The BookClub Kit

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When someone loans you a book for a short while (or more accurately, they loaned it for a long while and you didn’t make time to read it), or you have a book club meeting looming, you can either:

1. lie and pretend you read it, or
2. stay up all hours and get that baby done.

Luckily, Greg Koukl has offered his readers a helpful method for “Reading Less More.”

Overview

• Get a sense of the book in 10-20 minutes.
• Read jacket copy, contents, skim preface & introduction, read conclusion (last 3 pages) and skim the index. Note publisher and date of publication.
• Quickly page through the entire book at the rate of 2-3 seconds per page.
• Determine if you want to read the book more thoroughly, give it away, or file it for future reference.

Preview

• Skim entire book at a slower rate (4-10 seconds per page), breaking the book in as you go.
• Look for structure, outline, key facts and concepts.
• Write a quick summary for the book in pencil on title page.

Read

• Preview each chapter again before you read it to get the structure (4-10 seconds per page).
• Read every word at the fastest comfortable speed using a pointer so you don’t wander, hesitate, regress, or lose your place. Mark the margin, but don’t underline the text.
• Write a 1-4 sentence summary in pencil at the beginning of the chapter. This serves as a quick overview of the content of the chapter.
• Sketch a quick outline or recall pattern.

Post-View Immediately

• Re-read the chapter quickly, focusing on marked sections, interacting with the text.
• Refine your 1-4 sentence summary at the beginning of the chapter, if necessary.
• Review at regular intervals, looking over recall patterns and summary material.

These are some great suggestions! When reviewing books, I like to take a piece of paper folded lengthwise and use it as a bookmark as well as a place to create an outline from my reading.

What about you?