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Install a Transmission Mature readers know when to read quickly and when to read slowly.
Anticipate Before you begin reading a book, determine its purpose in your life. Why are you reading this book?
I encourage readers to write five to ten specific questions they would like the author to answer.
Determine the Author’s Orbit Which direction do you want
The business books I read are always centrifugal, pushing me away from the book into personal reflection. The leisure books I read are often centripetal, pulling me into the book for literary delight.
Run a Background Check
This step also acquaints me with the authors I read. Who are they? Where do they work? What worldview do they represent? This critical step helps to prepare me for what I am about to read and can alert me to the author’s motivations.
Grab a Pen I keep a pen behind my ear when I read,
Without a pen in hand, I forget the thoughts that pass through my mind.
Slowly X-Ray the Book
First, I study the table of contents, noticing how chapters build on one another. Second, I scan the book and its section headings.
Determine a Reading Strategy
Different books must be read in different ways. Francis Bacon famously wrote, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”2
Note the Progression of a Chapter As you read, pay close attention to the section headings and structural indicators like first, second, and finally.
Discover the Thesis Every nonfiction book has a skeleton, because it has been developed from a core thesis, a sentence to summarize the author’s main point. Every chapter should also have a thesis statement. Sometimes the thesis is easy to see.
Know When to Quit
Mark the Gold
It is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember 99% of what I read, but if the 1% of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don’t begrudge the 99%.3
Paraphrase
Before we can embrace the author’s arguments or reject the author’s conclusions, we must first understand what the author said.
Answer “Why?”
Find the Holes It takes discernment to evaluate what the author has written, but it requires advanced discernment to determine what the author has left unwritten.
Let the Dust Settle After you have completed a book, stop and give yourself time before making a final evaluation.
Compare and Contrast Books
Is this book better or worse than the other books I have read on the topic? Is it more helpful or less helpful? Where did this book contradict another book? What content was covered that other books neglected? The best books, the books that cover a topic well, are the books we respect, cherish, reread, and recommend to our friends. Collect and Store the Gold
If you have a poor memory (like me) you will need a place to collect the sentences and paragraphs that you hope to retain for the future.
To appreciate fictional literature I rely heavily on wise scholars, and none of them more than Leland Ryken. Read Ryken’s books, and you will learn a lot.
Fictional literature can help us explore abstract human experiences.
Fictional literature can deepen our appreciation for concrete human experience.
Fictional literature expands our range of experiences.
Fictional literature provides beauty and creativity to be enjoyed.
Reading literature is about absorption, about being lost in a story, and about delighting in the beautiful prose of a gifted writer. Fiction is art, and it must be handled differently from a business book.
We may not read literature to discover propositional truth claims or to develop a Christian worldview, yet we must remember that every author writes from a worldview, however complete or partial it appears.
God’s “amazing grace” is especially displayed when it “saves a wretch.” To some degree, the author must paint a picture of the wretchedness of sin in order for grace to emerge in its brilliance.
Perhaps the single most important philosophical question to ask when watching a film is, “What is the nature of humanity according to this movie?” If one’s view of the nature of man (in theological terms, “anthropology”) is skewed, then everything else will be off.
Goodness is often more difficult to portray than wickedness, says P. D. James. She should know. James is a crime novelist, a Christian, and the author of the thriller, The Children of Men.
Goodness is very seldom dramatic, I think. And it’s much more easy to write about drama.13
Realms of Gold: The Classics in Christian Perspective.14
Christians should neither undervalue nor overvalue literature. It is not the ultimate source of truth. But it clarifies the human situation to which the Christian faith speaks. It does not replace the need for the facts that science and economics and history give us. But it gives us an experiential knowledge of life that we need just as much as those facts.
Wherever sinful self-indulgence dominates our free time, we can be certain that personal idols are at work in our flesh, seeking to divide and conquer the soul (1 Pet. 2:11).
For many of us, reading is more a lack of desire than of a lack of free time. C. S. Lewis wrote, “The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”
By reading multiple books at the same time, I have the flexibility to read certain books in certain settings. I’m sure your reading priorities and your reading environments will differ from mine. But think carefully about these environments, because each environment will favor certain types of reading.
Book reading, on the other hand, cannot happen without disciplined and sustained linear concentration. Instead of browsing for fragments of information, we must learn to become deep thinkers who work hard to comprehend (2 Tim. 2:7).
So ask yourself the next time you read: When you come across a provoking or perplexing portion of a book, what are you more likely to do: react or think? When you are tempted to react, stop, and simply think and meditate about what you are reading.
Puritan Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) faced this problem in seventeenth-century England. Brooks wrote, Remember, it is not hasty reading, but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths, that makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee’s touching of the flower that gathers honey, but her abiding for a time upon the flower that draws out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most, that will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest, and strongest Christian.
In order to feel deeply about spiritual truths we must think deeply. And to think deeply we must read deeply. And to read deeply we must read attentively, not hastily. If we discipline ourselves to read attentively and to think deeply about our reading, we will position our souls to delight. But our souls cannot delight in what our minds merely skim.
My books are not fragile museum pieces to archive behind a glass display; my books are well-worn hand tools—hammers, tin snips, measuring tapes, and vice grips—to help me remodel my brain.
One great way to sink details deep into our long-term memory is to read and discuss books with friends.
God’s people read for the benefit of community. What we learn by reading is the currency for our trade with others. We use our private reading as a means of blessing the body of Christ.
“a reading of old Christian authors is probably the best way of challenging our own complacency with our understanding of the good Christian life.”
