Questions to Ask While Reading a Book
Questions for working through a book rather than a single article: what you want from it, what each chapter actually claimed, when to give up on it, and what to bring to a book club. Most suit any book; the last twelve are questions to ask while reading fiction, where you are weighing a narrator and not an argument. Some are for the margins, some for after you close it.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
As you read
Why did you pick this book up, and what do you want out of it?
Why ask it
A book read for pleasure, for a decision you are about to make, or because it was recommended calls for different attention and different notes. Naming the reason also lets you notice when the book stops serving it.
Looking at the contents page, what is the book trying to do overall?
Why ask it
Two minutes on the structure tells you which chapters are the argument and which are illustration. It also shows you the shape early, so a slow middle reads as a stretch of examples rather than a book falling apart.
What was the one claim of the chapter you just finished?
Why ask it
One sentence per chapter, written from memory, is enough to keep a book-length argument in view. If you cannot produce it, either the chapter was padding or you read it while thinking about something else.
What is the author assuming you already believe?
Why ask it
Books work by agreement, and the assumptions are usually in the opening chapter where they are hardest to see. Naming one lets you notice later that half the argument depended on it.
Which sentence on this page would you underline, and why that one?
Why ask it
Forcing a choice of one keeps you from highlighting whole paragraphs, which is the habit that makes notes useless. The why matters more than the sentence, and belongs in the margin next to it.
What does this connect to that you already know?
Why ask it
New material sticks when it is attached to something old, even loosely. A note that says this contradicts what that other book claimed is worth more later than a clean summary of this one.
Where did your attention drift, and what was happening on the page there?
Why ask it
Drift is usually a signal about the text: an over-long example, an unfamiliar term you skipped, or a section you did not need. Deciding which of those it was tells you whether to reread or to skim ahead.
What is the author not saying?
Why ask it
Look for the objection they never raise, the group whose experience is absent, or the cost they never total up. In book-length work these gaps are structural rather than accidental.
Which stories and examples are carrying the argument, and would it survive without them?
Why ask it
Anecdote does most of the persuading in popular nonfiction. Try restating the chapter with the stories removed; what remains is what the book has actually established.
What would the book's strongest critic say?
Why ask it
Constructing the best objection yourself, before looking for reviews, is the fastest way to find out whether you have understood the argument or only enjoyed it.
Where did you agree too quickly?
Why ask it
The passages that matched your existing view got the lightest reading. Going back to one of them and asking what it actually claims is where most of the value of a second pass sits.
Is this book still worth your time?
Why ask it
Ask it at a third of the way through and give yourself permission to stop. Finishing out of obligation costs you the book you would rather be reading, and the sunk cost is only a few evenings.
What would you try this week because of this?
Why ask it
One small action within days is what separates a book that changed something from a book you can name. If nothing suggests itself, the book may be interesting rather than useful, which is fine as long as you know it.
How would you explain the last chapter to a friend in two minutes, with the book closed?
Why ask it
Retrieval, not review, is what fixes something in memory. The parts where the explanation goes vague are exactly the parts to reread.
Afterwards
What do you want to ask someone else who has read this?
Why ask it
Keeping a running list of these turns a solitary read into a conversation and gives a book club somewhere to start beyond whether people liked it.
What did someone else notice that you walked straight past?
Why ask it
In a group this is the question worth going round the table on. Two readers rarely mark the same passages, and the difference usually says as much about the readers as the book.
Which part of this will still hold in five years, and which part will look dated?
Why ask it
Separating the durable argument from the current examples is a useful discipline, especially for books about technology, business or politics. It also tells you what is worth quoting later.
What did reading this make you want to read next?
Why ask it
Books point at other books, sometimes deliberately and sometimes by what they leave out. Following that thread is how a reading habit builds into knowing a subject rather than having read about it.
What will you keep from this book, and where will you put it so you find it again?
Why ask it
A note in a place you actually revisit is worth more than a shelf of annotated books. Decide the destination as you finish, because you will not come back to do it later.
