You’ve sat down with that book. You’ve skimmed the pages. You might have even finished reading it. But how do you get more out of your reading? Is it even possible? Does it require a college degree, hours of education, and the most advanced note taking system you can learn?
Not at all. It just requires a willing reader, a book able to be marked and highlighted, and nine tricks for success.
So if you’re a homeschooling parent looking for some ideas, a student looking for some guidance, or a reader who wants to get more out of your reading, then read on.
Before You Read
To get more out of your reading, you need to start before you even open the book. Reading to understand the story is different than reading for fun. Before you open the first page, you should understand the author’s background, their worldview, and their biases as well as the background of the story, the worldview it presents, and the biases it will lean towards. But it all starts with the story you choose…
1. Choose the Right Book
Make sure the book you are about to analyze is one you can freely mark and highlight. I recommend finding a used copy at a thrift store, one with large margins for taking notes, thick paper so pens and highlighters won’t leak through it, and something large with a loose binding. You want the book to be able to lay flat when you take notes, or have a flexible binding so that you can force it to lay flat.
You’ll also want to find a notebook that you can fill with tidbits of information, lists of characters, summaries of chapters, and anything else you find interesting. A spiral-bound, lined notebook is what I commonly use so that it also lays flat.
2. Research Relevant Facts
Before you sit down with the story, you want to understand where it’s taking place, who it’s written by, what the genre is, and what you should be expecting from the plot.
Research the historical setting of the novel, the author’s background, their potential biases, and the cultural influence surrounding the story. Find a breakdown of the story characters, a map of the book, and a timeline of important historical events taking place during the story (if it’s historical fiction). Choose a notebook for yourself to take notes and put these tidbits of extra information in its pages. You want to be able to access them quickly while you read.
3. Skim the Story
When I was twelve years old, my co-op tutor told my class to skim every chapter of the fiction book we read and take note of the main characters, dates, places, and notable events. As an avid reader, I was appalled by how this would ruin the story for me! But skimming the story is an essential part of evaluating a book and a great way to get more out of your reading.
Start by checking the index. How many chapters are there? How many books? Is this the first story in a series?
Then look at the first page. Is it older style writing with long words and long sentences? Is it more laid back? Is there a lot of dialogue or a lot of description? Note your findings in your notebook!
Skim the chapters before you read. Perhaps read a summary of the book. When I was reading Jane Austen’s novels for the first time, I made sure to read a summary beforehand. She includes lots of description in the first one or two chapters. It’s easy for a reader to get bogged down in her details and be unsure of what’s going on, especially if they have no background with the story.
BONUS: Watch the Movie
Before you quit reading this article at the appalling idea of valuing a movie over the book, understand that I only recommend this for classic novels, especially those that are excessively long, very complex, and feature large casts. If research a good movie that sticks close to the story, you may actually get more out of your reading by understanding a bit of the plot beforehand.
I recommend this tip to boys who have a hard time staying focused with a long story. If they understand a bit of the plot beforehand (either by a summary of the book or by the movie) they might enjoy reading the book more!
While You Read
Keep that notebook by your side because to get more out of your reading, you’ll need to evaluate the story while you are reading.
4. Invest in the Story
Remember that map you printed off before you began the book? And the character list you studied at the beginning? You should have those right beside you as you read!
Create a character list and timeline for yourself as you read! Note locations, characters, dates, important historical figures (if applicable), and even inconsistencies with the story! Are you confused on a part of the plot? Reread the chapter. Read a summary. Listen to it aloud; sometimes you’ll pick up on things you didn’t realize before!
5. Mark Up Your Book
To my twelve-year-old mind, this was another equally appalling idea. I was one of those children who never bent the corners of a book, never laid a book open and upside down across a table or couch arm, never held a book with dirty hands, and had every book on my bookshelf aligned perfectly. To my twelve-year-old’s brain, the thought of marring a book page with a pen, pencil, or highlighter was unthinkable!
But it’s also one of the best ways to get more out of your reading. Write thoughts you have in the margins, highlight characters and places and locations, write family trees in the cover of the book, mark up the chapter index with notes on what happens in each chapter, summarize chapters in the margins. To get more out of your reading, you need to get the most out of your book. And that starts with marking it up! Making notes forces you to slow down and engage more meaningfully with the content.
6. Note Conversation Points
You’re not going to stop analyzing the book after you finish reading it. You’re going to want to talk about it, so prepare for that now. I make green stars in the margins for parts of books that I want to discuss. Do you have an essay that you’re going to be writing on the book? If you haven’t already decided your topic or you know it already, then jot down ideas and points as you are reading!
I use pen on my books. The sound of graphite on thick paper sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me. But if you are an avid pencil-user, then use that as your tool to annotate your book. John Piper, a pastor and author, recommends pencil so you can change your comments as you discover new facts in the story while reading. Whatever is written in pen is there to stay, so make sure you’re not adding notes you’ll later want to erase.
Bright pens and highlighters will help you quickly see your favorite points later on. Color tabs will also enable you to easily reference pages you need. For teachers, homeschooling mamas, and students, notetaking inside your book is absolutely necessary!
After You Read
To get more out of your reading, you need to share the story with others, summarize it for yourself, and repeatedly revisit it. And all of this comes after you’ve finished the book.
7. Discuss the Book
Reading aloud is just one great way to discuss a story. Reading clubs are a wonderful way to share great books with others! When you’re all reading the same exact story at the same exact time, you are bound to have different insights. It’s actually quite comical to see what thoughts my friends and I bring to our book discussions even though we practically received the same upbringing, the same education, and have read the same story.
When discussing a story, revisit the notable, the valuable, the memorable, the questionable, and the debatable. What interested you? What interested others? What surprised you? What did you learn? What did you not expect was going to happen?
Remember those green stars I would make on my books? Well, those green stars served me incredibly when I had a presentation to prepare and needed to find a topic. All I had to do was flip back through the story and find a great discussion topic.
To get more out of your reading, you need to discuss it.
8. Summarize the Story
If you can’t summarize a story, you don’t understand it. It’s a great rule of thumb that is almost always true. Write out individual chapter summaries as you are reading, but then summarize the entire story. Do you understand the central themes, the central plot, the central message being sent to the reader? Every good book has each of these and until you are able to summarize the story, you probably don’t understand it.
9. Read it Again
This last tip to get more out of your reading is exactly what it says. Read the story again and again and again. Read the chapter, the sentence, the word over and over until you finally understand it or until you’ve seen something you didn’t realize before. Repetition is the key to having it stay in your mind, and as you read it again you’ll discover new things about the story you hadn’t previously discovered.
In Conclusion
So there they are – 9 ways to get more out of your reading. From when you first sit down with the book, to while you’re immersed in the story, to the discussions after you’ve finished the tale, you have incredible chances to delve deeply into that novel.
Evaluating and analyzing a story is a central part of what a radical reader does. While much of the world will accept a book simply as a cool story, some awesome action scenes, and a riveting conclusion, radical readers know that the true beauty of the story lies in the message it conveys and the lessons it advises its reader to learn.
What we read should change us.
Too often, reading becomes a passive activity. But if we are reading a radical story, the lessons the book teaches shouldn’t end on the final page. Learning how to get more out of your reading is learning how to see the truth, goodness, and beauty the author is proclaiming to the reader. Learning how to get more out of your reading is learning how to see the shadow of the Greatest Story woven into the book in your hands.
To get more out of your reading, you have to read stories radically.
Continue Reading…
