Read a Book...In 10 Minutes

The following blog excerpt is from a former professor of mine at Indiana Wesleyan University. It was written as a "way" to keep up on all the current pop Christian literature that saturates Christian Bookstores.

Enjoy!

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How to read a book in 10 minutes?  The trick is combining the following tips into your own personal pattern, and then adding others you discover along the way. Start with the following simple recipe then adjust to your own style.  IN just 90 minutes a month at your local Christian bookstore you can read a hundred books a year. Here’s a pattern to start with:

Minute 1: Memorize the title and author. To discuss a book intelligently you need to know the author, not remember him as “That guy from California.”  Study the cover until it is emblazoned into your mind. This take one minute, which is longer than you’d think.

Minute 2: Read the cover blurbs and recommendations—these often give a general sense of the book’s content and contribution.

Minute 3: Scan the front matter to get the gist of the book.  Unless the chapter titles are vague or cute you can often find the scope and sequence of a book’s contribution in the table of contents, Foreword and introduction.

Minutes 4-5: Find and scan the key chapter. Many books have a single chapter that includes their primary contribution. Actually many books are only a single chapter—the rest is filler and repetition. Look for the key chapter and scan it. 

Minutes 6-7-8: Find and read the secret clues.  Most books today have a way of “giving away” what they are about.  Find these clues and use then to figure out the message of the book.  If your book closes every chapter with a summary paragraph—read the final paragraph of each chapter. If your book does this by using pullout quotes or diagrams read them. Some writers carefully craft the first sentence of every paragraph as a logic outline—if so, read these sentences one after another to find the logic flow of the book. Usually you can get the general idea of a book in just three minutes scanning through the entire books reading these clues once you have learned how to find them.

Minutes 9-10: Write a summary on a note card. To condense what you learned take the last two minutes to write a summary in your own words of this book’s point. Use just one side of a single 3X5 note card—maybe drawing the cover on the other side as a memory prompt. Then, to solidify when you learned, tell someone about the book in the next 24 hours.

You should be able to do all of this in 10 minutes. If you are just starting out it might take a bit longer but don’t linger too long—remember your goal is to grasp a basic knowledge of these books, not to master them. If you set aside 90 minutes a month for a visit to your local bookstore you should be equipped to intelligently discuss a hundred new books every year. But, here’s the bonus: while reading a hundred books at 10 minutes each you will probably find five that are so good you’ll want to buy them. If you do, take these home and dedicate time for in-depth reading. After all, these five books are the ones you’ll want recommend to others.

                                                                                                                            - Dr. Keith Drury