If you had to cut a third of this book, what would go?
Why ask it
Sharpens your sense of what the book is really doing and makes you a better judge of the next one. It is also the most honest review you can give a friend who asks whether to read it.
A closer read
What do the first ten pages tell me about how to read the rest?
Why ask it
Openings signal pace, difficulty and how much the author will explain, and they usually establish the pattern the book will follow. Rereading them once you are a hundred pages in is one of the cheapest ways to get more out of a book.
What is the claim, or the story, in one sentence?
Why ask it
If you cannot do this by a third of the way in, either the book is badly organized or you are reading passively. Try it aloud, because the sentence that sounds vague when spoken is one you have not actually understood.
What is this book actually about, underneath its subject?
Why ask it
A book about a shipwreck may be about incompetent authority, and a management book may be about the author's regrets. The gap between subject and preoccupation is where most of the interesting material sits.
Whose point of view am I getting, and who does not get to speak?
Why ask it
The absences are the informative part: the characters with no interior life, the people described only in aggregate, the interviews nobody conducted. Noting who is missing is the single most useful reading habit for both fiction and reporting.
What is the evidence here, and what would have changed the conclusion?
Why ask it
Ask this of nonfiction chapter by chapter, since a persuasive book can rest on very little. Be alert to argument carried entirely by anecdote, and to studies described without a number attached.
When was this written, and what did the author not know yet?
Why ask it
Publication date explains confident predictions, absent technologies and attitudes that now read badly. It also protects you from dismissing a book for lacking information nobody had at the time.
What does this book expect me to have already read?
Why ask it
Unexplained references, a name used as shorthand, an argument treated as settled: these mark the conversation the book is joining. Following two or three of them is often more valuable than finishing the book itself.
What do I disagree with, and can I state their case better than they did?
Why ask it
Restating the argument well is the test of whether you have understood it or only reacted to it. If your version of their position sounds obviously stupid, you are arguing with something you invented.
What would this look like if the opposite were true?
Why ask it
A useful test for any strong thesis, and it works on novels too. If you cannot describe what evidence would have contradicted the author, the claim may not be the kind that can be wrong.
What is the author anxious about?
Why ask it
Writers overexplain the point they fear will be rejected and return repeatedly to the objection that worries them. Noticing the repetition shows you where they feel least secure, which is usually the hinge of the whole book.
Has this changed anything I do, or only what I say?
Why ask it
The most demanding question in the list, and the one that separates books that were absorbed from books that were merely enjoyed. Applied to nonfiction, it usually exposes how little of it survives contact with a normal week.
Who should read this, and who should not?
Why ask it
Naming the second group is what makes a recommendation trustworthy, and it forces you to be specific about what the book is good at. A book you can recommend to anyone is one you probably have not thought about carefully.
What would I ask the author that the book leaves unanswered?
Why ask it
Good books leave a clear question rather than a general admiration. If nothing comes to mind, that may be the most accurate verdict you can give.
Reading a novel
What question is keeping you turning the pages?
Why ask it
Name it exactly: who did it, whether the marriage holds, whether she gets out of the town. If the book answers it early, look for the second question it has been setting up underneath the first.
Are you reading for the story or for the sentences, and which is this novel built for?
Why ask it
A thriller read slowly and a quiet novel read for plot both feel like failures that are not the book's fault. Settling which you have in your hands tells you whether to speed up or to reread a paragraph aloud.
What has the narrator told you that you have had to take on their word alone?
Why ask it
A first-person narrator reports their own motives, and nobody else in the novel gets to check them. Put a pencil mark beside the claims only they can vouch for and count how many still stand in the last chapter.
What does the main character want in this chapter, and is it what they wanted at the start?
Why ask it
Plot in fiction is mostly a want meeting resistance, so a change in the want is often the real event of a chapter. When you cannot say what they are after, the novel may be holding it back deliberately.
Which character do you keep making excuses for?
