shares about book recommendations, new learnings, and principles that she learned and practised in business and life.
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