When it comes to writing in books, I have no fear. I litter books with my indecipherable scribbles for three specific reasons:

1. To highlight what I appreciate.
2. To notate content progression.
3. To critique what I don’t appreciate.

Let me explain each of these specifically.

1. Highlighting Highlights

From short phrases to full pages, I identify sections that I find helpful and persuasive. With a highlighter or pen, I mark those sections so that I can I return to copy the quote into a database for later reference. A while back I posted more detail about how to organize these quotes (here and here).

My process is pretty intuitive, so I won’t develop this much here.

2. Notating Progression

My problem with highlighting (#1) is that I too frequently scrape my nose on the tree bark. I’m a detail guy myself and this practice of notating as I read has helped me to pause and consider the author’s big picture development.

For these notations, I fill the white spaces of a book. At the top of the first page of a chapter there is usually 1/3 of a blank page where I jot notes after I read every page or so. Here I can connect the small details of a chapter together into a visual linear progression as I watch the author develop an argument.

My practice is simple: As I progress through the chapter, I jot little summary phrases and connect them with arrows on the opening page. This helps me track how the chapter is developed.

Naturally, section headings are helpful for following the progression of the book. But a number of books—especially Puritans—are long paragraphs of prose smashed tighter than the stones of Solomon’s Temple. In that case it’s necessary to crowbar the text apart with my own section headings written in the margin. It improves readability and comprehension.

And I use those blank pages in the front and back of a book as a personal notebook for all types of notes, questions, and things to remember. For example, whenever I read a book on Christian living, I make a note in the back for every reference made to the gospel. Each time I find a specific reference to the gospel, I’ll scribble the page number in the back. So in the back of my books you will likely find something like this:

“Gospel: p. 12, 56, 120, 187, 220.”

And this little discipline also helps me track any number of themes throughout a book, not just the gospel. What does this book say about sin? Justification? Sanctification? The local church? As we will see next time (tip #3) first determining these categories is very important to healthy, critical reading.

Like looking through a telescope with one eye and a microscope with the other, writing in a book helps focus my attention on the large-scale development (#2) as I mark helpful stand-alone sentences (#1).

3. Critiquing Lowlights

Reading with pen-in-hand is also important because good readers are critics. And reading with a pen reminds me that I am a critic. Open to new discoveries, yes. But always a critic.

Two clarifiers here. First, when I say “critical,” I mean a state of humble evaluation, not a state of prideful negation. Next, let me say that each of our hearts struggle with sin in different ways. Some of us find it easy to thrash books with the scissors of criticism, but resist being chiseled ourselves by wise books. This is pride. Some of us will find it easy to praise good books, but difficult to criticize specific thoughts. We will lift the thoughts of others without critique and discernment. This is laziness.

My struggle is with laziness. And so I started writing in my books to confront this tendency.

Identifying the lowlights in a book is my means of drawing attention to sections or arguments that:

1. Appear to be wrong.
2. I know to be false and can prove to be incorrect.
3. What I think lacks collaborative evidence and substance.
4. What lacks biblical support.
5. What portions of a book lack elements of persuasion.
6. What has been recycled and developed in the book already (business books are infamous for this).
7. What lacks vigor and consistency (for novels especially).

When I read sections that appear to be wrong I simply make a “?” in the margin or at the top of the page. When I read sections that I disagree with and can prove to be incorrect, I unsheathe the pen and start x-ing pages. At times I cross out an entire page when I disagree.

G.K. Chesterton has felt the sword on a few occasions. Chesterton is one of my favorite writers, but when he starts spewing off disdain for John Calvin I mute his mutiny with a black line.

You may be gasping that I would draw a line across a page, but please try this at least once. Unsheathe a Sharpie and, in a swift Zorro-like move, x out an entire page.

This practice is significant and important. This x-ing out discipline is important because that dark line reminds us that our books exist to serve us and our learning and our priorities. We, the readers, do not exist to gulp down the book’s entire content.

Only one book (Scripture) is inherently above x-ing. The rest are not.

Now please don’t think that I’m suggesting you read only what is easy and comfortable. Read what will stretch your mind. Read what you will disagree with. But make sure as you read with a pen in hand.

Books as Roof or Foundation?

Or take this building analogy. Books should lay the foundation for our thoughts, not serve as the roof—or cap—for our thoughts. We should think further beyond what we read (foundation). Not under, and limited to, what we read (roof).

Books help us develop and refine our own thoughts. Yet my lazy temptation is to live in the fragmented world of borrowed thoughts. Interacting with the author’s thoughts—by highlighting, notating, and critiquing—helps us develop our own thoughts, brick by brick.

I find this especially true for preachers in their use of books and commentaries. I can speak from personal experience that too frequently commentaries and books became a roof over a sermon, providing a cap for what can be said, rather than a properly laid foundation for which a sermon is constructed. As I look back, I have noticed that when I was quoting other’s words most frequently from books and commentaries, these were the periods where I was most commonly borrowing thoughts rather than building from them.

I think C.H. Spurgeon was a master of this. Just consider his wide familiarity with the Puritans, having read Owen and Brooks and Bunyan since childhood. Yet if you read his sermons you’ll notice just how few direct quotations he used in the pulpit. Spurgeon said a man who does not use the thoughts of others proves he has no thoughts of his own. He was not talking about the lazy copy-and-paste lifting of quotes, but reminding us that books help develop our own thoughts.

