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Reading entire books requires a different approach than shorter forms like social media posts, poetry, short stories, news articles, or research articles. Whether you need to read excerpts, individual chapters of a textbook, or an entire novel, reading requires patience, stamina, and focus. Even if you don’t consider yourself “a reader,” most of us are reading nearly constantly through messaging apps, in our email, or on social media. This module will build on the reading skills you already have and give you tools to approach college-level books, both fiction and nonfiction, with helpful strategies.
After completing this module, you will be able to:
What even is a book? War & Peace and Who Moved My Cheese? are both books but are drastically different from each other. Books can range in length from tiny novellas to long Russian epics. The librarian term for a book is a monograph, which means that it is generally only published once, where other forms of written materials such as articles written in scholarly journals fall into the periodical category, meaning they are released on a regular schedule.
When you read something short like a social media post, you rely on short-term memory to follow the argument or narrative. Longform works like books require you to rely on both short and long-term memory for comprehension and understanding. Authors of longform writings can craft more complex arguments than short-form works which are often very tightly focused, such as a research article that presents the findings of one study. Longform works like books offer not just more information or content, but can connect more ideas and make more robust arguments. When reading longform literary works, have you ever needed to make a list of characters? This is an excellent example of a memory aid that can support your reading books.
Reading longform sources like books requires you to hold what you’ve read before in your memory. While it might be possible to read some shorter works in a single sitting, chances are you will need to break up reading a book into multiple days or even over the course of weeks. To read well, you will need to consider where the work is going, recall what you read previously, and connect the ideas contained inside the book.
Books generally fall into two categories: fiction and nonfiction. Textbooks are a specific type of nonfiction that you are regularly asked to read. They present facts and may help guide the reader through analysis or have knowledge checks, can be easy to skim through, and are meant to be used as a learning support. General nonfiction may also be assigned for class reading to further deepen your understanding of a topic.
Books generally fall into two categories: fiction and nonfiction. Textbooks are a specific type of nonfiction that you are regularly asked to read. They present facts and may help guide the reader through analysis or have knowledge checks, can be easy to skim through, and are meant to be used as a learning support. General nonfiction may also be assigned for class reading to further deepen your understanding of a topic.
Purpose: When you begin to read, read with purpose:
Skimming: It is completely appropriate and useful to skim over the text of textbooks and general nonfiction books. However, do this with purpose, looking to identify parts to go back to and read closely later on.
Close reading: Some texts require close reaching, such as literature, historical documents, poetry, and fiction. Use the following close reading strategies.
Timing: Consider when and how long you will read.
Watch this video to learn about some other active reading strategies:
Diving deeply into the science of reading is beyond the scope of this module. However, people with higher reading comprehension and retention levels:
When you are reading a textbook, you should employ active reading strategies. One strategy to remember is the 4 Ps: Preview, Predict, Purpose, Practice.
Audiobooks are a useful alternative to reading textually. Look for audio features in library databases, in ebook apps, or freely online in addition to wherever you typically find audiobooks. Just like reading with your eyes, when you listen to a book you are engaging with the words, thoughts, and ideas of the author; it “counts” as reading!
Critically listen to audiobooks; don’t just hear the words but listen for understanding. Chunk your listening sessions into manageable amounts of time. Pause as you need to in order to take notes or make a summary just as you would annotate a written text.
If writing notes isn’t helpful for you, consider making a voice recording of yourself explaining what you heard or your questions and thoughts about the book section you listened to.
AI has changed the way we engage with a variety of content, including reading and understanding information. However, due to copyright laws and plagiarism prevention models, the generative AI available to the public often does not have the ability to “see” full books.
Instead, if you ask for a summary of a book, AI will compile and synthesize summaries, commentary, and reviews it can find. When using AI, always refer back to the original source material for any analysis or summary you may get from generative AI since it is most likely relying on second-hand information. First ask the generative AI tool if it can access the full book you want help understanding. If it does not have the ability to access the entire book, ask for the best sources to aid your understanding. If you are reading a classic text, for example, that has been studied by scholars, you might ask AI to recommend a guide for that text.
Generative AI may be helpful in giving a summary for works in the public domain such as open access books or older classic books whose copyright has expired.
The content for this module was drawn from the following sources:
Academic Success Algonquin College. (2020). How to use active reading strategies. [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRjTn5jXz8I
Cornell College. (n.d.). Reading a textbook for true understanding. https://www.cornellcollege.edu/registrar/academics-registration/study-tips/reading-textbooks.shtml
You’ve been assigned to read the novel Pride and Prejudice for your English class. This novel is about 350 pages long and has 61 chapters. You have two weeks to finish the novel.
Either in the textbox in the LMS or in a Word document, describe your plan for keeping up with the reading, including how much time you’ll give yourself, where you will read, and how you will check your understanding.
See the Google doc here for quiz questions and answers. Please note, this document is stored on the PALNI team drive and is only accessible to those who work in a PALNI school.
All of the PALNI Information Literacy Modules are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.