Preview

When you preview your book, you gain a basic understanding of the book and how it is structured. The familiarity you gain from the preview process will significantly increase your reading speed. Previewing will also increase your reading endurance (the duration you are able to read without having to consciously force yourself to focus), because you will be building curiosity about the book's content.

Previewing Non-Fiction:

If you are just starting the book, read the cover, preface, and table of contents. For a particular chapter, skim the entire chapter, focusing on headings and topic sentences (usually the first sentence in a paragraph). While previewing, you want to become genuinely enthralled by the information residing in your book, but be careful to resist the urge to stop and read entire pages, because we want to bottle up that curiosity and use it to keep you focused. Finish your preview by reading the chapter summary. You should be cruising during the preview. It should never take longer than 5 minutes to preview a chapter.

Previewing Fiction:

When you preview fiction, read the cover and table of contents. Then, skim the entire book very quickly. Your goal is to rapidly identify the main characters and gain a basic understanding of the plot. You may skip previewing for fiction if you wish to completely avoid the possibility of spoiling any part of the story. However, doing so will result in a slower reading speed.