When I fall into the tendency of simply lifting quotes from other books without developing my own thoughts, I’m confusing the fundamental purpose of my books.

Conclusion

Reading with pen-in-hand is one of the most crucial and fundamental tips for reading effectively and efficiently. This discipline reminds me that books are tools, raw materials, and a foundation. It keeps books in their proper place.

With a pen, I am positioned to highlight what I appreciate, to notate content progression, and to critique what I don’t appreciate.

————

Series posts:

On Reading
Tip 1: Capture Reading Time
Tip 2: Read with a Pen in Hand (just read it)
Tip 3: Read With Purpose in View (next)

On the first day we moved into our home in Maryland, our gracious friends arrived in work clothes to help unload furniture and boxes from the truck, to fill the air with sweet fellowship, and to assemble beds. O, the sweet taste of hard labor accomplished within the ceaseless hum and energy of joy-filled fellowship.

On the second day I said, “Let there be a library.” And by the end of the second day there was a library—my library. All my books were unboxed, organized topically, and aligned properly on the bookshelves. It took the entirety of the second day. The boxes full of, oh little things like clothes, toys, and my wife’s books could wait until the third day.

I love books. I love to buy new books, collect old books, and cover my walls with books. Books are the scholarly jolts that begin my day and the literary nightcaps that bring my day to a close. Books are my hot chocolates, my Irish cream coffees, and my hot lattes with extra shots of espresso.

Are my biblio priorities healthy? I suppose at times I lack self-control, like the jogger who runs for 20 miles when he should only run 5. Or maybe like the chocoholic who measures serving sizes by the bag, not by the piece.

Vice aside, I suppose it’s out of a love of reading that I invest so much time in the discipline. But a question I receive a lot, and even more frequently now that I’m posting my reading digests, is this:

How do you read so much?

Which is a misleading question because it can be interpreted and answered in any of three different ways:

(1) Often the question arrives more in the form of a rhetorical exclamation than a question, more like: How do you read so much!

(2) Sometimes the question is asked with a schedule in mind, like: How do you find all the time to read?

(3) Sometimes it’s asked with achievement in mind, Like: How do you read so many books?

In the case of (1) let me just say that I’m a normal guy. Maybe less than normal. One fact I try to forget—and would forget if not for its value as a bludgeoning cudgel to smack pride in the nose—is that for at least one third of my college years in I found myself on “academic probation.” Which sounds a lot like criminal probation, except that criminal probation is a recovery phase following a guilty verdict. “Academic probation” is what you get on the spiral downward before someone officially pronounces you guilty of stupidity and kicks you out.

So I don’t read a lot of books because I got born smart.

In the case of (2) I don’t think I spend much more time reading than some of you. My calendar is full, my honey-do list is long, my kids are hyper, and my boss is active (or is it the other way around?). My running shoes are muddy, my weight bench is dusty, and my 10-foot front yard needs to be mowed at least twice a year.

And this leads me to the first of three tips.

Tip 1: Capture Reading Time

So, when do I read? Everytime I get a spare moment. Sometimes I read over my morning bowl of Crispix, sometimes I read over my lunchtime can of tuna, and sometimes I read over my evening cup of decaf.

I read at the DMV. I read when I’m waiting on my barber. I read when the kids are climbing all over my back on the living room floor. And on Mondays I retreat for 4-6 hours to read at Starbucks.

Books I have no intention of reading cover-to-cover are kept beside my bed. I’ll grab one of these volumes and read for about 20 minutes each night before falling asleep. This stack is constantly cycled, but here is a current picture:

Kindle

A month ago a friend introduced me to the Kindle, Amazon.com’s electronic book reader ($359). Having immediate access to 200 books on this one device has improved my reading productivity, especially while traveling. The little device switches between books quickly, allowing me to pick up books where I left off. I’ve found ways to make my own free ebooks of Spurgeon sermons and the works of Jonathan Edwards. Really any text document can be converted into a book (via Mac OS X and the free program Stanza). And there are more than 23,000 free books already formatted for the Kindle. The Kindle is a traveling library of sorts.

Hours x WPM =Books Read

In sum, I read for about 15 hours a week. This sounds like a lot, but you can capture 15 minutes here and here and easily come up with 5 hours of reading time per week.

Here’s a quick calculation (from someone who took the same college Algebra class three times) to prove how small moments of reading time really do add up.

The average reader moves through a book at a pace of 200-250 words per minute. In finding 15 hours to read each week, I read for 900 minutes. Assuming the average book is around 60,000 words in length, and figuring nothing more than an average pace, I am positioned to complete 3-4 books per week! Do the math: That’s a pace of nearly 200 books per year. At this pace, I could read the complete works of William Shakespeare (850,000 words) in a month (but that would be an awfully boring month).

Your personal goal may be 5 hours of weekly reading. Sounds like a lot. But you hit this goal if you set aside 15 minutes to read the morning, 15 minutes to read at lunch, and 15 minutes to read before you fall asleep. Reading at 225 words per minute, you could easily read one book every week.

My point is that time is a precious commodity for the reader. And we all can make extra time within our day to invest in reading. Reading 50 books per year is a realistic goal for most of us (paying for 50 books is quite another problem).

Conclusion

So perhaps you can now see, I don’t read a lot of books because I have an abundance of smarts or free time. I just try and capture moments throughout the day, and redeem the time.

Next time, I will disclose tip #2 for reading more efficiently and effectively (no Kindle needed).