Why are you reading this book?  That’s a question you should ask yourself each time you pick a new book up to read, or consider reading one.  Have you ever made it half way through a recommended book realized you’re not enjoying it? The book is not what you thought it would be, and you feel like you’re wasting your time?   Or have you ever made it halfway through a book and realized that you were reading a book set in the future, and everything from the first half makes more sense now?

Learning to interrogate a book and understand the context, and what you’d like to get out of the experience is a key factor in improving how you read.  

In one of my university classes we spent an entire class on the first few pages of a book. You know those pages next to the title pages you flip by quickly to get to the start of the book?  No, not the introduction or the foreword, those weird pages at the front with numbers and dates and the publishing house listed (what’s a publishing house anyway?).  Those things are actually useful to help you orient yourself and understand a book.  They answer simple questions, like when a book was published, so you can quickly identify that if this book is talking about the 90’s it’s a look back at history, not a book written in that time, and you should keep your modern wits about you while you read.  

One of the most valuable sections, and one of my favourites is the Library of Congress listing.  Most popular novels will have this description.  The LoC needs to figure out how to categorize this book. If you had to summarize a book down to just a few words, or a few categories, how would you do that?  If you wanted a one sentence summary of a book to identify if it’s worth your time to read – then this is a great place to focus.  

Look at the year it was published, the number of times this book was printed or reprinted (how popular it is) and the categorization if it’s a work of fiction.  Those three quick pieces of information will tell you a lot about a book  and give you good insight as to whether it’s worth your time to read.

I always used to skip the foreword or the introduction.  I didn’t see the value of reading someone else’s perspective about a book, I wanted to make my own impressions and get my own sense of the book first.  After reading a few intros or forewards after I had finished a book, I realized it was a valuable way to get a sense of the subject matter and the historical context of a book. Most of the time they’re not there to pad pages, the author, or the publisher saw this introduction as a useful way to welcome you into the book.  The more I read them, the more valuable they seem.  And I don’t think I’ve ever had one spoil a book for me.  

I have had them stop me in my tracks.  I used to always finish books, once I had picked them up.  I’ve learned that it’s much more valuable to evaluate books and identify if I should read them at all. Should I invest my time reading a book?  Evaluating it helps you sort that out.  

There are hundreds of thousands of books published each year.  Not including the books published since or before, that would take you an uncountable number of hours to read.  That’s not counting all the great articles, magazines, recipes and tweets that are waiting for your attention. So you need to be selective about what you read.  So how do you make good decisions about what to read?  

The more often I use these techniques, the more often I find great books I enjoy reading.  

But there are many reasons why I’ll dive into a novel or book headfirst without checking.  First it’s an author I like, and I am curious to see what she or he has written and want to immerse myself in the work no matter what.  Or it’s recommended or required reading, and I’m going to put my nose in and stay there until I’m done no matter what. In those instances, I’m not trying to evaluate whether it’s a worth my time, but I still find it useful to get my bearings and understand the context of the work before I crack page 1.  

I also read regularly books that are just for pleasure.  Books that have no purpose other than to transport me away from my current experience and take me on a journey.  The first time I experienced this was reading The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien.  Now I think this is a great book, and understanding the time it was written, the historical context about the author and his process has helped me appreciate the book even more as I’ve grown older.  When I was a boy and I opened this book up and fell into it’s pages, I read and enjoyed the story, and I loved that aspect of it.  There’s nothing wrong with picking up a novel and diving in.

But if you’re not sure, or you’re deciding between two works, or you have a stack, and you’re trying to figure out where to start and how to manage your time.  Use your brain, look through the first few pages of each book and prioritize.  There are millions of books waiting for you, and you only have so many hours in the day.