Do you remember what you read? How often do you read a book only to forget everything about it? Your lack of retention may be due to how you are reading the book. Do you read straight through without review or demand? Using a specific strategy when reading will help you remember more from your books.

In an earlier article, I summarized the major points from Mortimer J. Adler’s classic text, “How to Read a Book.” While that article discusses the major types of reading you will endeavor, here let’s discuss the 4 steps to enhance your retention.

Each step below is associated with a different level of effort and time commitment to your text. As such, each step enables a correlated amount of learning and retention. A key point to remember is these steps stack on each other. to learn more and remember what you read, do these steps IN ORDER!

Step 1 – Skim your book

Things learned – Is the book worth reading, roadmap

Before you dive into a book, inspect it. Look at the cover (and judge it, dang it). Read the back. Read the publisher’s blurb. Flip through the table of contents, and then skim the book. Read the first page of every chapter and the last two paragraphs from every chapter. Dip in, here and there, reading paragraphs (no more than a page) as you wish. At this step, you are laying the foundation of your expectations from the text. Don’t expect to learn much, though. This is mainly to create a mental roadmap of the journey you will take.

Step 2 – Read your book

Things learned – Theme, key arguments, supporting details

After skimming your book, read it. Read it all the way through. Don’t stop to look up words you don’t know or concepts you never heard of. The point of this stage of reading is to get through all the content as quickly as possible. If you don’t understand something, that is OK. Well written books will often clarify details and explain concepts further the more you read on. If the author does NOT explain their content in a way you can understand it, you can acknowledge this in step 3. But stay in Step 2, for now. As you read, you should be able to identify the author’s theme, key arguments, and supporting details. Well written books will have a repeatable theme.

The author Cal Newport is superb at this. In So Good The Can’t Ignore You, he often repeats “Don’t follow your passion. Most people aren’t lucky enough to know what their passion is.” Look for the repeatable theme in your book. At the end of a book, if you can remember the theme and a few details, I call that a win!

Step 3 – Reread your book… but be a demanding reader

Things learned – Author’s biases and opinions, strengths and weaknesses of the arguments, more supporting details

Sometimes you get to the end of the book in step 2 and have no desire to read it again. That is just fine. Books do not have to make it past step 2. However, if your book is good and you want to remember it, immediately reread it. But this time, be a demanding reader. Slow down. Highlight passages that capture your attention. Write questions in the margins. Act as if the author is your pen-pal and you are writing to them.

Books are like conversations with authors. Instead of a 2-way conversation, a book is an author’s speech, sermon, or pontification about what they have learned (or what they believe). To ensure you have a voice in this conversation, you must write. As you are a demanding reader in this stage, also look out for the veracity of the author’s arguments. Are there logical fallacies? Do they connect all the dots?

Many authors will give a deep description of what they know and then gloss over what they do not, acting as if it is not important. In many diet and health books, authors cherry-pick research to support their claims. Do you notice them ever referencing research that does not support their argument? This is the kind of question you can write in the margin. Remember, a book is often meant to convince you an argument is true.

Understanding how arguments work and where the holes are will help you identify where the author is avoiding conversation. Take your time in this stage. Digest the content. Argue with the author. And enjoy your book!

Step 4 – Read other books on the same topic

Things learned – Common arguments, opposing viewpoints, conclusions that are not in any book, awareness of gaps in the subject

To really learn a subject, read more books on the same topic (and follow the previous steps for each). This is what Mortimer J. Adler calls “syntopical reading.” Reading a variety of books on the same topic will enable you to draw conclusions that are not in any book. Different authors may describe the topic in different ways. This can help you learn from different perspectives.

Also, you may learn that authors have different opinions. Hopefully they have counter opinions and provide opposing ideas so you have a larger awareness of the topic at hand. While you are reading more about your topic, you are also spending more time with the subject at hand. And learning is dependent on the time and focus you put in.

By reading more, and by going through these steps, you are ensuring time and focus is being put toward learning. While you can always just pick up a book and read it, adjusting your approach can have a huge effect on how much you learn and remember.

Happy reading!

Clark