Time to crack the cover for the first time and inhale that new book smell, or that old library smell—or, I guess, the warm flickering scentless pixels from your favorite e-reading device. Before I begin reading page 1 of a book I invest thirty to sixty minutes to ask broad structural questions. Adler writes, “Every book has a skeleton hidden between its covers.”1 I am trying to x-ray for that skeletal structure. First, I study the table of contents, noticing how chapters build on one another. Second, I scan the book and its section headings. Third, I read the chapter summaries and even the
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