General Tips

• Do your reading!
• Think about your reading!
  • "Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider." Francis Bacon
  • Almost all books have pros; almost all books have cons.
• Time yourself!
  • How long does it take you to read X pages?
  • Start early enough to know how long a book will take.
• Use These Tips with Care!
  • Different disciplines and documents require different kinds of reading.

Conversational Reading

A Book is Part of a Conversation ...

• Between you and the author
• Between the author and other authors
• Between you, your professor, and your classmates

Your Goal as a Reader?

• Enter the conversation
• Place the book or article in its larger context
• Assess the author's argument
• Memorize every detail

Speed Reading versus Smart Reading

• Speed reading assumes all words are equally important, and privileges rate: it's like assuming that the best way to drive is to go 80 mph all the time.

Smart readers learn when to slow down and when to speed up by paying attention to signposts.

Pre-Reading

How to Skim

• Collect information from all the book's titles
• Read through once like a writer
  • Where do you put your main points when you write?
  • Look for main points early and late ...
  • In the book, in chapters, in sections, in paragraphs
• Come back to difficult parts later

In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things that you do not understand right away. Pay attention to what you can understand and do not be stopped by what you cannot immediately grasp. Go right on reading past the point where you have difficulties in understanding, and you will soon come to things you do understand. Concentrate on these. Keep on in this way. Read the book through, undeterred and undismayed by the paragraphs, footnotes, comments, and references that escape you. If you let yourself get stalled, if you allow yourself to be tripped up by any one of these stumbling blocks, you are lost. In most cases, you will not be able to puzzle the thing out by sticking to it. You will have a much better chance of understanding it on a second reading, but that requires you to have read the book through at least once.

From Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren, How to Read a Book, 36-7.

• Consider: Are you slowing down because the author left you a signpost, or because you are "rubbernecking" at something just because it's unusual?

The point of skimming and pre-reading is to formulate questions and hypotheses about what the author will say.

The Slow Read

As you read ...

• Be on the look-out for reasons and evidence
• Ask yourself questions about the author's reasons
• Selectively annotate with marginal notes or high-lights
• Pause at the end of each section to review and jot notes

The Post-Read

While reviewing your notes ...

• Evaluate the author's claims
• Prepare a few points you could make in class
• See what other readers have said about the book
  • The library's OneSearch tool often has links to reviews

Other tips?

• http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/howtoread.html
• A link to this slideshow will be available there.