How to read and not run out of time. How to read and retain something. Most of all, how to read and have a life. Bibliophiles especially need help with “book-life balance”—a catchphrase popularized in 2017 on Bookriot by Yaika Sabat, then a Master’s student. (View Highlight)
My early advisees dubbed the techniques I showed them “the Sandage Method,” but the X-ray Method describes the goal more clearly. Before starting a book, examine its bones and organs, its muscles and ailments. Then make a diagnostic snapshot for easy reference in class discussion or exam preparation. I show every incoming student how to x-ray a book, on day one. (View Highlight)
if you can avoid the Ph.D. student epidemic of immobilizing self-doubt.” (View Highlight)
Richard White is one of those brilliantly accommodating authors who makes his point in his book titles, empowering us to read for argument without too many details. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Everyone knows that a middle ground is a space for negotiation. Given the where and when in the title, anyone with basic knowledge of early America can guess that the empires are France and Britain. Are the US and indigenous confederacies empires, too, or maybe the titular republics? So this is a study of power, negotiation, and changing players over time. Without opening the cover! (View Highlight)
Sonya easily made these educated guesses. Next, we turned to the table of contents. Based on the presumed argument, which might be the key chapters? Chapter two, “The middle ground,” was easy to flag (as was chapter seven, repeating the key phrase in its title). Chapter three, “The fur trade,” named a player not cued by the book title. Chapters five and six, respectively, focused on “republicans” and “empires.” Chapter ten, “Confederacies,” did not echo the book title but confirmed our guess about indigenous alliances. That made half a dozen chapters out of eleven, not to dismiss all the rest, but simply to mark those six as potentially most important. (View Highlight)
Long before showing Sonya, I had discovered that a book’s index is a more useful tool before reading than after. We go back to the index to relocate some hazy detail, but certain entries can also preview main topics, themes, and arguments to guide your reading. Scan for abstract nouns more than for proper names, entries listing many pages, and especially multipage ranges. For example, in White’s index, “alliances,” “chiefs,” “gifts,” “middle ground,” “republics,” and “trade goods” (as well as several subtopics under each) identify key sections within chapters. (View Highlight)
Do you know what discursive footnotes are? Of course you do, as did Sonya: less citations than wordy asides for litigating scholarly debates, interpretations, and arguments. I asked her to flip through every page. (White chose footnotes over endnotes, which academic readers prefer, but for this step endnotes are easier to scan continuously.) Sonya located a big one on page 154, in a chapter that she had not flagged, and several other long, chatty notes that explained debates she (and I) might have lost in White’s compellingly detailed narrative. (View Highlight)
Having her list sections and pages she planned to read, so far, I showed her how I had done that on the flyleaf of my own copy. Book indexes vary in utility, so I make my own—tracking themes I find interesting but don’t find in the printed entries. “Power,” for example, at pages 33-38, 57, 148, and 174-175. The “village world,” at 16, 37, 143, 185, 316, and 413. “Exchange,” at pages 99-103, 116, 128+, 265, and 334. It’s a good habit (and good fun) to index your own obsessions along with the author’s. So is keeping an eye out for one or two pages that sum up the entire book. For me, White does that at pages 456-457 … with still nearly 100 pages to go. (View Highlight)
Here again, the book at hand was a perfect teaching tool. Richard White is the rare scholar who enthralls like a novelist; since that day with Sonya, I’ve always used The Middle Ground with all who followed her. Most bookworms honor the taboo that it’s wrong to skip to the end. While a monograph is not a novel, doesn’t it disrespect a renowned stylist like White not to savor his masterpiece word by word, sentence by sentence, page by page, chapter by chapter? Maybe, but no more so than not finishing a great book at all, reading it like we learned in third grade. (View Highlight)
The bane of grad students (and all harried lovers of serious nonfiction) is running out of time without getting to what’s most important. That’s a common if secret shame when you’re trying to digest three doorstops a week. Relearning how to read, under pressure, means getting what you (and nobody else) need most from this book. To do that consistently, you must plan before you scan. (View Highlight)
A good plan has two parts. First, make a list (in pencil) of all pages you will read, adjusting it step by step. Second, and most important, be realistic about the maximum amount of time you can give to this book. Being realistic means respecting your daily rituals and the relationships that keep you happy and functional. Rather than get only as far as you can before running out of time, you have made a plan to read what you decide are the most important parts, within a preset time limit that respects yourself as much as the author. This is why you need a plan: to read attentively but efficiently, and sustainably, without surrendering your book-life balance. (View Highlight)
There is one more catch: your limit must include time for taking notes. For my grad classes and advisees preparing for exams, I prescribe a strict one-page template. Start with the complete Chicago-style citation, the main argument(s) in your own words, historiographical keywords from relevant debates, and names of a few scholars or books in dialogue with this one. Then list all chapter titles, but take notes (including key pages and brief quotations) only on sections you actually read. The goal of making a concise, easily reviewable record of what you consider most useful in this book—and doing so within the time set aside for reading—is to avoid taking too many notes or procrastinating note-taking and having to reread. (View Highlight)
The x-ray method is most of all a tool for restoring and maintaining book-life balance. Book by book, you can take back your time and decide for yourself. Learning to read more efficiently—and sustainably—can even empower you to read joyously again. And obsessively, for those of us who are so inclined. (View Highlight)
