How to "cheat-read"

Jan 2, 2007

“Mark has a confession to make. He has recently started doing what he calls cheat-reading of certain books. He really likes cheat-reading books. Particularly because he has a house with 20,000 books and by cheat-reading he can get to a lot more of them.”

“This is what I did. I committed to reading only the first sentence of each paragraph. If I found the sentence interesting I would skim the rest of the paragraph. If it were really interesting I would read the entire paragraph. I also could just go on to the second sentence and then make that choice again how to read the rest. That’s it. It was just a formal way of skimming the book, I suppose, but I made sure I got to every paragraph. Basically, I commit to reading the first sentence of each paragraph and then however much more and at however much depth seems appropriate. ”

The full article is here. I advise cheat-reading it.

I believe this is a variation of what I think Adler calls “The First Pass”. Or something like that. I may have cheat-read that book.

2 responses to “How to "cheat-read"”

Elliot

January 2, 2007 at 9:39 am

I do that with long blog posts alot.

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Clemens

January 4, 2007 at 2:37 pm

It’s also akin to the method grad students in history, and probably everything else, use to survive. When each class gives you two or three books a week, some in languages you are not to good at, you read the intro and the conclusion, then the first and last paragraph of every chapter. If the chapter looks worthwhile, cheat-read it. You can cover a LOT of ground that way and if you take notes, you still know more about what you have just read than most people (since you will be tested on it at the end of your school experience).

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Ian Daniel Stewart

How to "cheat-read"

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2 responses to “How to "cheat-read"”