Why ask it
Novels are good at getting you onto someone's side before showing you what that person does. Catching your own leniency halfway through shows how the author has been steering you.
Who in this book knows something the others do not?
Why ask it
Much of the tension in fiction comes from uneven knowledge: a secret kept from a spouse, a fact the reader has and the hero lacks. Keeping track of who knows what helps more than tracking events, above all in a mystery.
Which detail has come up twice without mattering yet?
Why ask it
A novelist rarely describes the same ring, scar or locked drawer a second time by accident. Marking the repeats as you go lets you watch the book being built, and makes the payoff land harder when it comes.
Where has the story jumped in time, and what did it skip?
Why ask it
What a novel leaves between chapters is chosen as carefully as what it shows. A wedding that happens offstage or a year passed over in a clause tells you what the author thinks the story is not about.
What is this scene doing that a summary of it would lose?
Why ask it
An argument can be boiled down; a scene mostly cannot, because how long a silence lasts or who looks away first is the content. If your answer is nothing, you may have found the pages you are allowed to skim.
What are you feeling about this chapter, before you decide what it means?
Why ask it
Dread, boredom, a laugh you did not expect: the reaction arrives first and is the evidence you will interpret later. One word in the margin keeps it from being overwritten by what you think you should have felt.
Which minor character would you follow out of the room if the book let you?
Why ask it
The person you want more of often carries whatever the main story is leaving out. Your pick also says something about you as a reader, which is why it starts good arguments at a book club.
What ending are you hoping for, and what ending is the book preparing?
Why ask it
The two are often different, and the gap between them is where a novel gets its pull. Writing both down before the final stretch gives you something to test the ending against when it arrives.
Reading a whole book and keeping it
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
A workable system
- 1Before you start, skim the contents, the introduction and the conclusion, and write one line about what you want from the book.
- 2While reading, mark sparingly: one underline per page at most, with a few words in the margin saying why.
- 3At the end of each chapter, write one sentence from memory before you look back.
- 4At the end of the book, write a paragraph in your own words: the claim, the support, your objection, and one thing to try.
- 5Move that paragraph somewhere you will pass it again, with the title and date attached.
- 6A month later, try to say what the book argued without opening it, and reread only the chapters where you cannot.
Handling the middle of a book
Slow does not always mean bad
Many good books have a stretch of evidence or backstory that is doing necessary work. Skim it, note where it was, and keep going rather than abandoning the book in chapter six.
It is fine to stop
If the argument was made in the first fifty pages and the rest is repetition, take the argument and leave. Reading in order and to the end is a school habit, not a virtue.
Read two at once if that keeps you reading
One demanding and one easy, or one fiction and one not, often means more total pages read. The alternative is frequently a stalled book and no reading at all.
Reading fiction
Ask at chapter breaks, not mid-scene
With a novel, the questions about claims and evidence mostly fall away, and who is speaking, what they want and what the book is keeping from you take their place. Save them for the end of a chapter so the story keeps its hold while you are inside it.
Keep a cast list on the bookmark
A name, a line on who the person is, and the page where they first appear. It takes a minute, and it stops a long novel with a large cast being dropped at the point where you can no longer tell the cousins apart.
Leave the plot summary until the end
A summary or a review answers the very question that was keeping you reading. If you are lost, go back over the last two pages of the previous chapter before you look anything up.
For a book club
Open with what people marked
Ask everyone to bring one passage and one question. It starts the discussion with specifics instead of a round of general verdicts, which is where these groups usually stall.
Give the dissenter room
The person who disliked the book has the most useful thing to say, and will not say it if the first four people were enthusiastic. Ask them early and directly.
Separate the book from the subject
Groups drift into talking about the topic in general, which is enjoyable and means nobody discusses what the author actually argued. Bring it back with a question about a specific chapter.
Finish with what changed
Go round once: one thing each person now thinks differently about, or one thing they will do. It is short, it makes the reading count, and it tells you what to pick next.