How to Gut a Book

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By ksgarvin
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Gut a Book

Although it sounds destructive, “gutting” a book isn’t about ripping it apart; it’s about getting the most information from the book in a minimum amount of time. But gutting isn’t speed reading, either. It’s about making decisions about which material is worth your time to read, and which material isn’t relevant to the research you’re doing.

Let’s say you are doing some research for a history term paper. You go to the library and pick out a dozen books on your topic that look promising. Most of the books are 400-500 pages, if not longer. How are you ever going to manage to read all of them in the time you have available, let alone analyze the material and write your paper?

You won’t. So -- you need to break the reading task down into smaller tasks

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Pen and paper
Time

Step 1

Take a look through the table of contents to see what the book is about. Look for chapter names or subtitles that will guide you to topics of interest. Note also if there is a listing of charts, tables, maps, or other figures that might be useful to your research. Spend some time looking at the index for keywords related to your topic.
Step 2

Read the introduction to get the gist of what the book is about. If the author addresses any specific issues or debates, he or she will write about that in the introduction. For instance, is that book about zeppelins a technical treatise on the engineering of the airship, or a more general history about their development, or a biography? By the end of this step, you should know whether or not to spend more time with the book or not.
Step 3

Turn to individual chapters, and read the first and last paragraphs of the chapter to get an idea of what the entire chapter is about. You may find that only a chapter or portion of a chapter is relevant to your research. Reading the opening and closing sections of a chapter will help you narrow your research focus.
Step 4

When you’ve determined what is useful to your research topic, read what is relevant and be sure to take notes at the same time. While note-taking may slow your reading, it prevents you from having to reread the entire chapter later on.